dForce, dWeight and dWardrobe. Chronicles of...
L'Adair
Posts: 9,479
As Mama used to say, "Use it or lose it." I figure if I chronicle here what I learn about dForce, applying Weight via the dForce Weight Node, and how I overcome some of the challenges presented by older wardrobe products, I'll have a reference for later down the line when I've been working on other things and need to come back to dForce.
Quick Index
Links to topics within this thread:
- Medieval Cloaks
- Geometry Editor Tool: Selection Sets; November 17, 2017
- Platinum Cocktail Dress
- SY's Unicorn Mane; November 21, 2017
- Simulation Error: No objects to simulate; January 15, 2018
- How I Used A Cylinder With KA's Ultimate Dforce Bed; February 14, 2018
- Merimay Dress; February 25, 2018
- Turning Your Perfect Simulation Into A Morph; March 2, 2018
- Sorceress Dress for G8F; May 23, 2018
Post edited by L'Adair on
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Links I don't want to misplace:
Date: May 09, 2021
Late last year, 2020, Daz3D implemented new code for their store shopping cart. It was long overdue, but still presented a number of glitches that took time to find and fix.
In the meantime, the Galleries were down and nearly all the images and galleriy links in this thread were broken. When the Galleries came back on line, those images and links were still broken as the new "improved" Galleries use a different structure than the previous one, and image appear to be stored on a different server.
The most useful feature of the previous Galleries, in my opinion, was the ability to create private galleries that only showed for the Gallery owner. I used those extensively to create images for my threads without cluttering up the public display with my screencaptures and what not. Fortunately, all of those images are still on the server, but I can't access them through the My Gallery interface. I am able to modify the URLs in my posts and update the images, so that's something.
However, for any post that quotes one of my posts with images, the links will continue to be broken. If you come across a post like that and want to see the referenced images, just scroll up, or go back a page or two and you'll find the original. Post.
Because this feature is no longer available in the Galleries, I'll be attaching images from this point forward, so hopefully images here won't be affected if Daz3D decides to change the Galleries again at some unknown point in the future. However, it is a lot of work to update all the images in multiple threads, so I cannot guarantee I'll update threads in the future, if another update breaks the images and links.
With any luck, I've reserved enough comments. I'll use these to provide links to threads and/or comments that I found personally useful.
Oh, you're gonna pay for that thread subject ..
I'm still chuckling!
Medieval Cloaks, Part 1
Up first is the Cloak from the PC+ item, Medieval Cloaks. A quick search of the Daz store shows this product for Genesis, Genesis 2 Females and Genesis 3 Females. There is also the Iconic MFD Bundle 2 for G8F that includes the Medieval Cloaks. I have the G2F and G3F versions.
All three items in the G3F set—the cape, the robe, and the cloak—pose problems for use with dForce because of their specialty bones. The same is true of the G2F set. I cannot test it, but I suspect there will be issues using the Genesis and G8F versions as well.
Here are the bones for the Cloak:
Medieval Cloak G3F Bones, Front View
Medieval Cloak G3F Bones, Angled Down Front View
And here's the front view of the bones of the Medieval Cloak for G2F for comparison.
On both versions, the Hood is conforming to the head and neck bones. The Cloak also conforms to the torso on both. The G2F Cloak has special bones to control the cape instead of arm bones, from the shoulder area. There are bones for the shoulders, but they do not control anything. The G3F uses special bones to control the cape in place of legs bones, from the pelvic area. The collar and shoulder bones do work, but control a very small area of the cloak. With this setup, the area of the cloak between the shoulders and pelvic cannot be moved away from the arms or body using bones, though you can bend the figure and the cloak will follow. (Bend/Twist/Side-to-Side)
Medieval Cloaks, Part 2
Working with the Cloak, I came to several tentative conclusions about dForce with clothing. Any one or all of these conclusions could be spot on today, and be made wrong with a future release of dForce. Or they could be wrong right now, with me misinterpreting what I see. Check it out when you have a chance and come to your own conclusions.
