alternatives to dforce
Masterstroke
Posts: 2,000
We have dforce for a while now. It is slow and unreliable on clothes, polygon - and strand based hair.
In many other apps we have those simulations almost in real time, while dforce sometimes takes as long as a full blown render job.
My suggestion is an either complete dforce remake (dforce 2.0) or a new simulation engine. 3rd pardy developers welcome.
Please do not hint to any previous DS Sim solutions. Those have been even slower or more complicated.
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And do the other applications simulate similar things or do they take much simpler inputs?
As a professional engineer I will comment a bit.
dForce is effectively a special purpose finite element deflection analysis package. I have sat down and written a finite element modeller in C++ from scratch myself, and came to the conclusion the analysis was too difficult for me to code. It really is a heck of a task. Even if you only do it for one type of element - a 3 or 4 vertex facet instead of having capability for a pyramid or brick or line element too. And then you don't make provision for one or two nodes down each edge, either.
BUT
In recent years the commercial finite element analysis packages (and freebie ones - check out 'calculix' or PrePoMax which uses the calculix solver) have had a massive speed boost, not quite sure what new analysis method is being used, but it's hugely faster than it was. To give an idea, I have had a 1.5 million pyramid element model analysed on my work machine in 12 minutes in 2018 (traditionally shell elements like dForce cloth & cloth hair are analysed at half the speed of solid pyramids in the model I used), this year a similar but not identical load case using that same model took 50 seconds on the same work machine. During these analyses the matrices were saved on the network server, not even on the machine that analysis was running on, and the use of it on a local machine hdd will speed it up by a factor of 2 or more.
My machine at home is twice the speed of my work machine and a 100k facet hair model takes 6 minutes. I'd expect a similar shell model to be analysed in under 6 seconds per step nowdays, so 3 minutes at the absolute outside for the cut-down deflection only type of analysis dForce does.
So, dForce does seem a bit slow, despite using the GPU to speed things.
Regards,
Richard
you could always make your figure invisible to Dforce and use primitive proxies like many of those other programs (Unreal Apex cloth, iClone Physix for example)
Another problem I encountered with dforce, that it often looks like there is some kind of a wind force aplyed, which is not. Cloth pieces wiggle around instead of following gravity setting.
Clearly, please. Can anybody greate a plug in? Any better and quicker product, than dforce?
I cant speak to speed of all simulation options, but Marvelous Designer for example can take very complex patterns and highpoly scans and sim them effectively in real time (dpeneding on GPU or CPU specs), with interactive grab options to control the garments as they sim.
Im not saying i expect Daz to compete with MD, just saying it's certainly possible. In any case, there are many approaches to high speed simulation that have been demonstrated at places like SIGGRAPH for many years, some of them im sure would be possible to acquire if not already open source, and implement, and certainly better than dforce.
Isn't Unreal Engine able to simulate it in real time ?
Something like MD is special-purpose, though, so it can be optimised for the things it does (and has to be, since that is tied to its selling point).
As for implementing other algorithms, there is no reason a third party couldn't do that using https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-4-5-sdk
Yes... some of other software / engines ( MD, C4D, Houdini......) may give you better results than what you get by using dForce in DS, however, don't forget that you have to spend more money and time, face potential tough learning curve and make more effort before obtaining the expected results.
In fact, dForce can do a lot and bring you pretty good results if you dive in the relevant settings on dynamic surfaces / engine as well as the quite a few tricks... yada yada.
In my exp. , some pretty good combo like: 1) Free : DS + Blender (which can help to make much better "initial shape" on dForce items before simulation... it's really helpful in lots of cases.) 2) Better Cost & Effectiveness: DS + MD
You don't have to go for those heavy / expensive software even if they have more advanced technology in terms of physics or whatever. Anyway, at the end of day, it'll be always up to your preference and choice, as long as you can happily get what you want ~~