Anim8dtoon posted at 7:37 PM Wed, 16 November 2022 - #4449391

odf posted at 6:56 PM Wed, 16 November 2022 - #4449388

Just as a heads up: I'm planning to rework joints other than the knees, as well. Definitely the hands (including fingers), elbows and feet, possibly the shoulders and neck if I can manage something that improves on the current rigging. All as individual add-ons, of course. Some of those might break existing poses and conformers for Antonia 1.3. So maybe the best way to look at them is as previews of some future version. I'm pretty sure this will, even with the most detailed and explicit warnings and explanations, confuse some people, whether you also make JCMs for the unmodified 1.3 or not. Antonia has always been and will always be confusing, lol.

Odf, I've got a question for you and that is, when I went to the Freestuff area to conduct a search for Antonia add-ons, I came across a number of ethnic head morphs by one contributor that are very nice, but they are old ones. Would they be at all compatible with Antonia 1.3, or not? 

Note: I was unable to post the link to one of those freestuff add-ons, but if you run a search for the contributor sazzyazzca, they'll show up. There are several of them available.

Anim8dtoon posted at 7:37 PM Wed, 16 November 2022 - #4449391

odf posted at 6:56 PM Wed, 16 November 2022 - #4449388

Just as a heads up: I'm planning to rework joints other than the knees, as well. Definitely the hands (including fingers), elbows and feet, possibly the shoulders and neck if I can manage something that improves on the current rigging. All as individual add-ons, of course. Some of those might break existing poses and conformers for Antonia 1.3. So maybe the best way to look at them is as previews of some future version. I'm pretty sure this will, even with the most detailed and explicit warnings and explanations, confuse some people, whether you also make JCMs for the unmodified 1.3 or not. Antonia has always been and will always be confusing, lol.

Odf, I've got a question for you and that is, when I went to the Freestuff area to conduct a search for Antonia add-ons, I came across a number of ethnic head morphs by one contributor that are very nice, but they are old ones. Would they be at all compatible with Antonia 1.3, or not? 

Note: I was unable to post the link to one of those freestuff add-ons, but if you run a search for the contributor sazzyazzca, they'll show up. There are several of them available.

Morphs for Antonia 1.2 don't work with 1.3 because the vertex count and order has changed. But on the other hand, her shape has not changed, so Poser's "Copy morph from..." functionality tends to work very well. I made a little kit to simplify the process a bit which can be downloaded here. It was meant to go into FreeStuff but when I first posted the link all I got were crickets, so I assumed there wasn't much interest.

odf posted at 8:13 PM Wed, 16 November 2022 - #4449400

Anim8dtoon posted at 7:37 PM Wed, 16 November 2022 - #4449391

odf posted at 6:56 PM Wed, 16 November 2022 - #4449388

Just as a heads up: I'm planning to rework joints other than the knees, as well. Definitely the hands (including fingers), elbows and feet, possibly the shoulders and neck if I can manage something that improves on the current rigging. All as individual add-ons, of course. Some of those might break existing poses and conformers for Antonia 1.3. So maybe the best way to look at them is as previews of some future version. I'm pretty sure this will, even with the most detailed and explicit warnings and explanations, confuse some people, whether you also make JCMs for the unmodified 1.3 or not. Antonia has always been and will always be confusing, lol.

Odf, I've got a question for you and that is, when I went to the Freestuff area to conduct a search for Antonia add-ons, I came across a number of ethnic head morphs by one contributor that are very nice, but they are old ones. Would they be at all compatible with Antonia 1.3, or not? 

Note: I was unable to post the link to one of those freestuff add-ons, but if you run a search for the contributor sazzyazzca, they'll show up. There are several of them available.

Morphs for Antonia 1.2 don't work with 1.3 because the vertex count and order has changed. But on the other hand, her shape has not changed, so Poser's "Copy morph from..." functionality tends to work very well. I made a little kit to simplify the process a bit which can be downloaded here. It was meant to go into FreeStuff but when I first posted the link all I got were crickets, so I assumed there wasn't much interest.

Wow, Odf, thank you for posting the kit here. I will give it a try and see how it goes--and post renders here in this thread. Keep up the awesome work--I love seeing collaborative efforts by members like this!

Hmm, proper knee socks are also delayed until after my knee-WM efforts. What would you call a sock that ends about half-way between mid-calf and kneecap?

ETA: The internet says executive. I like that.

odf posted at 1:57 AM Wed, 16 November 2022 - #4449320

Socks will come in four lengths: low-cut, quarter, crew and knee. Over-knees are tricky with the current JCMs, so they'll have to wait until I've managed to make a nice weight-map for Antonia's knees or given up for good.

I think I'll aim at something like this for my first properly published Antonia outfit:

Like I said, there will be several shorter variants for the socks. I might also add some more cuts for the pants, depending on how hard they are to weight-map nicely. I like how this style can work as underwear, pajama bottoms or rather skimpy lounge-/active- wear.

Scratch that. The fitting room is a disaster, and so is Poser's antiquated cloth simulation. I'm not going to spend hours and hours fiddling to make Poser-ready clothes when I have a perfectly fine method to dress Antonia for my own renders. Still happy to share the clothes I make as OBJs or Props or whatever is convenient, but at least until Poser 13 comes along, that's it.

