How to I find out if my mesh is problematic for DAZ?

spearcarrier

I ask because I've got this clothing prop that dislikes draping.  Or anything. I've restarted multiple times, and I'm now on my fifth time backin up to an earlier mesh. I've restarted so many times I no longer know where the starting point actually is, so it's impossible to post screenshots or anything. This latest version explodes when bending a knee. It didnt' at FIRST, I might add. I made no changes. It just steadily got worse and now it won't without a problem.

I have looked at the daz to blender bridge briefly, but I couldn't get it to behave and sequaying into a whole no venture to learn something else entirely is more than I can do right now. I've been exporting morphs out and bringing them in the old fashioned way. I did update Blender to 3.6 for this, but created some serious issues as they've changed the obj dialogue so I've had to go back to using the older version for now to at least get a morph in that works.

I just want a checklist. That's how I learn: step for step, bit by bit. Not with college lectures or long discussions, no offense to anyone else.

Yes I know I usually adopt a Gollum persona to discuss things in here, but eh. I'm too frustrated by this project right now.

Richard Haseltine

Avoid self-intersection. Try to avoid doubled layers (for an inside and an outside of the cloth). Make sure that the edges of the polygons are longer than the monimum offset value. restart Daz Studio if the simulation does go wonky.

spearcarrier

OMG thankyou.

Self-intersection: checked.

Double layers: doggonit, but I had to admit to myself last night that double layer hem wasn't going to work. So deleted and rebuilt. (which added a new problem: how to rebuild and have the entire edge connect, because so far it laughs in my face and I had to rebuild using extrude.) It's a shame on that one... because my thought was having it double layered would present an interesting effect if things draped a certain way.

I also deleted loose geometry just in case.

Unwrapped to make sure all the faces were all in the correct direction. 

Made sure edges of polygons are longer than offset value.... ... wait. Wut. (Goes to see if she can learn wth that means.)

felis

Collision distance is default 0,2 cm. Your edge length should be longer than that, or you must decrease collision distance.

I would also advice that your normals are facing outwards.

Richard Haseltine

A shader can be used to make a surface appear double-sided - so the back face can have different properties to the front. Doing that with Sahder Mixer in 3delight was almost trivial (if you have a vague recollection of dot products in vector maths) but doing it in Iray is trickier - I think there is a product or freebie, though.

spearcarrier

I had thought of the shader/face double-sided situation, but I was also seeking a bit of depth. As I largely work with pwtoon, it's not feasible to use bump or anything like that.

I decreased collision to .1 and it's working pretty fast considering I've got half the computer I did when I was in this forum last. I was worried I was going to have to change the mesh somehow. As far as I can tell the mesh is clean, but I've never tried anything this advanced before so what do I know. I also, however, subdivided the model because I didn't like how the other was draping. Too many bumps and triangular edges.  I may experiment with a triangulated mesh in the future. I've always liked how the triangulated meshes drape.

Normals appear to be out but also facing the right direction. I've had a lot of fun twisting them around in Blender. But I like to unwrap. I've unwrapped some old model doozies just because I was bored.

With the increased mesh it's draping reasonably, and I've been able to fix a joint easier than before. But i admit i dislike the thought of there being too many vertices. It is what it is.

 

 

spearcarrier

I'm currently trying to track down how to key morphs. I did find a nifty script tool, which would work if I were doing a character morph. With Genesis 9 clothing, it doesn't stick. I'm trying to "animate" the joints so that the slight folds move along rotation because it wouldn't be me without animation. Joint rotation -70 is being a nasty hobbitts...

Richard Haseltine

What happens if you unfit the clothing and try using the script then? If that works you may find you need to adjust the follow Mode on the outfit for the links to work correctly.

spearcarrier

The script is pJCM ERC-Keyed: https://www.mikededes.com/pjcm-erc-keyed/

Very neat. I haven't found a permanent use for it, yet, but I'm going to someday.  If I select an unfitted piece of clothing, it complains there's no parent node so the item has to be parented to what the morph is supposed to do. However, I imagine I could use it for a starter base: getting the joint in there so to speak. 

Thanks to this thread here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/55679/one-fader-controlling-multiple-morphs-in-a-sequence I have managed to sort of figure out how to rudimentary key things. It took me some fiddling, because it wasn't quite said in detail how you key manually.  (On the other hand if the thread hadn't been short and concise I may never have gotten there.) Thanks to their example, after a while I figured out where. So now joint -70 isn't a nasty hobbitts. Just a gnarly orc. At least it's behaving so far. 

So far.

I am still concerned about my mesh, though. I converted to subd out of curiosity and symmetry went nuts.