Dynamic clothes Gen 4 to Genesis
krickerd
Posts: 188
Is there a simple way to convert Opti Tex dynamic clothing from generation 4 (M4 ect) to Genesis? Autofit does not work in this case, the rigging must be changed. Not sure how to proceed.
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Dynamic cloth is dynamic cloth — rigging is for conforming cloth, so you don't need to try Autofit (which won't work anyway on dynamic cloth). No conversion is needed.
Do you have your figure posed? If so, move the cloth into roughly the right place, select each of the body parts of the cloth in the Scene tab (remember to work outwards from the Hip part) and manually pose it to match the figure using the dials in the Parameters tab. Note that you don't need to get the fit exact, any small amounts of pokethrough or odd not-quite-fitting will settle once you start a drape.
Meh, nice try but no. That's not going to work. Maybe for a tablecloth but not something like this: https://www.daz3d.com/dynamic-tunic-and-sashes
I'm stuck with M4 looks like.
I have managed it using the joint editor tool but since I got VWD not really looked much.
With Optitex Clothes... You should be able to get an M4/V4 optitex outfit to work on genesis characters by generally setting up your genesis character size to be as close to the intended optitex outfit's target character (e.g. M4) in a t-pose as possible, then animating the size/shape and pose/position of the character to its target/final state *in the outfit* over as few frames as you can get away with. I usually expect to use 30-60 frames to get a character's shape *and* pose to my target pose/position in most scenarios, with some more frames (15-20?) for settling. To get an M4 optitex outfit to Micheal5 in a pose, try:
- fresh scene, load your genesis, T-pose
- open DS timeline (animation), be sure you're in the timeline's 'Advanced View' w/ right-click on the 'Timeline' *tab' and enable that, else you can't see the keyframe icons!
- frame 0, shape genesis to M4 (if you have the M4 shape!, if not, resize your genesis to get close to M4's size), then set the keyframe (little key with plus on DS timeline)
- frame 15, re-shape genesis to your M5 (or whatever shape you want), set that keyframe
- frame 30, pose M5 to your preferred pose, set keyframe
- frame 45, do nothing, set keyframe (settling, just because)
- to test things so far, scrub the animation 0 to 60, and Genesis should start as M4-ish shape, morph to M5 Shape, then migrate to your desired pose/location, and stand there for a bit
- go back to frame 0
- load optitex M4 outfit into scene (merge)
- still at frame 0, *move* outfit to best fit the genesis M4 shaped t-posed character. DO NOT SCALE optitex clothes. Doesn't work. Set Keyframe 0 again
- open Dynamic Clothing Tab
- select cloth item, set 'affected' setting to 'all selected cloth'
- set mode to 'animated' (vs single frame) drape
- open 'collide with...' tab and only select things that might collide with the cloth. (I unselect the cloth itself...)
- open prameters tab, set 'self intersection', and 'face body intersection' (at least to start - play with these later)
- on DS timeline, set scrubber to frame 0
- In Dynamic Cloth tab, press 'clear'
- press 'drape'
- wait/watch while simlation runs, press cancel to stop the simulation anytime if you like it. It doesn't erase, or undo anything. It just stops it there, and all actions until that point are fine.
- scrub back and forth in the animation tab (play it) to see the draping in action. Pretty neat.
(at this point you can change settings, poses, gravity, materials, etc., and 'drape' some more, and it will continue from there... handy!)
- If you don't like it, set the scrubber back to 0, and press clear (yes), and 'drape' again, and it will start from scratch. Before each drape, or after you cancel, You can change M4/M5 morphs, poses, locations, etc. and/or adjust optitex outfit materials, and 'drape' again. You can add frames to the timeline, and continue to drape more, and change poses/shapes, etc. if you like. Everything is a work-in-progress at this point.
- save the scene/scene-subset every-so-often as you progress through the adventure (I use numbered versions to be able to go back if I mess things up)
- repeat to taste, and when you like it, you can either render it right there at the frame(s) where you like it, or, save the scene and come back/load/merge it later with othr stuff for rendering, or, 'freeze' the resulting animation as a scene by right-clicking on the dynamic clothing tab and pressing the 'freeze' option.
