Why should I care about dForce?

DDCreate

Hi All, just a quick question...what is the dForce stuff all about? I saw the video and see that it makes the clothes move naturally in animation but not doing animation myself, do I care? Does it also have the same effect in still renders? Does it ONLY apply to certain clothing (i.e. Gen2 stuff won't work)? Is it as big a pain as Dynamic clothing? I tried that once and got burned badly. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks!

Leana

dForce provides a new option for clothes simulation. You can use it for still images too, to get more realistic cloth draping, either directly or as result of an animated drape (for example if you use a sitting pose you'd use an animated drape).

It's not limited to G8 items. New items sold as "dForce ready" in the store are mainly for G8 as that's what vendors sell these days, but you can apply dForce modifiers to any mesh.
The results will vary depending on how the mesh is built, though, some existing items will work fine, other not so much. For example if you have a dress where the skirt part is not welded to the bodice part then there's a good chance that the skirt will fall down when you use dForce on the dress ;)

 

murgatroyd314

One reason to care: it can be used for things that simply cannot be done with conforming clothes.

(Ignore the bumpy bits; the shirt is still a work in progress.) 

Peter Wade

Clothes draped with dForce can look a lot better than conforming clothes in some poses. Murgatoryd's example is an extreme case, you couldn't do that with conforming clotes. In more normal cases I often find that skirts don't work well with sitting poses unless they have special morphs, and even then it can take a lot of fiddling with morph settings to get them to look right.

DDCreate

Ahhh, and the dForce utility comes with Daz 4.10? Is there any "how to" thread? I have some outfits that I use frequently that are built for Gen2 and cam sometimes look a little funny around the under arms. I wouldn't mind giving it a whack with dForce and see if it improves things.

 

Deke

I had also thought it was just for people animating flouncy dresses, but it can be applied to any mesh (right?). So I'm using it in animation to make a curtain move in the breeze. I assume it could be used for hair as well, but havn't tried that yet.  

namffuak

Check out this thread for a series of great examples of what dForce can do that is over and above just fabric!

maikdecker

Deke said:

I assume it could be used for hair as well, but havn't tried that yet.  

I have not yet tried it lots, but from the few occasions, it seems hair is a bit iffy when it's dforced. Some of the results looked rather like a hairstylist trying to create a hairstyle by using dynamite.

On the other hand, using primitives to push clothes around to create undressing options for clothes that don't have any works quite well most of the time. Although one has to be flexible with the positioning of the male/female figures. Sometimes it helps, when they float bottom up, head down in the air to get some cloth moving the right way.

Deke

I can imagine it's hard to get hair right. It would be great, however, for animations in which a character with long hair is tiling her hand one way or the other.