Design your own clothing?
Phantom Studios
Posts: 203
I see some software is available to make your own clothing and content such as Blender, Hexagon and Marvelous Designer. I love Marvelous Designer, but not sure how detailed you can get with the clothing.
Is there a program or software anyone can recommend to me to design my own clothes for Poser Pro 2014? I'd also like to create my own props and accessories etc; Do you suggest Hexagon? Thanks in advance!
Matt
Comments
If you are using MD already, you may be able to work from there. I have a friend who brings his MD clothing into zBrush to retopologize. But just going from MD to Poser, I don't know how well that works.
You didn't say if you have Hex... Hex is a great little program that has never gotten the love from Daz it seemed to deserve. I have it, but I have not used it enough to become comfortable with it. Wings3D does most all of what I would want to do with Hex, minus the extrusion/path tools. I have been using Wings to convert clothing among different figures using the fitting room. I expect to make a clothing item from scratch very soon, but have just been using existing clothing items from my library up til now.
The fitting room changes everything for me though. It really is easy to fit a basic clothing item to a figure, but it may take a few tries to get the results you expect. I just wrote a lengthy description of how I use Wings with the fitting room, the problems I encountered (so far) and how I worked around them. I could repost that info here if you are interested, but it kind of assumes you are able to make at least a basic clothing model of some kind already, which my friend is currently doing using MD (I believe) and zBrush.
The beauty of the fitting room is that it is fun and fast to play with. When it doesn't do what you want it takes very little time to do it again.
Thanks!
Yea, I guess I will just utilize and keep at it with Marvelous Designer and ZBrush. Is ZBrush like a Photoshop alternative? Never used it before. I use Photoshop often. I love how MD 2 can manipulate the clothing. I just learned it recently.
ZBrush is a modeling and sculpting program that also allows you to paint on your model. It's a bit pricey, but has become indispensable to CG and game artists in recent years. I thought everyone knew of it by now! ;)
Anim8or is free and easy,
Pegasus 3 works quite well and is designed from the ground up to build clothes for poser.
I'd recommend them both,
amim8or is a good general purpose modeller
I have never used MD, so I can't comment on it.
Wings3D and anim8or together make a good no-cost modeling pipeline. The thing I never liked about Wings3D is that you cannot have open faces in it, so once a model got as far as I could go with it, I would take it into anim8or to make additional cuts/splices/remove faces or vertices as needed.
Once I got my hands on Hexagon though, I never went back. I've tried many other modeling apps, but always found myself going back to Hex, just for the sheer intuitiveness of the interface, simplicity of use and powerful features (although UV-Mapping and UV-Painting is it's one weakness where another specialty app like ZBrush or 3D-Coat would be essential to the pipeline).
Now that said, not every interface is intuitive to everyone. For example, some people find Blender's interface very intuitive, while the majority of the rest of us look at it and see a complete train-wreck of a nightmare. You simply have to try them out and see what works well for you.
I use Blender.
Sure, there's a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it is extraordinarily powerful.
I've also tried Wings and Hexagon, but I always find myself back in Blender.
Yes, Wings tries to maintain a closed manifold mesh. It's not something you should worry about though... Just select all of the desired polygons of your mesh (except the ones that close it) when exporting. Keeping a closed mesh is how Wings keeps seams welded, reduces redundant vertices. You don't have to export those extra polys...