Hi,
I've been trying - fits and starts - to create conforming clothing for Poser 6 (V3). I came across an excellent tutorial for 3DS Max by Markdc at a mate's place. It walked through all the steps and kinda gave a mini-outline on how to use Max as well. I was almost decided to get myself a copy of Max until I priced it - in Australia, it's AUD $5500! Since my earning capacity here has actually dropped (compared to California) buying a copy of Max is not an option.

I've worked with Blender before - I have the current version (2.42a) - but now I find myself a bit puzzled how to accomplish the same things I did in the tutorial in Max. I've been able to bring a zeroed V3 obj into Blender (with all groups intact) and based on her create my model:

of a Little Black Dress. I need to assign groups now, since Blender supports groups and bones. In Max, one could 'freeze' V3 and she would stay solid, whilst the clothing mesh could be viewed in wire-frame mode. I've put my V3 figure into layer 3, and one of the group items - in this case, the hip - in layer 2 and just made layers 1 and 2 visible. Selecting the right faces is painfully difficult, though, because in wire-frame mode [ZKEY]:

you sometimes end up selecting the backfacing polygons as well when in wireframe mode

since the 'Limit Selection To Visible' button isn't available in wireframe mode, and you can't see the hip to select the appropriate faces for your group in solid mode. Even if I could made the faces somewhat opaque in Solid mode so that I can see the underlying body part, it would work.

Any suggestions on how to do this - or even how to better select the part of the mesh I want to create a group from? This is a bit of a showstopper...

Cheers,
Robyn

:thumbupboth:
You well deserve that halo, Haloe, and wings to go with it - you're an angel! Thanks ever so for that! I'll have a go but it looks like that should work.
Cheers,
Robyn

You don't mention it, and it might not be of much use to you, but you can use lattices (lattaci ?) to manipulate a fairly dense mesh with only a few control points.  After things are mostly complete use grab (proportional or whatever mode works best for you in your specific situation) to manipulate individual verticies.

I never liked the conforming clothes concept in Poser much. I've taken to creating a clothing figure with the unneeded body geometry underneath the clothes removed and then just popping the head of my choosing onto the different figures. I think that's a more efficient way of doing it.

Hi Fred,
I haven't really looked at lattice at all - not sure I understand the concept. This I will look into and get back to you. Thanks for your input, too...

Cheers,
Robyn

Hi fls13,

Although the trend seems to be dynamic clothing (which has a bit of a steep learning curve itself) I don't think the last word has been said about conforming clothing. There are a few fashion-conscious designers in our 3D world --t I would like to become one of the top designers here, initially emulating current styles in the real world and finally coming up with some of my own, more daring attire. If you consider the range of women's wear that exists in even just the Western world, what we see represented in Poser fashions is but the smallest sampling. I see a largely untapped market here.

My objective is to learn all I can about creating fashion for the main Daz and Poser people, from generating the object file, to grouping and boning and texturing and finally giving easy-to-use morph targets to these fashions. So, I like the idea of conforming clothing. I just don't think the development has gone far enough.

Cheers,
Robyn

Attached Link: http://www.blendernation.com/tutorials/blender-3d-beginner-tutorial-dolphin/

haloedrain that is an understatement. There is hardly even a use for filling in the polygons when the character is made up of a solid layer of vertices! :)

Thanks, haloedrain and oldskoolPunk - I was wondering why my attempts at deforming seemed so difficult using a lattice. Thinking Subsurf is probably the way to go....

I'm 'exploring' modeling in Blender on a coupla pages or so:
http://www.tightbytes.com/poseIndex.php
...might post all my foibles there first before taking up Renderosity bandwidth... hoping that's not against Renderosity policy...

Cheers,
Robyn

Oh hey im sorry, I was just putting my two cents in on the density of Poser meshes :)

Fred and Haloedrain are correct I think, using a lattice would be the way to go if you were changing the shape of a model as dense as V3 or Aiko. 
Another good way is using proportional editing combined with the 3d transform manipulator (the little hand) set on Normal.