As the images in the previous post show, the arm bones corresponding to the G3F are missing on the cloak. With G3F selected, and the Cloak added to the scene, it will "fit to" the G3F figure, but her arms will go through the fabric. She will remain in the T-Pose, but the Cloak does not distort to fit that pose. On the other hand, because the Cloak doesn't have those bones, positioning her arms under the garment do not affect it.
More often than not, I prefer to use the Animated (Use Timeline Play Range) option of the Frames To Simulate setting in the Simulation Settings tab. This allows me to make adjustments to the pose between Frame 0 and the final pose. In this case, that also meant changing the pose of the Cloak to accommodate the pose of the figure. Here is a side-by-side showing the bones of the Cloak at the beginning and end, as well as the two frames in between where I change the bones' positions:
At Frame 15, I moved the bones to open the Cloak and to let the arms of the figure move freely. At Frame 25, with the left arm nearly in place, I moved the bone to the side, allowing the fabric to appear to be falling from the figure's arm. At Frame 30, the pose of both the figure and Cloak are complete. I let the simulation run for another 30 frames to stabilize. It doesn't show here, but her left arm intersects the Cloak. Once the simulation was complete, it was possible to move her arm slightly until it was fully inside the Cloak.
I also made some changes to the morphs late in the Timeline. When I returned to Frame 0, the changes to the Morphs remained. The first image of this post shows the morphs I used. It also shows the five material zones of the Cloak.
Here is a side-by-side of the figure's bones at Frame 0 and Frame 30. If you look closely at Frame 30, you can see where her arm intersects the Cloak at the shoulder and forearm. It didn't do any good to move the arm during the simulation, the cloth just followed and intersected her arm lower, leaving less room for her arm after the sim.
Thank you.
I thought it worked better than a Star Wars reference.
Bookmarked!
Divamakeup here for class, Ma'am! :)
Looking good! Glad to see you're documenting your learnings as I haven't given clothing on figures a try yet (too busy trying dForce on other things
).
Hey, @Divamakeup. Welcome to "class." LOL I'm happy to see you here!
@RGcincy, I've found your thread very helpful. So much of using dForce is trial and error at this point. It helps to learn from each others' experience. Thank you for your generosity and support.
Definitely watching this thread! Thank you for doing the hard work of chronicling!
You're very thorough and it will definitely pay off to document as you go. I'm not attempting Dforce anytime soon so this will come in handy in the future. Thanks for providing a valuable reference.
Medieval Cloaks, Part 3a
dForce provides several ways to control the influence of the simulation. The two most obvious are the Simulation Settings tab, without which you cannot start a simulation, and the dForce Dynamic Surface modifier, without which your surface won't drape. Other dForce modifiers are available to help with static objects, and Addon objects, (for example, buttons attached using Rigid Follow Nodes.) Then there's the dForce Adjuster tool, which simplifies the process of changing several properties of the selected material zones at one time. And finally, (if I haven't missed anything,) there is the dForce Modifier Weight Node that can be applied to an object, via the Create menu, (New dForce Modifier Weight Node...) for even more minute control.
In the offical dForce - Start Here thread, rbtwhiz gives a very technical description of the various Surface properties, and frequently states at the end that weight maps provide the ability to attenuate the effect that "…this property has on specific verticies of the mesh." Attenuate just means to modify, specifically to "reduce via multiplication." To really confusticate the issue, it's just another form of Daz Maths: Dynamics Strength x Weight% = Actual Influence. For example, if you set Dynamics Strength to .8 and set the weight to 80%, the Actual Influence will be .64 (80% of .8). (Influence and Actual Influence are my own terms, and how I "understand" what is happening during a simulation.)
To be clear, all the properties added by the dynamic dForce modifier besides Dynamics Strength influence how the mesh drapes. I'm still figuring out what most of them actually do.
Using the dForce Adjuster tool, you can modify Stretch Stiffness, Shear Stiffness (Quads), Bend Stiffness, Buckling Stiffness, Buckling Ratio, and Contraction-Expansion Ratio without actually understanding them. An easy way to access the tool is to select (highlight) the material zones you want to change, and then right-click on the highlighted area. The tool is (currently) the last item in the popup menu.
