Help with D-Former field adjustment, please?

john_antkowiak

Hi. I'm approaching this problem from a D-Former perspective because that's the tool I'm most familiar with for a task like this. I know some will recommend Mesh Grabber instead, but I already tried it and couldn't get it to come close. I don't even get how it's supposed to work... but D-Former, I grasp. (Generally.)

But sometimes I wish I understood how to fine-tune the mesh points to be influnced. In the current project, the figure wears two sets of pants: Sword of Time and War Dog. In the latter, all the polygons except belt loops and pockets were deleted. I need to pull each cargo pocket away from the leg just a bit. But if I reduce the Y and Z scales of the field enough so that no part of the rear pockets or belt loops are also affected, the remaining selection is largely yellow. I want the entire cargo pocket equally red so that it's all uniformly affected by the D-Former. I know there's a way to do this, but I can't find details either on YouTube or in the forums. What I do find in the forums is that any discussion of Weight Mapping (which I think is how this trick works) almost immediately goes over my head. I don't understand the vocabulary. So please... talk to me like I'm four.  :)

Oh and btw if I simply reset the collision item, the cargo pockets distort in undesirable ways and I'm still left with the dilemma because some vertices need to be pulled closer to the figure.

NorthOf45

Weight mapping would definitely give you the control you want, but if you want a quick fix, you can adjust the spline of the D-Former while using the sphere (DForm tab pane -> Edit Spline...). The normal spline is a smooth s-curve, giving that fade-in, but you can move the control points to the top to give 100% effect across the range. (it's easier if you remove the two default control points in the middle and move the right -side one to the top). You will have to carefully shape and place the D-Former to grab only the pouches. You could leave a bit of a falloff to prevent sharp changes in the mesh where the influence cuts out.

chris-2599934

Weight maps aren't that difficult to do. Here's a step-by-step.

I don't have the products you're working on, so I've fitted a G8M with the combat pants from Genesis Ultimate Military Basic (still a brilliant product after all these years, btw). I'm going to use a weight map to make one of the pockets bulge out. Here's what we start with:

Select the pants and create a D-Former (Create > New D-Former...):

Select the D-Former field, open the Parameters tab, and change its influence from "Sphere" to "Weight Map". The red and yellow dots you usually get will disappear:

In the Tools menu, select the Node Weight Map Brush:

Still with the D-Former field selected, go to the Tool Options tab and click on "Add Map." A map is generated that has the same strengths as the sphere did. Red is strongly affected, blue less so, and grey not at all:

We want to get rid of this default map, so right-click on the pants and a menu appears that has a lot of the same options as the Geometry Editor does. Choose "Geometry Selection > Select All," then "Weight Editing > Fill Selected..." In the dialog that appears, set the slider to 0% and accept:

Now we have a blank grey canvas to work with. Use the brush to paint the area we want to move. I want the front of the pocket to be red, the sides blue, and the rest of the pants grey. It's kinda hard to control the brush with that much prescision, and as you can see, I've splurged over the edges a bit:

To fix that, hold down the ALT key and use the brush as an eraser (again it works a bit like the Geometry Editor in that respect). The pants leg is now all grey:

Now we're ready to D-Form! Change back to the Universal Tool, select the D-Former peg thingie and move it sideways. The pocket bulges out, but the pants stay still. Easy, wasn't it?

Richard Haseltine

If you want to expand a piece of clothing it may also be worth looking at a Push Modifier, with a weight access node so you can djust thw eighting. That moves each polygon out (or in) along its facing where a dForm scales from a point.

john_antkowiak

Wow - thank you all SOOO much! Exactly what I was hoping to learn... but was almost afraid to ask. You guys are awesome :)

john_antkowiak

Well guys, that worked so well that I started wondering if it would help on another project. Think "dog chews boot;" I'm attempting to mangle the boot. But it's more complicated because for this scene, it has to mangle in a certain way. I'm so close already. What I'd like to know is, once I have the geometry selected as I desire, can I then fold the selected region say 90 degrees to the unselected? I'm having a tough time using the sphere control to do this... Do I need to use Blender for this? I'm even less familiar with Blender but I do have it and have conducted exactly one simple exercise to explore it. 

Richard Haseltine

It should be possible, though the more complex the morph the more likely you are to be better off using a dedicated modeller.