Simple Geoshell tutorial

Oso3D

Someone commented that geoshells seemed daunting and they hadn't tried them yet, which is a shame. :)
Geoshells are actually pretty easy.

You can make a geoshell around any object. Just select an item, then click on the tabs Create > New Geometry shell.

A geoshell is nothing more than a clone of the original object, that copies whatever you do to the original object. If you pose, move, scale, or morph the original object, any geoshells of that object will change the same way.

Geoshells have two extra bits: visibility (which easily lets you make different bits visible or not) and offset. Offset 'pushes' a geoshell out from the original, fitting around it like a glove (or a balloon, depending on how high you set it).
A negative offset shrinks the geoshell, placing it within the object (which can be handy if there are holes or gaps in the original object).

And... that's it. Geoshells have the same material zones as the original object, and you can plop shaders, as normal, into them.

So... why?

There are a lot of things you can do with geoshells. Let's say you want someone to have a form-fitting outfit, but don't want to mess with the character's texture directly. A geoshell hugs all the curves, and you can then put fabric or plastic or metal shaders on them to make a form-fitting outfit. (You might want to add smoothers or make use of No Suit morphs to not hug QUITE so precisely).

You can add a water layer to a character, making them look wet or dry with an easy visibility toggle instead of going in and changing top layer (or whatever) each time.

You can place tattoos or splatters, or flaking layers of paint (with cutout/opacity), or whatever.

Two things to keep in mind:
You can have more than one geoshell, but they have to have different offsets or you get weird render artifacts.
Any displacement on the object might make it poke through the geoshell if the geoshell doesn't ALSO have the same displacement settings. This can be a tool for cool effects, though!

 

And there you go. Any questions?

 

Oso3D

Example follows.

All I did was create the figure, then create a geoshell, hide the eyes, mouth, head, neck, hands, feet on the geoshell.

Add a matte blue shader I had to the geosuit.

Decided it was clinging too much, changed offset from 0.10 (default) to 0.50, which gave it an 'edge' that makes it look a little more like clothing without 'hovering' weirdly.

 

Now, admittedly, I hid hands and feet and head because the suit looks WEIRD if it covers that, which is where you get things like the No Suit morphs. These change feet, hands, nose, and ears to look like clothing is covering them.

 

nicstt

Cheers for this tim.

Must try it out when I've more time.

Allegra

Thank you for this, there are so many new things to learn in Daz and this has been one I've been one them:)

Oso3D

It's one of those things I was scared to try and, when I did, was like... oh, that's it?? Duh.

Design Anvil - Razor42

Good little tut WIll, thanks for sharing it!

ColemanRugh

Thanks a lot!! Nicely explained

Midnight_stories

Will this is brilliant never knew how it worked but knew it was there. What about HD can the be applied to the geoshell?

Thanks

Midnight_stories

Had a go at a mask pretty easy to do, now this has me thinking of an Egyptian Gods makeover for my Anubis character.

Taoz

Very useful, thanks!

Oso3D

What do you mean about applying HD? Do you mean HD details, like from the base model? Geoshell just copies whatever morphs or parameters you set in the base figure, including Resolution and whatever.

Another potential upside, for those unaware, is that a geoshell can have different UV mapping than the underlying figure.

So, for example, imagine you have V4 skin on a figure, but want to make use of V5 makeup. If the makeup is a layer added to underlying skin, just do that on the geoshell, then 'hide' the underlying skin so you have, essentially, airbrushed V5 makeup on top of the V4 skin. Or eyebrows. Or whatever.

Mind you, most makeup options are actually baked into a copy of the skin, but still, there are a few times this might be useful.

 

Connatic

Thanks, Will!

Knittingmommy

Thanks for the explanation, Will.  I DO wish you had put this up last month.  I could have used it then whilst I was trying to figure this out on a contest entry.  I do have to admit that it was our conversation about geoshells with regards to the scars (can't find thread at the moment) that had me give it a try.  You seemed so convinced it was super easy.  I did listen and try it and you were right.  It was super easy.

JeremyD

Thank you s much. I'll admit the concept of geo shells seemed intimidating but it doesn't look so bad. I like the idea of adding tattoos using shells. Can you apply bump mapping to a tattoo using this method? I'm trying to think of a way to have the tattoo look more "3D"

Tiddly

Thanks, that's another Daz feature I've not learned yet.  There's so many! 

Oso3D

You can! You can get some weird effects this way, too, because bumps are 'fake' surface, like have a geoshell on the outside look like it's on the inside.

For example, in the image below, the metal bits are actually on a geoshell very slightly outside the figure. But because bumps can be made to look angled any way you want, it LOOKS like the metal is showing where the skin has broken off.
But it's all an illuuuuusion, as you can see if you look carefully at the edge of the figure -- there is no actual displacement or anything going on.