As shown in the image above, the buttons are in pairs: Stiffer and Silkier modify the Buckling Stiffness and Buckling Ratio properties; Shrink and Expand change the Contraction-Expansion Ratio propertiy; Stretch - and + Stretch affect the Stretch Stiffness, Shear Stiffness (Quads) and Bend Stiffness properties. To date, I've managed to use the tool to create some pretty awesome explosions.
So far, I've only touched on ways to modify dForce influence on a specific object through the material zones properties. Often times, however, the material zones aren't enough.
The first image in Part 2 shows the five material zones for the Cloak—CloakEdges, CloakFabric, CloakRibbon, HoodEdge and HoodFabric—with a different color for each zone. For my purposes, there are really only three sections, the cloak, the hood and the ribbon ties. I've already determined the ribbon will cause the cloak to explode if Self Collide is on, and with Self Collide Off, the ribbons fall off. By setting the Dynamics Strength low, the ribbons stay in place. The hood and edge work well with a single Dynamics Strength. But I want to vary the strength on the cloak and cloak's edge, using the a higher strength at the top where the cloak is conforming, and a lower strength at the bottom, where I've determined the special bones will interfere with the draping anyway. And I want a smooth transition between the two.
This is where the dForce Modifier Weight Node came in handy, along with the Geometry Editor. I used the Geometry Editor tool to cut the cloak into three sections: top, middle and bottom. I selected the polys I needed for the top and saved a new Selection Set. I then selected the polys I needed for the bottom and saved that to a new Selection Set. And finally, I selected the cloak and used Deselect by->Selection Set->Top and Deselect by->Selection Set->Bottom to isolate the polys for the middle and saved that as another Selection Sel. But I took it a step further. I selected all the polys for the neck of the cloak and a thin, 2-poly wide section from the neck toward the shoulders on both sides to create a fourth Selection Set. Here's an image showing the sets, I applied weights to the four Selection Sets here for illustration purposes only. The actual weights used are shown in the image at the beginning of this post.
Medieval Cloaks, Part 3b
With the dForce Modifier Weight Node selected in the Scene tab,and using the Node Weight Brush Tool, open the Tool Settings tab.
The image above shows the default load of the Tool Settings tab with the dForce Modifier Weight Node selected in the Scene tab and the Weight Node Brush Tool active. (The Weight Node Brush Tool is the left highlighted icon at the top of the image.) Notice the highlighted "Weight Maps" about half way down the tab? Then the drop-down list of "Unused Maps"? Click on the list to see all the available maps for the selected object. For this project, I need the first one, dForce Simulation::Influence Weights, so I'll just click on Add Map.
Now "Influence Weights" is listed and automatically selected. The Cloak appears red as 100% weight is already applied by default. I could use the tool to "paint" a lesser influence on the fabric, but it's a lot slower than selecting material zones, or in this case, Selection Sets. I'm going to apply weights to the Cloak first, using the Selections sets, then use the material zones to apply weights to the Hood. First, I select the NecklineAndShoulders set. (Right click anywhere in the viewport for the popup menu.)
I don't want the neckline moving away from the neck, and I want to stabilize the shoulders so I'll apply 10% weight to this set, (see next paragraph for how.) After applying the weight, I'll Clear Selection. (Notice it's the third entry on the second menu in the image above.) If I don't clear the selection, the currently selected polys will be added to the next Selection Set. (Considering how much and often one must Clear Selection when using the Geometry Editor or Weight Node Brush, it boggles my mind that it doesn't have it's own Ctrl+something option!)
Now I'll select the CloakUpperBody from Selection Sets. I want to fill the selection with weight. I can do that easily with the menu item Fill Selected… The image below shows the menu on the left and the popup dialog on the right. For illustration purposes, I previously filled the entire Cloak with 0% weight so it appears gray and hid the Hood.. Notice the yellow highlighted polys of the upper section of the cloak.
