Lobo3433 posted at 9:05AM Wed, 06 April 2016 - #4264323

I know from Daz Studio there is the option to send to Hexagon just curious for your opinion I usually work more often in Blender and I remember a tutorial that i rewrote using Blender instead of hexagon Create Clothing Manikin/Doll In Blender can be found in the standard Tutorial section under Blender here on the site https://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/?section_id=14 my question is making a such a Manikin/Doll still a good rule of thumb or has it become somewhat obsolete as far naming all the body groups and such? Just interested in your opinion on the matter.

Thanks in Advance

It depends upon which rigging system one is aiming for. I call those "clothing dummies" ... and it helps to have one. Yes one can model on the real figure however that takes more memory. Memory is precious in Hexagon. Having separate body part Shading Domains is handy for quickly seeing exactly which bone areas will be affecting one's creations. To avoid just crossing section lines is helpful for avoiding rigging issues. Once one has one made, one does not have to keep remaking it. One can keep a collection of "clothing dummies" in a folder for such. It is very easy to select "all" the model's faces and make them into "one" shading domain. I tend to do that near the end of a project to check for poke through. Make the dummy red, the clothing yellow ... or some combination of extreme contrast to quickly spot poke through.

Then if the clothing is headed for triax rigging ... one can make the uvmap, unfold it, then apply shading domains/materials as they please for the garment [in Hexagon within its rules for such of course].

If the clothing is headed for legacy rigging ... it then has to be "one piece" of mesh [no groups] BUT all the areas for EACH bone MUST be assigned their own Shading Domain and material named EXACTLY as the corresponding bone. This is to preserve sanity when working on it next in D/S.

In today's upload concerning Legacy Rigging of a Figure in D/S, I cover "grouping in D/S" ... clothing headed for legacy rigging would be worked on in the same manner however there is a nifty short cut [sort of] for getting the group areas marked prior to this stage. [that tutorial is in the planning stage atm]