 

 

 

Oso3D

Actually, here's another render showing how crazy it is. ;)

(Offset here is .5, while previous offset was .01)

 

Midnight_stories

timmins.william said:

What do you mean about applying HD? Do you mean HD details, like from the base model? Geoshell just copies whatever morphs or parameters you set in the base figure, including Resolution and whatever.

Another potential upside, for those unaware, is that a geoshell can have different UV mapping than the underlying figure.

So, for example, imagine you have V4 skin on a figure, but want to make use of V5 makeup. If the makeup is a layer added to underlying skin, just do that on the geoshell, then 'hide' the underlying skin so you have, essentially, airbrushed V5 makeup on top of the V4 skin. Or eyebrows. Or whatever.

Mind you, most makeup options are actually baked into a copy of the skin, but still, there are a few times this might be useful.

 

No I'm OK the HD morph on the head transferred with no problems !

GlennF

Geoshells are a lot of fun to play with.You can make tanlines and second skinz.

AlienRenders

I used to export the character and then bring it back in and use the autofit tool to apply the rigging and transfer the weight maps. The geometry shell does all this for you now. So you can just change the mesh or apply different textures and cuts down on all the work. I did this for the Dredd outfit in my gallery.

 

fictionalbookshelf

How would you save a texture meant for just the geoshell of an item?

If I make a prop and it has a geoshell applied to it for various reasons, if I save that as a Daz prop, does it save the geoshell information also?

wiz

A very useful, but seldom mentioned, geometry shell feature is that the geometry shell can be translated or rotated (and those translations and rotations are, of course, animatable).

This means that Midnight_stories mask could fly off the character's face and park itself on a table (or turn around in midair and face the character).

It also makes it relatively easy to have certain clothing that would normally parent to a figure parent to the shell instead. Make the shell invisible, fly it to zero translation and rotation, and a cape can fly onto a wizard (that is a real example, btw. I've done flying capes twice). Theoretically, you  could have normally parented clothes fly off a figure, too. It's kinda cliche, but still fun. I've parented sections of armor to a shell and flown them in.

Oh, and sometimes geometry shells and geografts don't work, and the resulting disaster is not undoable, so save a copy of your work in a safe place before applying a geoshell to a geograft.

JeremyD

timmins.william said:

You can! You can get some weird effects this way, too, because bumps are 'fake' surface, like have a geoshell on the outside look like it's on the inside.

For example, in the image below, the metal bits are actually on a geoshell very slightly outside the figure. But because bumps can be made to look angled any way you want, it LOOKS like the metal is showing where the skin has broken off.
But it's all an illuuuuusion, as you can see if you look carefully at the edge of the figure -- there is no actual displacement or anything going on.

 

 

 

Hey that's pretty cool! It's like the Terminator getting his skin peeled off :P  

GlennF

fictionalromance said:

How would you save a texture meant for just the geoshell of an item?

If I make a prop and it has a geoshell applied to it for various reasons, if I save that as a Daz prop, does it save the geoshell information also?

Save it as a wearable material item.

Daywalker Designs

Nice; I'd downloaded a texture that was meant to apply to a Geo-shell but hadn't tried it yet, but I did last night. After some experimentation, I figured out how to do what I was wanting and the girl turned out pretty nice. I'll post a link to my deviantArt account when I finally post the image, as I can't post it here (she's topless in the render to show off the tattoo).

RGcincy

Thanks for the tutorial! Concise, clear and very helpful. I've used shells before but in a very simple way. 

NoName99

Great tutorial, Thanks for posting this!

nicstt

GlennF said:

fictionalromance said:

How would you save a texture meant for just the geoshell of an item?

If I make a prop and it has a geoshell applied to it for various reasons, if I save that as a Daz prop, does it save the geoshell information also?

Save it as a wearable material item.

Save As > Wearables Preset: This the one?

fictionalbookshelf

If I have a prop I made and textured it, then added a geo-shell to that prop to add some texturing effects, could I save the original prop with geo-shell paranted to it, so that when I click on the thumbnail of the prop in my library/content it will load with prop and the geo-shell already textured?

Pack58

I did that with some MRE packs and a couple of weeks later they still load fine.

Edit: And that includes trans map on the geo-shell.

GlennF

nicstt said:

GlennF said:

fictionalromance said:

How would you save a texture meant for just the geoshell of an item?

If I make a prop and it has a geoshell applied to it for various reasons, if I save that as a Daz prop, does it save the geoshell information also?

Save it as a wearable material item.

Save As > Wearables Preset: This the one?

Oops Yes That is the one.