I want the upper cloak to drape the most, so I'm filling the selected faces with 80% weight. After clearing the selection, I'll select CloakMidBody from the Selection Sets, selected Fill Selected… and fill the mid section with 70% weight. Still plenty of weight, but less than the upper section. Again I clear the selection and then select CloakLowerBody and fill it with 60% weight. There is now a clear demarcation between the four areas. Notice in the menu in the image above, there is a Smooth Selected… option. I'm now going to use it to smooth the transition bewteen the four areas. I'll start with the still selected CloakLowerBody and open the Smooth Selected Faces dialog.
I want a really smooth transition, so I opted to apply the highest values of both options. Again I'll clear the selection, and then select the CloakMidBody from Selection Sets. As with the bottom section, I'll apply the highest values for the smoothing and clear the selection. Finally, I'll select the CloakUpperBody from Selection Sets and this time, I want less smoothing between the upper section and the neckline and shoulders. For this operation, I set both values in the smoothing dialog to 50, (50% and 50 iterations.) The left side of the image above shows the final results of using the Fill Selected option to set the weight values, as well as the Smooth Selected Faces dialog. The right side show the cloak after smoothing has been applied. The ribbons are still gray as I'm using the surface material properties to control them. However, I could just as easily have filled them with 10% weight and set the Dynamics Strength to 100%. The results would about the same.
To finish up the weights, I'll now selected the surfaces HoodFabric and HoodEdge, and apply 60% weight. This allows some movement to the hood, without losing the nice shape the vendor provided.
Aside from tweaking the morphs for the hood to work with the hair I used on the figure, this cloak is now ready to render.
You're welcome, @Chameo. Thank you for stopping by the thread.
Thank you, @Novica. I've been thinking about doing this for a while. It's easy to get bogged down with Stuff™, and not update a thread as often as I should. But I've been learning so much about Daz Studio with the release of dForce, I know if I don't write it down, I'll forget. And the forums are a great place to store the info as it won't get lost on one computer or another, or one of the many hard drives I use for data! So while I do hope people will learn from what I chronicle here, I have to admit this whole thing is also a bit selfish on my part. The old gray brain just ain't what she used to be!
Sorry for not responding to you both earlier. I was working on the last two posts, (I decided to split one large one,) and I believe I needed to post them first or lose the draft.
Geometry Editor Tool: Selection Sets
I promised @Divamakeup my I'd cover the Platinum Cocktail dress next. But before I do, I'd really like to discuss the Geometry Editor Tool. Novica put together a tutorial specifically about using the tool for materials. You can read it here: The Material Zone~ Geometry Tool Tutorial & Shaders. But I'd like to show you exactly how to use the tool to create the Selection Sets I use in Medieval Cloak Parts 3a and 3b. (Not exactly how I did it. Better.)
With the Geometry Editor Tool active, select the Tool Settings tab. There are three Group Names listed: Face Groups, Surfaces, and Regions. Expand Surfaces and click on the "eye" icon for CloakRibbon, HoodEdge and HoodFabric. Now click on "Surfaces" so nothing is highlighted in the viewport. The three material zones hidden this way will not interfere with the tool for the next steps.
First, create the NecklineAndShoulders selection, the most complicated of the four Selection Sets:
Second, create the CloakUpperBody:
Third, create the CloakMidBody:
Finally, create the CloakLowerBody:
Note: While there are multiple options for hiding polygons, Show All Polygons is not selective, and will unhide the surfaces we hid at the beginning. If the hood, trim and ribbon are in the way, or distracting, you will need to go back to the Tool Settings and hide them again, by clicking on their respective "eye" icons.
Instead of Selections Sets, I could have saved my selections as new surfaces. However, among other things, a new surface will not be seen by the materials presets available for the Cloak. Using Selection Sets instead leaves the Material Zones intact.
Wow, this is a really impressive effort - I'll be watching with interest. Thank you very much for sharing this!
Bless you for this!
I've been tearing my hair out, trying to get one of those Medieval Cloaks garments -- in my situation, it's the cape. And it's been driving me absolutely nuts!
I will definitely be following this thread, in search of tips, tricks, tweaks, and cheats...!
