Decimator and dForce
marble
Posts: 7,482
I bought a G8F clothing item which turns out to have an extermely high polygon count and it does not have dForce. When I tried to add a dForce modifier, it just crashed and I had to re-start DAZ Studio.
I have Decimator so I reduced the polygon count to 40% and tried again. Now, after adding dForce again, it explodes immediately. Seems that dForce doesn't like Decimated mesh. The clothing has a lot of fitting and movement morphs which I consider to be important but I think that if I export it as an OBJ file I will not retain those morphs. Seems I'm stuck with a useless piece of mesh unless someone can educate me as to how I can resolve this. To be clear - despite the included morphs, the garment looks awful when posed which is why I want to add dForce.
[Update]
I did export it at the lower resolution. I then re-imported the OBJ file and used the transfer utility. However, attempting to add and use dForce again resulted in an immediate explosion.
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Comments
It's probably a quirk of the reduced mesh - have you tried decimating with different target reductions? It's also possible that any weight map for dForce influences is being muddled, which might cause the simulation toa ffect areas from which it had been excluded because they exploded.
Could try posing the figure & garment, select the figure and send it over the bridge to the modeller, morph the clothing to look better, in D/S select the clothing and from the modeller send back in the reshaped clothing. Very important to "reverse deformations." If it's a keeper, select the figure and zero the pose, dial out the new morph on the clothing, select the clothing and save the new morph.
Then repose the figure with the clothing, dial in the new morph, etc. for the scene.
I have added dFroce to conforming clothes before but I've never had a dress with such a high polygon count. When I first added dForce to it, it took 4 minutes just to get through that spring-count phase before the simulation starts. I have no idea if it would have exploded then (without the Decimation) because it just hung the whole of DAZ Studio and I had to restart. That's why I tried decimation.
There are other options such as sending the OBJ to Marvelous Designer with a posed G8F avatar but it is not worth the hassle. I remember now that it came with the latest MegaPack so I'm not losing much. Just disappointing because it is the one item in that megapack that I though I might use often until I realised that it is not dForce.
https://www.daz3d.com/teddy-sleepwear-for-genesis-8-females
(The nightgown). It's easy to see why things end up in give-away megapacks. [Retracted]
I think that 's harsh criticism, considering that the garment wasn't designed to be used the way you are using it.
Installed that set, looks lovely but yes, it is not meant to be used with dForce.
For the nightgown, the problem are the bows.
There is some program or way some are making bows these days - out of loose pieces of mesh.
dForce works better with one piece of mesh that is not intersecting anything.
If you remove the bows, it appears to accept dForce just fine. I tried it alone in the scene with an object to land on. Mileage would vary with multiple clothing pieces in the scene.
I meant the extremely high polygon count rather than the fact that it explodes when dForce is added. I thought that releasing products with such a dense mesh was not good practice but I don't make clothing so I'm just going on what I've read over the years.
One can get the garment to work in dForce if one takes the time to add in the dForce Weight Map and nullify the weights over all the bows. I normally use the timeline for simulations.
After running the sim, applied a ribbon morph to wave them a bit. Very nice set :-)
Ahh - you went a step further than me. I tried the bows with a lower dForce Dynamic Strength and then again with zero Dynamic Strength but it still exploded. Did you get it to dForce at the full resolution or did you decimate?
Full resolution.
While one seeks a balance for polycount, clothing DOES require more mesh for working nicely in the poses and/or with dForce. Consider how hard it is to bend a section of plywood. Consider each 'face' as a piece of plywood. Need a lot of faces to enable a bend.
Yep, I guess the next step would be to use weightmaps as you have done. And morphs to hang the ribbons etc.
The reason I started the thread was really to ask whether dForce and Decimation together are a no-no. I'm still not sure whether you decimated but looking at your simulation times I think you must have.
No I did not decimate ;-)
Sorry - I keep getting Cloudflare errors.
I don't really get how you are able to simulate so quickly when I have to wait so long just for it to run through all those spring things. That's why I tried decimating in the first place. I know that a higher polygon count makes for a more realistic drape but the count is so high that it crashed my DAZ Studio.
Without the bows being in play [whether I removed the mesh, or applied the weight map], it ran through all those springs very quickly and then proceeded to do the drape.
RTX 3060, 32GB RAM, 1TB for the drive, but only 6GBs VRAM {laptop}.
OK - when I get a chance I will go back to it and try again. I also retract my unfair comment about free give-aways.
RTX 3090 24GB VRAM / 64GB RAM / 2TB M.2 Drive
If you reduce collision distance to 0.1 (cm) you can get through the springs much quicker, as fewer will violate that.
And you can simulate it without weightmaps, if you remove the bow and attach it with a rigid follower node.
+1
You can also
Seperate the ribbon, make part static, dynamics to the rest and use a Dynamic Surface Adding to join them, will need to create some linking geometry.
Or you could just add an extra mat zone, apply some polygons to it and set dynamic strength to zero
Have the ribbon at about 80% dforce strength should work
Now you are getting a bit complex or, to put it another way, beyond my present knowledge. I don't know enough about creating clothing, material zones or "linking geometry" to follow your advice. I get the feeling that it would probably be no less simple to create a garment from scratch (or in Marvelous Designer). If I could do that I would be buying far less clothing from the store - which is something I ought to consider but have not been dedicated enought to pursue up until now.
The previous tip about collision distance is something I could try though. Thanks everyone.