NOTE: the outfit becomes non-dynamic after 'freezing', and you'll have to load a new original outfit again and redo/redrape things if you wish to change things after freezing. Once frozen, tho', the clothing item can be exported as an animated 'thing' and loaded into other software (FBX/alembic/PZ2. @th3Digit has some experience migrating animations around that might be helpful if you have questions).
Also note that when reloading a saved dynamic draping scene (non-frozen), you need to reset the 'collide-with' settings again, but other settings seem to stick pretty well.
I hope this helps with the big-ideas (you have to nudge dynamic clothes around and stretch into them), and I hope the example is clear enough to get you going. It's kind of cool to play with once you get how it all works.
Lastly, scaling dynamic clothes doesn't work in DS. try the 'shink X % or shrinkY % settings (in the Dyn Cloth 'panel' tab) to see if that will help, and if a character is too big to start with, scale him/her down at the start, and animate the figure's scaling back up to 'stretch into' the outfit for best results. Any action that intersects or pushes though opitex clothes too radically, usually results in some very odd outfit distortions - and can be pretty funny.
Edit to add: I use sequential mode for most multi-cloth drapes, and to fix simple poke-through, you can select the coth item, enable the 'smoothing-modifier' (search for it, too long for this post/topic), and use the new parameters to fix collision and smooth the cloth a bit. I mention a bit more below
Edit to add: Anywhere a pose or figure's body-parts sandwich optitex clothes (intersecting it), you will see problems! Under-arms, crotch, knee joints,hands through thighs, etc., all like to do this. Some ways around this are to disable collision for one of the two body-parts (hands/fingers), adjust the pose, or maybe cleverly use the 'poke-away' tool to shrink the body part out of the way for those sections of the drape... esp during animations. I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but you'll know it when you see it...
cheers,
--ms
Here it is on Michael 5. I parented it instead of fitted it to the chest. It bunches a bit around the neck, but doesn't look too bad. Let me try a pose and see what happens.
Sorry, duplicate post.
Oh yeah, that's bad. I'll try mindsong's directions. We must've posted at the same time.
lol,
fwiw, i treat all optitex clothes as 'props', and don't compete w DS autofitting or other 'help'. never missed it if i animate the drape rather than trying to 'bend' the clothes at the start. Might be inefficient, but it's more predictable to my workflow...
curious how this goes!
--ms
Hmm, I've never got a drape fit that bad in all the years I've been using Optitex dynamics. Did you try to pose the body parts of the tunic to match the body parts of the figure at all? That's what you must do manually, parenting instead of fitting-to will not force the tunic to pose.
Another gotcha is that frequently dynamics do not play nice with lots of tiny little shapes such as fingers and toes. Also, the dynamics system is a bit fragile and easily overloaded. Do not just load, pose and drape the clothes — open the "Collide With" list and deselect everything in the scene that the cloth will not touch; in this case, the head, hands and feet, and of course any scenery or furniture.
I won't say it's easy or quick, but I've almost always managed eventually to get some sort of drape onto figures the cloth hasn't been made for — there's no such thing as dynamics "made only for" V4 or Genesis3. That sort of limitation is only for conforming clothes.
I couldn't find the key icon thingie on the timeline (I'm exhausted), but I liked the idea of treating the clothing as a prop, so I did this:
Here's what I have so far. Not great but not horrible. Gotta sleep, more tomorrow!
That's pretty good!, I like the outift when seen draped (yours looks better than the promos).
uuuggg!!!! - to get the mentioned 'keyframe' icons in the timeline, you need to right-click on the 'timeline' *tab* and enable the 'advanced view'! I haven't needed to do that in so long, I forgot it was not always there! (edited above too). When animating, remember that changes in anything will leave keyframes on the timeline that you may not expect (little black triangles), so if cameras or poses seem to be getting 'random' or not where you want them, select *the things* that are moving, and look for black ticks on the timeline. scrub to those ticks and remove them with the other keyframe icon that has the 'x' on it (also in advanced mode!). Or you can clear the whole selected thing via the main menu:edit->figure->clear-animation-> options that are there. So many gotchas!
BTW - If you weren't using the animation mode in your drapes (above), your mentioned adjustments would help as described, so you're on the right track for static drapes, but I've had much better draping via animation sequences. I don't get the draping errors (you'll see that pop-up in single-frame scenarios at times) in that mode.
