Rigging question and the shrink wrap effect

Knittingmommy

So, to be honest, I have not yet attempted to rig anything.  I will be tackling that soon when I finish my first outfit.  However, I am curious about rigging and why everything is shrink wrapped around the breast/pec area.  I've been working on an image with an older couple and his outfit has been giving me fits.  A man in his 60s - 70s shouldn't have his sweater shrink wrapped around his pecs making him look like he's built like he's in his 20s!  It has taken a lot of fiddling and hiding and every trick I know (thank goodness for Fit Control!!!) to get a sweater to look loose and natural.

While there are lots of nice outfits suitable for an older figure, there really aren't a lot of outfits geared to fit an older physique.  Don't even get me started on how long it took me to find a decent shirt for my older lady and her boob issues!  Once those breasts start sagging, you might as well hang it up because there is all sorts of distortion going on!  Even Fit Control has a problem handling that one!

Is there something in the way an outfit is rigged that causes this?  I'm curious because I've spent a lot of time making an outfit specifically for an older man making sure that things do NOT look shrink wrapped.  I want this outfit to fit the body loosely.  Is this going to be totally undone when I rig it for us in DS?  Are there ways to tell DS that you don't want the breast/pec area fitted, but loose instead?

Valandar

The "Shrink Wrap" effect comes about two ways:

1 ) When modelling, the creator basically follows the shape of the figure. Great for getting it to rig properly, but ends up "sculpted" to the torso

2 ) When creating the morphs for different body shapes, the creator basically just lets the Autofollow make them for him. This also ends up "sculpted" on the larger morphs, and often distorted on the morphs smaller than default. It's 10x worse on the breast morphs.

So if you don't want your item to look "shrink wrapped", 1 ) Make sure the default shape isn't shaped directly on the torso but with some room (the top of the breasts on a female is okay to follow directly because of gravity), but be aware it WILL be harder to rig, and 2 ) Create any and all morphs you want your outfit to support outside of DS, in (say) ZBrush or your modeller of choice.

Knittingmommy

Valandar said:

The "Shrink Wrap" effect comes about two ways:

1 ) When modelling, the creator basically follows the shape of the figure. Great for getting it to rig properly, but ends up "sculpted" to the torso

2 ) When creating the morphs for different body shapes, the creator basically just lets the Autofollow make them for him. This also ends up "sculpted" on the larger morphs, and often distorted on the morphs smaller than default. It's 10x worse on the breast morphs.

So if you don't want your item to look "shrink wrapped", 1 ) Make sure the default shape isn't shaped directly on the torso but with some room (the top of the breasts on a female is okay to follow directly because of gravity), but be aware it WILL be harder to rig, and 2 ) Create any and all morphs you want your outfit to support outside of DS, in (say) ZBrush or your modeller of choice.

Thanks for the suggestions!  I appreciate it.  I just kept having visions of spending all of this time working on how I want the outfit to look and then ending up with something totally different!  I'll know more once I started trying to rig it.  It sounds like it might be best to not let Autofollow make all of the decisions which I'll have to figure out as I go along.  I love some of the clothes available here, but when you have a model with sagging pecs/breasts and isn't the usual perky young pecs/breast of the younger models, it is a nightmare, at times, to undo all of the autofit stuff!  This is especially true with the female breasts.  Very few of the outfits work without distortion on older ladies.  I'm glad there is hope that the work I'm putting into my outfits might actually still work inside DS.  Thanks for the advice.

Diomede

In general, for morph and rigging issues, I recommend Josh Darling's Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtqhpxQyGa7fm0LPoDz4s4A

 

If I understand you for this specific problem, it sounds like you want to create your own replacement morph for the clothing when an aging morph is applied to the figure.  If that is the case, you might want to follow these instructions by SickleYield.

 

"Then there is the making of custom FBMs or PBMs or support:
1. Dial in the morph in the figure, with the clothes on.
2. Hide the figure, leave the clothes visible (clothes must be at base resolution, sometimes leaving smoothing on helps, though).
3. Export the clothes to obj.
4. Import them to your modeler and reshape them to fit the body morph properly. I keep a file for Blender of the major morphs I want to support and update it periodically, so I can just use that and not re-import the cleavage morph (Victoria 7, etc.) repeatedly.
5. Export it again. Make sure it has the full correct name of the morph you want it to replace, e.g. FBMMichael7, not Michael 7 Body.
6. Start Morph Loader Pro (icon looks like a flexing biceps) and click on "Choose Morph Files" to navigate to that obj. Make sure "Overwrite Existing/Make Unique" is right-clicked and set to "Deltas Only" (if you don't you will get an error and it will fail). Then Accept.
7. Now MLP will run and tell you if it worked. If it does, your replacement morph will appear instead of the broken auto-generated one.
With the actual PBMCleavage morph it's also a bone pose, so loading it takes a special procedure. Let me know when/if you get to that specific one and we'll go into it.
If you are making a fixit or style morph that is not meant to replace another, you need to also right-click on Morphs/Morph Loader Pro and change it to Actor/Style or Actor/Adjustments (depending which is more relevant - for e.g. pants legs are more a Style morph where anything that is a clip fix is an Adjustment morph). I think they allow Actor/Movement too.
For saving morphs without resaving the entire item it's file--save as--support asset--morph assets. Then check just the ones you want to save."
found at  http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/938931/#Comment_938931

 

Some other tutorials that may be helpful for rigging and morphing in general.
Rigidity to Exclude Corrective Morphs 
Content support
Part 1 - Joint editor 
Part 2 -Polygon Group Editor 
Part 3 - Weigthmap Brush 

 

 

 

Knittingmommy

Thanks, @diomede!  There are several outfits I've thought of trying to takin into Blender or another program to do morphing to fit a particular body shape, but I haven't been too successful in the past.  I've since done better at learning how to use Blender so I may have to try to do it again.  For this specific outfit I'm modeling, it is a 1800s era nightshirt for men and I've worked very hard on how I want it to drape.  I'll be finished with that soon and trying to figure out the rigging part.  My goal is to still have it drape well and not wrap around the body like a second skin after rigging.  I'll look at the videos you linked.  I had watched SY's video in the past, but I think I need to watch it again now that I know more about what she's discussing. :)  I had not come across the Josh Darling channel as yet so that link is much appreciated and I'll be watching those.

I'll be finishing up that nightshirt this week and my weekend project will be trying to rig it.  I'll let you know if I have any problems and need more in depth tips.  Thanks! :)