problems with business suit shoulders

marco.trevissoi_f7d64cbade

hi there
my first post to this forum, so please bear with me... ;-)

I'm stuck at trying to get a male character with business suit to look like he is NOT a hulky guy.
With Genesis and MorphingBusinessSuit the suit always looks like it's been bought 2 sizes too big.
With M4 and the M4 BusinessSuit it looks ok, but the shoulders are always way too wide and bulky for what my client wants.

I've tried various things, from making the figure thinner, making the suit shoulders narrower, etc, it always looks like the guy was consulted by a tasteless taylor.
I've spent hours with that stuff, but to no avail.
My figure should also move and talk, and in the end it has to be a semi-realistic avatar character for an elearning course.
Therefore i'd like to stick with M4, since I have some props, hair, morphs, walks for M4 already, and I think they don't all translate well to Genesis.

Any suggestions? I'd be thankful for all advice, my deadline is approaching fast and I've waisted way too much time with this now...

Thank you very much in advance!

EDIT:
Just found out what might cause my mayhem:
I'm using animate+ walk construction kit, and every time i apply a walk/stop animation (e.g. stop-N) the shoulders bulge despite what i set them up like before.
Any remedy anybody?

Thanks a lot!

SickleYield

Hi! Thank you for buying our suit. Are you using the Business Suit's shoulder JCMs? It's kind of what they're for. They are under "optional JCMs" and are called ArmDownL and ArmDownR.

There's also the TightFit morph under Style and Movement, which is intended to make the suit fit more closely.

marco.trevissoi_f7d64cbade

Hi & Thanks for the fast reply :-)
Think I tried that before, but I ll give it another run.
My intention was that the shoulders were set up ok in the base standing position and only got bulkier when I applied a morph.
Can'remember if it was a puppeteer pose saved from an office construction aniblock.
Unfortunately I'm away from my machine for some time, will keep you posted (and maybe bug you with some more questions probably)
Cheers

marco.trevissoi_f7d64cbade

Hi
first iof all thanks for the tip, i never got it to look the way i wanted it though.
this seems to be so simple, and the fact i can't make it work makes me feel kinda stupid...
first of all i could not find the shoulder JCM.
where would i go searching for them? do ia have to load them separately? please guide mr through that process if possible, it drives me nuts!

thankx a lot!

SickleYield

That's the problem with doing a set with lots of features under user control. We really need a manual included with it, and that's not one of our options to offer one. :D It's so hard to make a fully layered suit work at all that it takes a lot of fiddling to get a good result.

The first picture shows the suit on M5 with the jacket colliding with the shirt. The Optional JCM heading is highlighted, but no JCM is turned on. When you select the jacket's root node, you should see things in the Parameters that say Actor, Display, Fixes and Layering, and under that Optional JCM. This heading contains the shoulder helpers.

The second picture shows the arm JCMs turned on. At this point this is still bulkier than most people want. Here I changed the collision back to Genesis on the jacket because it was giving visual errors colliding with the shirt.

The third picture shows you where to find the TightFit morph under Styles And Movement on the jacket.

The fourth picture shows where to find the matching morph in the shirt, under Fixes And Layering. You need to turn smoothing and collision OFF on the shirt to use this.

The fifth picture shows the suit with the tight fit ON but the arm JCMs OFF. This is what you should do if you want the tight fit but not the square shoulders.

marco.trevissoi_f7d64cbade

Thanks very much SickleYield!
I guess it's hard to do conforming clothing, like you just explained.

I probably found a solution to my problem. I also must say I'm using the M4 Business suit since I'm using M4 'cause I have already bought numeros poses and morphs for it.

I adjusted the pointed shoulders, bizeps, trizeps and arm settings to make everything thinner, then michael's skin poked through.
Next I turned the offending parts' visibility off, and there I am :-)

I know this is a somewhat unelegant hack, but it works fpor the time being.
Found out later why I could never use the morphs++ (which would have allowed me to make M4's figure thinner): I had to newly install them to my content directory, now they are available. Strange, since I also did some content rebuild stuff rom the content pane.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the moment, I think I'm getting more comfortable with DAZ studio every hour I'm using it :-).

Now I'm looking for someone to have a working download link for Crescent's pwToon Presets (which are referenced all over the tutorials but not downloadable any more). But that's another thread I guess.