You can also adjust the material parameters in the DynCloth 'panel', and I play with thickness, stretch-resistance x/y, and friction to good effect. If you have other dynamic clothes with various materials (leather, bra-straps, panchos, hats, collars, etc.) load them up in a scene and look at the clolthing parameters that are set (DynCloth-tab->Panel, select the cloth part) to get an idea what settings need to be set to get the various cloth effects, and how much they change between materials. (FYI, in that same 'panel', you can then select and 'save' materials from those items in your DS library - or changes you've made - and later apply them to any clothing items.). You can delete the unwanted clothing items from your scene when you're done checking out the material settings., or just take notes from a clean-fresh scene and discard it when done...
Some folks lighten up gravity. I sometimes float an item in free space and turn off gravity (set. to 0.0001) to see how it naturally 'shrinks' in mid-air. Kinda cool to watch - single-frame or animated. Turn on some wind and watch it blow away... heh. (and to turn off wind, I think you need to delete it from the scene tab... not sure if making it invisible turns it off. You can adjust the velocity of the wind by selecting it in theg scene tab and find the velocity parameter in the prameters-tab)
That poke-through in your current drape could also probably be fixed by selecting the cloth after the drape (say in that frame you posted), and applyng a 'smoothing modifier' via the scene->edit->geometry-> tab, then when those new smoothing parameters are available in the parameters tab, add some smoothing and collision iterations, and the outfits usually clean-up pretty good. It adds some time to each frame refresh though, so be aware that you might have to wait 10 seconds or more for the smoothing to be apparent in the basic viewport (not rendering) after you rotate your view/camera/zoom/etc.
I hope you can try the animated approach, as your current drape is pretty darned good for as extreme as the pose is relative to the t-pose shape the item probably started in!
Also, for multiple clothing items (layered or multiple outfits, or any other on-top-of scenarios), consider checking the 'sequential' button on the DynCloth Parameters tab. I've seen drapes work using that option that otherwise wouldn't complete without errors while in concurrent mode.
Edit to add: Anywhere a pose or figure's body-parts sandwich optitex clothes (intersecting it), you will see problems! Under-arms, crotch, knee joints,hands through thighs, etc., all like to do this. Some ways around this are to disable collision for one of the two body-parts (hands/fingers), adjust the pose, or maybe cleverly use the 'poke-away' tool to shrink the body part out of the way for those sections of the drape and then return it to normal once past the intersection frames... esp during animations. I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but you'll know it when you see it...
Good luck, and good progress!
--ms
Thanks, mindsong! These are all great tips! I have just started playing with Optitex and really like it. I've also got VWD as well as Poser 11 Pro. I wanted to learn all the different options for dynamics. These tips will certainly help! I'll keep playing
Thanks for the info! I must've missed this last night. Sorry. My internet was acting up and I was tired. Will definitely take this into account as I start to use the dynamic cloth more.
Simulated in Daz studio... exported as MDD to C4D
That looks very good, wolf359! Love what you can do with the dynamic clothing.
@krickerd I found this video that's very helpful in showing how to fit dynamic clothing onto other figures (note: this figure is gray shaded, there are no nipples, so I believe the YouTube preview that appears is within TOS, not sure how to turn the preview off) :
After watching a few Poser and Opti-tex videos on dynamic clothing, I'm beginning to understand it more. The animation timeline certainly comes in handy in both. Also played with the wind morphs. Didn't realize there was a little fan that showed up and you move it around to simulate the wind direction. That's a lot of fun to play with.
The animation method is definitely the way to go when putting the dynamic clothing on other characters (and it's fun too!) Sleeves can be challenging, but most other clothing items do pretty well.
Here's Dynamic Dancer for V4 on FW Chara for G3F and the Centaur Female.
Yes alway use the animation option for a better result.
This also make Alot easier to use Dynamic peices that were designed for a different base shape if you have an emaciation morph installed.
you can make your figure extremely thin/skeletal at frame one and at frame 30 back to your preferred final shape and watch it grow into the cloth and pose simultaneously.