I'm following this closely - I was trying to get the Medieval Robe cross-fitted to G3M to dForce but it explodes around the hood. I'm going to find another cloak to get on with my picture but I'd like to get these cloaks working in the future
Awww...
Thank you, guys. And you are all welcome.
Ken, the cape and the cloak have exactly the same bones. Use those special bones at the bottom to help control your cape. Don't expect a lot of draping. Though you could try making the lower areas 100% weight and see if you can get more movement.
@3Ddreamer, Have you tried setting all the material zones to Self Collide Off? That seems to cure a lot of explosions. Does the robe have ties at the neck like the cape? Those were causing the Cloak to explode until I turned off Self Collide. The hood on the Cloak is a separate mesh. I would expect it to be separate on the Cape and Robe as well. If you hide the hood, does the Robe still explode? These are a few things you can try, to isolate the reason for the explosion. I could be wrong, but I don't think it's because you're trying to make it work with a male.
Thanks L'Adair - I did turn off Self Collide, to begin with it was exploding all over, now it is just the hood area. The Robe has a clasp rather than ties and seems the Hood can't be turned off on it own - but I may have to go back and check that. I managed to turn of half the hood when I tried that and it still exploded, but the bottom which touches the shoulder area turns off the shoulder as well. I suspect I will need to get into Geometry editor but I'm following your turorial avidly for tips :-) In the meantime I did the render with another robe, without a hood. ;-)
I'm heading to bed now, but I'll take a look at it later today when I get a chance and see if I can figure it out.
From what I've been able to determine, the hood on the cape is not a separate mesh, so there is no way to "hide" that portion of the garment. It does have a separate material zone, which can be made invisible. However, when I attempt to paint a weight map for that part of the cape that covers the shoulders (because that's the part that tends to "fall through"), the hood is still "visible" to the weight-map brush, so the brush is unable to differentiate between polys in the cape and polys in that part of the hood that obscures the shoulder area of the cape.
Right now, I'm concentrating on just diddling with the dForce-specific surface settings, and am having some small measure of success; at least the cape isn't falling through the figure's shoulders and chest any longer! Now I just need to figure out how to animate the simulation; I need the figure to walk in this thing, or else I'm just wasting my time!
Yeah Ken that is what I was finding, but I am very much on the starting blocks of dForce and I haven't got my head around weight mapping side yet. (It would arrive just before I had laid aside some time to try and understand Blender so I could fix little things myself).
Don't interrupt your own experiements for this L'Adair, I am sure what you figure out I will be able to apply to this Robe, when I next look at it :-)
Ken, you can hide any material zone using the Geometry Editor.
Now you can access the polygons of the cape as if it doesn't have a hood.
ETA: The hood is a separate mesh, as are the Buckle and CapeLaces, (but they load as one object.) If you run a sim with just the cape in the scene, Self Collide Off, you'll end up with five very weird looking pieces well below the level of the ground. I'll add an image in a little bit. Image attached.
Sneaks into a corner to lurk and learn*
Hi, Pendraia. Welcome. Feel free to ask questions, too. I'll do my best to answer.
It got a few out of me too.
Much better, though those will still appear, no doubt.
Thanks L'Adair...: )
@3Ddreamer, Sorry to take so long to get to this. I actually thought it was the Cape you were using at first, (but that was Ken.) You said the Medieval Robe has a clasp rather than ties, but the Robe in the Medieval Cloaks for G3F uses ties. Am I looking at the same robe as you wanted to use?
For the Robe in the Medieval Cloaks, after fitting it to the male figure and applying the dForce Modifier:
These are basic instructions to keep these small mesh sections from causing your Robe to explode. You'll want to adjust the amount of influence dForce will have on the rest of the robe as well; One hundred percent weight when Dynamics Strength is at 1.0 will make parts of the robe look like soft silk and the rest of it like heavy upholstery fabric. (Remember those special bones I was talking about earlier...) How much weight to use will be a matter of taste, and require a bit of trial and error.
Let me know if this doesn't solve your problem.