Your dress model looks really good by the way, nice touch on the wrinkles in the shoulder.

While I'm here, a word on fls13's statement. That method is they way it all used to be done I think. But now, as the technology progresses, we can have things like dynamic cloth, softbodies, and other tools to make the models and clothing look and act even more realistic. So having a body underneath really is a requirement for realistic renderings and animations.

Hi ima70,

Never too late - thanks for taking the time, and thanks for illustrating to me that one can actually see one item in wireframe and the other in solid mode... think I've got that bit figured out, now. Gonna be so much easier to group polygons, now... thanks again!

Cheers, Robyn

Yea this is a great tip, ima70 thanks! I had to refresh my screen or somthing for it to take effect (2.42).

By the way, I create the groups using materials and then defite the real groups in UVmaper, how do you do all the work in blender?

I use materials in Blender  for material zones, and just seperate each bone vert group as a seperate object. When I export the .obj,  I uncheck Objects in the grouping section, and click Object groups and material groups. This makes everything identifiable in Poser.

Not sure if I'm doing this right, but it looks and feels right. I have the model I'm working on (the dress) in layer 1, and Victoria (all the groups that make up that character) in layer 11. I start, say, with the hip area... move just the hip into layer 12 and make it and layer 1 active. With the dress selected, TAB and with the mouse cursor over the button panel F7... in the Draw section, select Wire for Drawtype and in the Objects and Links section I see:
"OB: LBDress04"
with and 'F' on the drop-down tab... nothing in the Par: box, and an 'Add To Group' button. After selecting the area I want to group and 'p' to detach, move the detached area to another layer and with it selected click that 'Add to Group' button. In this case, it gets named 'Hip'... and so on.
Selecting with the lasso thingie is pretty quick.... - actually, as I get used to Blender, things doooo seem to be getting a bit quicker and more intuitive. The big challenge, as I see it, will be making sure I do my initial subdivide of polygons (and extrusions) correctly, or the item becomes impossible to shape properly. At this point I do the shaping in Subsurf mode, but I will have a look at lattices and see where they might come into play. I have noticed that a 4-sided polygon and a triangle have completely different deformation behaviours and will affect how that body part or clothing item looks. So whilst I accept your compliment, oldSkoolPunk: "nice touch on the wrinkles in the shoulder" it certainly wasn't deliberate or by design. Guess there's a lot of ground to cover with regards to modeling. If you know of any tutes - I've already checked out the ones on Blender.org - that deal with this aspect of modeling, I'd be deeply indebted to you.

Cheers,
Robyn

ps... Thanks to you all for all your feedback!

Haloedrain has a nice selection of tutorials here.

There's a bunch at the BlenderWiki place, too.

As for the wrinkles, they are an excellent example of a "Happy Accident" ! You could be Blender's new Bob Ross :)

Thanks for that - got me barking up the right tree... this one is amazing!:

http://blenderartists.org/cms/index.php?id=31#Getting%20Started

Quote - Thanks, haloedrain and oldskoolPunk - I was wondering why my attempts at deforming seemed so difficult using a lattice. Thinking Subsurf is probably the way to go....

I'm 'exploring' modeling in Blender on a coupla pages or so:
http://www.tightbytes.com/poseIndex.php
...might post all my foibles there first before taking up Renderosity bandwidth... hoping that's not against Renderosity policy...

Cheers,
Robyn

First off, thank you for offering the basics of this. This will help us a lot when getting ready to design our stuff. But we wanted to ask this; When importing V3, V4, etc into Blender, how do you get the object to view like you have in your modeling tutorial? We've tried and tried, but still end up with the "Cubed" look even though she is in the scene.  Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Hi LiquidAnime,
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I guess I'd have to explain how I export the model from Poser first, and then import into Blender. I'll put together a quickie little tutorial on that if you want.
Cheers,
Robyn

Quote - Hi LiquidAnime,
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I guess I'd have to explain how I export the model from Poser first, and then import into Blender. I'll put together a quickie little tutorial on that if you want.
Cheers,
Robyn

Thanks Robyn, that'll be good. We'll be looking for it. Thanks much.