Thanks, @wolf359 ! That's a brilliant idea. I really appreciate the tip!
beautiful work! yes!
(it's fun to watch it all fall into place in the animation process, don't you think?)
--ms
Thanks for your help, mindsong. It's a blast once you get the hang of it. A bit addicting too. Fun to drape everything!
another way is to put M4 or V4 in the scene and load the clothes on them
morph your later figure to their clone shape (bought or GenX created)
set it as the collision item
then along timeline morph it back to your character as well as posing it.
bingo on that!
I use a 20-ish frame 'prep-phase' to get the clothing on the figure, before moving on to my final target goal for the shot or animation:
to wit: usually, my first frame has the target character (e.g. Genesis1) posed (usually 'T', but not always!), scaled, and shaped (using the DAZ legacy shapes products or GenX2) to *match the outfit's original intended figure shape* (e.g. V3, or M4, or ...). @wolf359 mentioned using the 'emaciated' shape - that, and simple figure scaling, and the 'no poke through' DAZ product for Genesis (or equiv for any character) all help get the initial figure *inside* the outfits. So, generally, try to set up the initial frame so the figure has as little interference with the raw clothing item as possible, by adjusting the figure to match the clothes in their raw imported shape. keyframe that... frame 0.
then, with the relevant Dyn-Clothing settings above - collisions, shrink, cloth material, gravity,etc., I re-morph the figure to become the intended final character at frame 15, and keyframe it, but make no other changes to the poses or location of the figure - simply get the clothes to fit the intended character shape first. Usually 15 frames is enough to stretch into it, and 5 more to just settle adding a keyframe at 20 with no changes from frame 15. All of this assumes we're using the Dyn-Cloth animation mode. Save the scene once you like this for a good backup (re)starting point!
then, having a nicely fit outfit and the desired character in place at +/- frame 20, the prep work is done, and I'm ready to do what I came to do... I set the target pose/motions/animations of the figure for the 'shot' and animate my way there until I like it. Freeze/save/export pz2 with mjcasual's export script, etc., or just use it in DS, etc.
It's a lot of words to say what @th3Digit and @wolf359 just said, but it works quite well, and is fascinating to watch. I'm fleshing out the vivid detail for future readers, as once you 'see' how it all works, it's magic!
Note that you can start the 20ish frame 'prep-phase' with your cloth items set to a more thin/friction-free optitex material setting, then when they are 'fit' at frame 20ish, change the material to be what you really want for the continued draping steps after frame 20ish (cotton/leather, etc.). This friction-free setting shouldn't be to radically different from the target material, but can help get the outfit settled around your target shape in fewer frames.
you can also run this prep-phase out 30 frames or more if needed. The ideas are the same...
too cool!
--ms
Hmmm...that's a shame. i was going to try Dynamics again. I have only the Optitex plugin though. I need the VWD so I can do all DAZ clothing in dynamics.
When it works, it works well. It's a bit buggy and I find it crashes quite often. It can also do dynamic hair. Sickleyield has some helpful tutorials on her YouTube channel about it. Certain hairs work better than others. Some just crash because of the high poly count.
thanks
VWD is allowed to be mentioned just not linked as it is an off site commercial product.
Only hacks of Optitex forbidden.
VWD rocks just keep your polys manageble it does fail if too many
geometry editor comes in very handy if doing parts ouf bigger outfits convert to prop, hide delete rest then hide simmed parts on a conformed copy
I wonder how the newly updated DAZ dynamic clothing control is going to affect things. Hopefully nothing will break. Crossing fingers...
EDIT: Seems to be working fine. Looks like this is the basic plugin. I seem to have lost my full plugin.
So where did the $50 full Optitex Clothing control plugin go? The one I bought three months ago? Nowhere to be found. No place to add it or put in the serial number. Why sell something if it's going to be obsolete within a few months?
What I usually do as a final step, once it's frozen or whatever, is add smoothing, collision, and usually a push modifier of about .1. That helps make the clothing look more substantial and helps fix a lot of minor pokethrough you may get.
Llynara: I still see it? https://www.daz3d.com/dynamic-clothing-control
It's in the store, but not in the program. At all. All of my other plugins seem to be there. I will try downloading it from Product Library and reinstalling. Let's see if anything breaks.