Clothing mesh messed up when posed on customized character
I have added pants to a Genesis 8 character which I have heavily customized with many many morphs. The pants is from this product and I used the method to create a Genesis 9 clone for adding Genesis 9 clothing to Genesis 8 figures - this just as background. I am quite sure that it has nothing to do with the usage of a Genesis 9 cloth on a Genesis 8 character as I tested the same pants and the same pose on other Genesis 8 figures including the base figure without having the same problems.
So problem now appears with any pose with bending thighs bones. I've attached a screenshot showing the areas of the pants where the problems appear (there are torn areas on the pants which have no opacity so I marked the areas which should not show the underlying character mesh). I first thought some smooting would help or dforce but nothing helped. So I looked further and I found that the mesh is actually messing up - I think that the weight maps are not really fitting the figure any more?! I've attached another screenshot that shows you the inside of the pants when posed and a third screenshot with the pants on another Genesis 8 figure in the same pose. You may see that the mesh of the pants is deformed in another way here which looks much more correct.
I first remembered that on custom characters that you import by a single custom morph you need to "Adjust rigging to shape" and make an ERC freeze on the morph to avoid problems with the rigging. Following the tutorial at least I adjusted the rigging to the shape but I cannot do an ERC freeze if I have not a single morph for my character (yet - should I?). As I said, the character is build up by a bunch of dialed in characters and morphs. But this did not solve the problem - and I am not sure if this actually would be a solution as I have no problem with the character itself during posing... it's this pants which makes the trouble.
In Blender I adjusted the weight painting and I am quite sure that the weight panting is somehow misplaced... but I wonder why this is just the case for my character but not for other characters or the base figure? I have also tested some other pants on the same character and they are doing well. So I think that it might just be a problem of some pixels / vertices which do not have the correct weight painting for some bones due to the different influences (customized character, auto-fitted Genesis 9 cloth on Genesis 8 figure)?! Is there something that I need to keep in mind additionally?
Comments
The individual morphs should already have the necessary rigging adjustments set up, unless they are morph you created your self (in which case do the adjustment and ERC Freezing on those). Do the clothes work on a base figure, or are they broken there too?
No, they work on the base figure
It's hard to tell ... as you dialed many many PBMs on the character. In general, you need to fix corrective morphs (pJCMs) 'cause pose brings it distortion. But 1st of all I suggest you make a single FBM rather than keeping so many PBMs on the figure. Then it'll be easy to fix FBM and pJCMs on the conformed clothing.
Thank you again @crosswind - this was the solution: I exported the mesh of the character and re-imported it to Daz as a morph with Morph loader pro on the Genesis 8 base figure. Then I followed the mentioned tutorial: adjust rigging to shape and ERC freeze. Now the pants are deforming correctly when the figure is posed.
Man... this was a source of stress
Nice!It proved that one or some of the PBMs was the culprit.