Okay - those pages are kinda roughed out:

http://www.tightbytes.com/poseIndex.php

They are open for comment, criticism, addendums, even a few "hey, that's the hard way to do that!" type comments - I'm still learning this, and it looks very much like I will be for some time to come. At work (I'm a nurse in an operating theatre) I see some of my colleagues struggle with Word and Excel, doing things the hard way because they've limited themselves to only using what they know instead of exploring the rest of the program. I find myself in a similar situation with Blender. :unsure: So, if you see me doing something schtoopid because I've failed to enlighten myself on some tool in Blender, pleeeeeze let me know...

Cheers,
Robyn

Hi,

I've taken fredsmith's advice and am having a play with lattices. For those who have experienced frustration with even just associating a lattice with an object:

http://www.tightbytes.com/poseIndex.php

may enlighten you. Perhaps. The disclaimer stands that these pages are not a tutorial, but rather a blow-by-blow, "here's what I'm doing" sort of thing. Anyone reading it and has a better way, please let me know.

I've noticed that when in object mode, there seems to be an object centre - I'm assuming that it is where the object components are measured from? When I work on this mesh (the dress), the object centre appears to be different from Victoria 3's centre - is that going to present a problem? Anticipating that it might be, I've tried to align the centres so that they are in the same place, just in case.

Also, these lattices. I only want to deform the skirt part of the dress - do I really need to make the lattice completely enclose the mesh of the whole dress?

Cheers,
Robyn

The dress will need to have the same center as the character when you import it back into Poser (I think). In object mode, select the character,then press Shift-S for the snap menu and choose Cursor -> Selection. This will snap the cursor onto the center point of the char. Now select the dress and click the center cursor button(in the mesh panel (F9)) This will snap the center point in the EXACT same place as the character's center point.

Creating and using a lattice is pretty easy now. First add the lattice, than scale and position it to surround the area you want to affect.(making it ever so slightly smaller than for the desirable effect). Next, in the Lattice panel, you can break it up however you like by increasing the U: , V:, and W: variables. To associate with your mesh, just select the dress and add a lattice modifier in the stack. In the Ob: feild, enter the word "Lattice" (the default name) No parenting or anything required.

To make the lattice only affect a portion of the dress, you must create a vertex group. Highlight the vertices you want the lattice to deform. In the Links and Materials panel, under vertex groups, click New, to create a new group container,then click Assign, to fill the new group with the selected verts. Name the group "somthing". In the modifier stack, find the lattice modifier you created. Under the Ob: feild you will see a VGroup feild. Here you will enter the name of your group ("somthing"). Now only this section of the mesh will be affected by this lattice. Remember, you can have as many different groups as you want, and they can all share any other like vertices, so don't worry about all your different groups getting mixed up. (I realise you will have several different groups for your dress as you progress through your work)

You have probably already learned all this info, you seem to be catching on to everything pretty quick :)

Personally I prefer just using the proportional edit tool (toggle on and off by hitting the O key). You can grab a vert and it will move surrounding verts also, how many and how much depending on the strength (mouse wheel) and the type of fall-off you have chosen. Using this along with the 3d transform manipulator (with orientation set to normal) you can do some pretty easy mesh manipulation.

I like your tutorials. Nice style and approach :)

Hi oldskoolPunk

Thanks for taking the time to explain centering ... I've put together a page based on your explanation, hoping I got it right:

http://www.tightbytes.com/entryView.php?tbstory_id=20086

I'm going to have a go this arvie at using the proportional edit tool... thanks for that heads-up.

Cheers,
Robyn