Thick cloth dForce items?

mikethe3dguy

Has anyone successfully created thicker cloth objects (like blankets and towels for example) that simulate convincingly in dForce? There are 2-3 dForce towel products, but when you simulate they end up hanging like a sheet of silk rather than thicj terry cloth. Or maybe I'm asking the wrong question?

felis

I would say in essence no.

DForce cannot handle thickness in an object. It will just be 2 planes falling towards each other untill they collide.

Mada

The lower the base resolution on the mesh the less silky the look. Higher resolutions have more room for folds in the mesh than lower res. 

If you have 2 layers, using an add on between the 2 will keep the layers apart, but again higher resolution will give still you more silky folds even with 2 layers.

lilweep

There are towel-y displacement maps you can add to give thickness. (from random places on the internet that are readily googleable)

There is a plugin to add thickness after dforce, if that helps https://www.daz3d.com/thickener-plug-in

Richard Haseltine

lilweep said:

There are towel-y displacement maps you can add to give thickness. (from random places on the internet that are readily googleable)

There is a plugin to add thickness after dforce, if that helps https://www.daz3d.com/thickener-plug-in

I think the question is about how the cloth behaves in simulation, not its surface appearance.

hansolocambo

Any 3D object, whether it's a rock or a blanket, is still as thin as OCB rolling paper. What makes 3D objects seem thick is just our brain's mental interpretation of the information it receives. 3D deceives the brain as it tries to relate what it sees to something it knows.

When a 3D simulated object looks "thick" after a soft-body simulation it's only because the physics parameters (stretch, shear, stiffness, etc) have been properly configured to help the original modeled/sculpted mesh to retain its original shape as much as possible even if forced, by gravity or other physics forces, to deform. ("solidify" in Marvelous Designer is such an amazing option for that. I still hope something similar will come to dForce someday..).

There's no thickness. It can be simulated in Marvelous Designer by duplicating a whole garment over or under the one we created. With dForce it can somehow be simulated using Collision Layer, although in my experience it doesn't do a great job at keeping layers under or over other layers.

What you want to do is :

1/ model a mesh that has enough geometry, wireframe density will help the mesh to retain most of its shape. If the mesh is from a Daz item you bought, then subdivide it once, export it as obj. Import that obj back (copy/paste shaders) and simulate this subdivided obj rather than the original one.

2/ read, test and understand properly all dFroce Surface Properties.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/203081/dforce-start-here

It's always very technical to dive in a new soft-body simulation but understanding those dForce Surfaces properties is the only way to make things look "thick" or "thin" or "heavy", etc.

 

Everything in 3D is based on real world physics (indexes of refraction, PBR materials, etc. ), but to make objects "feel" real, one has to comprehend that 3D tools fake reality rather than reproduce it. To make a thick blanket it's not necessary to model it thick (except if it's meant to be eventually seen from under), but it's necessary to model/sculpt it thick-looking, then simulate it with Surfaces Properties that will force the cloth to retain its shape.

-----------------

Testing physics properties one after the other and writing things down is the only way (at least for me) to clearly understand what dForce Surfaces values mean, and what changing them will do. Without a bit of that understanding, clicking on "simulate" can only give random results. Not all products sold by content creators are made with a proper understanding of dForce. If a "thick" blanket looks like a bed sheet after simualtion, then dForce Surfaces weren't thought properly and need to be changed by the final user. Just a glimpse of a portion of the docx I wrote (summary with tests of what is explained in the official documentation) to help me understand what dForce Surfaces or Marvelous Designer materials mean :

--------------------------

Easy solution :

For those who don't know much about 3D and don't want to bother with dForce properties. A trick solution would be to export the object (A) to simulate as .obj (B). Import (B) back and scale it down a little so that its surface doesn't touch the original (A) object. Then simulate.

This way the towel, blanket, etc. (A) will fall on a copy of itself (B), you'll stilll have some nice folds and more natural movements of the mesh, but no more flattening issue as it simulates on itself.

Cheap trick but it does a good enough job in some situations.

mikethe3dguy

lilweep said:

There are towel-y displacement maps you can add to give thickness. (from random places on the internet that are readily googleable)

There is a plugin to add thickness after dforce, if that helps https://www.daz3d.com/thickener-plug-in

Oh, that Thickener did the trick! I forgot that I'd already purchased it a while back on sale. That is an awesome product! I created a plane with much fewer polygons than the typical towel products, edited it in Geometry Editor to get it to the right "aspect ratio" so I wouldn't either have a square towel or a rectangular one with elongated polys, and applied the Thickener. After application of a Dimension Theory UHD Fuzzy shader, I've now got a convincing dForce bath towel. Thanks!

felis

Here is a duvet I created and simulated, which has inner geometry in order to keep thickness. It can kind of work.

lilweep

hansolocambo said:

Any 3D object, whether it's a rock or a blanket, is still as thin as OCB rolling paper. What makes 3D objects seem thick is just our brain's mental interpretation of the information it receives. 3D deceives the brain as it tries to relate what it sees to something it knows.

When a 3D simulated object looks "thick" after a soft-body simulation it's only because the physics parameters (stretch, shear, stiffness, etc) have been properly configured to help the original modeled/sculpted mesh to retain its original shape as much as possible even if forced, by gravity or other physics forces, to deform. ("solidify" in Marvelous Designer is such an amazing option for that. I still hope something similar will come to dForce someday..).

There's no thickness. It can be simulated in Marvelous Designer by duplicating a whole garment over or under the one we created. With dForce it can somehow be simulated using Collision Layer, although in my experience it doesn't do a great job at keeping layers under or over other layers.

What you want to do is :

1/ model a mesh that has enough geometry, wireframe density will help the mesh to retain most of its shape. If the mesh is from a Daz item you bought, then subdivide it once, export it as obj. Import that obj back (copy/paste shaders) and simulate this subdivided obj rather than the original one.

2/ read, test and understand properly all dFroce Surface Properties.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/203081/dforce-start-here

It's always very technical to dive in a new soft-body simulation but understanding those dForce Surfaces properties is the only way to make things look "thick" or "thin" or "heavy", etc.

 

Everything in 3D is based on real world physics (indexes of refraction, PBR materials, etc. ), but to make objects "feel" real, one has to comprehend that 3D tools fake reality rather than reproduce it. To make a thick blanket it's not necessary to model it thick (except if it's meant to be eventually seen from under), but it's necessary to model/sculpt it thick-looking, then simulate it with Surfaces Properties that will force the cloth to retain its shape.

-----------------

Testing physics properties one after the other and writing things down is the only way (at least for me) to clearly understand what dForce Surfaces values mean, and what changing them will do. Without a bit of that understanding, clicking on "simulate" can only give random results. Not all products sold by content creators are made with a proper understanding of dForce. If a "thick" blanket looks like a bed sheet after simualtion, then dForce Surfaces weren't thought properly and need to be changed by the final user. Just a glimpse of a portion of the docx I wrote (summary with tests of what is explained in the official documentation) to help me understand what dForce Surfaces or Marvelous Designer materials mean :

--------------------------

Easy solution :

For those who don't know much about 3D and don't want to bother with dForce properties. A trick solution would be to export the object (A) to simulate as .obj (B). Import (B) back and scale it down a little so that its surface doesn't touch the original (A) object. Then simulate.

This way the towel, blanket, etc. (A) will fall on a copy of itself (B), you'll stilll have some nice folds and more natural movements of the mesh, but no more flattening issue as it simulates on itself.

Cheap trick but it does a good enough job in some situations.

saving this post thanks 

hansolocambo

The screenshot posted was just a portion of some of my notes. Not all of it. What I meant was just : one needs to understand dForce to use it. Testing each Surface slider, taking screenshots and writing things down becomes a very handy source of info.

Glad if you find that useful in some way.

But please shorten your Quotes ;) Any quote's content can be edited like the rest of a message.

Pent Up Games

I've had some success faking thickness with geoshells. In this problematic G9 shirt on G8 model combo, I fixed all the pokethrough by adding a geoshell with a 0.25cm offset, but as you can see in the third image, a 3cm offset can give the look of a puffy duvet.

(Sorry, I'm getting Daz server errors when I try to upload the images, but give it a go!)

EDIT: Apparently I was making things more complicated than they needed to be - A push modifier does the same thing! (Although you'll need to apply the modifier AFTER simulation, so depending on your use case, the geoshell approach might be better)