To clarify: disaster for what I‘m trying to do. In principle, the fitting room is a fantastic tool. The problem is that the fitting is not implemented well.  

I never use the fitting room for fitting. I make the fitted geometry elsewhere (MD, preferably) and use the fitting room as an easy version of the setup room.

I never use the fitting room for fitting. I make the fitted geometry elsewhere (MD, preferably) and use the fitting room as an easy version of the setup room. 

The body shape, especially where detailed and concave, is not a good basis for morph or weights copy into garments.

FVerbaas posted at 7:48 AM Sat, 19 November 2022 - #4449585

The body shape, especially where detailed and concave, is not a good basis for morph or weights copy into garments.

I'm still not sure what to do about my MD clothes for Antonia. I'd like to share them, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on making them digestible for Poser.

I'll be perfectly honest with you; a figure without clothing is absolutely no use for me. It can bend like a dream or be morphable...if it has no content, not much I can do with it. I don't do naked gymnastics renders, so...while I adore your Antonia's shape, if the figure is not easy to create for, it probably will never garner support.

And that may be just fine for those who can grab MD and such and do their magic. As a purely end-user, that is definitely not me,  especially if Antonia cannot be used in the Fitting Room like other figures.

Wishing you the best!

And that may be just fine for those who can grab MD and such and do their magic. As a purely end-user, that is definitely not me,  especially if Antonia cannot be used in the Fitting Room like other figures.

Some things work quite well in the fitting room. Some work okay with a bit of tweaking. For example, the socks I made work perfectly as long as they end no higher than just above the calf. Maybe over-knee socks will also work nicely with a weight-mapped knee. We'll see. Shorts and panties work well with some editing of the weight maps. With upper body garments, the front usually fits well but there are sometimes problems in the upper back. Probably something that could be fixed or worked around. What doesn't work in the fitting room can be taken to the cloth room.

I tend to make pretty high-res meshes in MD because in MD, that's what looks best. The fitting room does not like high-res meshes very much, so that's frustrating. I also like clothes to be really tight to the body were that would be the case for real clothes, but that of course increases the risk of poke-though. So, one might say that I'm expecting too much from the fitting room.

The thing is, if I am to make Poser ready clothes routinely, I need to find a workflow that's easy for me, because my motivation is pretty low. It's not that I don't care about end-users, it's more that I don't care about convincing end-users. If you're an end-user looking for a specific kind of garment for a render, I'll be several orders of magnitude more inclined to make one for you that works well in Poser than I am based on the vague concept that if there were more content for her, more people might pick her up.

A couple of things I forgot to mention: firstly, if you don't use extreme poses, that will obviously make things easier, as well. Secondly, it seems to me that weight-maps work much better in the fitting room than the extensive JCMs that regular Antonia has. So, until I get around to weight-mapping more joints, Antonia-WM might be a good option for folks who like clothed figures and are comfortable with the fitting room.

To illustrate, here's a render I made some time ago of five Antonia-WMs doing half-naked gymnastics in conforming leggings:  

To further dispel the impression that Antonia does not work well in the fitting room, here is the MD outfit shown above (except with a longer sock) taken into the fitting room and conformed to Antonia 1.3 without any manual tweaking. The difference to my unsuccessful attempts is that I used a much lower mesh resolution and a larger separation between the skin and the fabric. There's actually very little poke-through and other little issues here that would be easy to fix.

For comparison, here is the same outfit simulated in MD and imported into Poser as a high-res OBJ.

FVerbaas posted at 7:48 AM Sat, 19 November 2022 - #4449585

The body shape, especially where detailed and concave, is not a good basis for morph or weights copy into garments.

You're right, it's just a difficult problem. Perhaps my expectations were skewed by some surprising early successes. I apologize to the folks who made the fitting room for calling it a disaster.

I'm still not sure what to do about my MD clothes for Antonia. I'd like to share them, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on making them digestible for Poser.

At the risk of repeating myself: fastest route forward in general is doing a post-drape.  You give the clothing an injected rig, preferably from a garment base. Conform and pose the figure. Then draw a unimesh copy of the garment and use it in a short simulation. The cloth room is surprisingly good at fixing poke-thru and skirts magically hovering above the legs.

Here is a small script that does most of the work. It makes a prop copy of the conformer,  hides the conformer, and sets up a simulation with collision on the conformee. Depending on the build of the conformer the user may have to play a little with the decorative, choreographed and constrained groups for best results.  Note it is experimental, set up as a proof of concept, and it comes with no guarantee whatsoever. 

One thing I never got the cloth room to do well is layered fabric. 

odf posted at 3:47 PM Sat, 19 November 2022 - #4449604

I'm still not sure what to do about my MD clothes for Antonia. I'd like to share them, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on making them digestible for Poser.

If you want to shear some of them to me I will make them dynamic for Poser and give them back to you so that you can upload them on the free stuff item (Antonia needs some suport in the Poser world). Files can be in MD format or obj. 

At the risk of repeating myself: fastest route forward in general is doing a post-drape.  You give the clothing an injected rig, preferably from a garment base. Conform and pose the figure. Then draw a unimesh copy of the garment and use it in a short simulation. The cloth room is surprisingly good at fixing poke-thru and skirts magically hovering above the legs.

That sounds like a useful method. I might give your script a try.

Neat script, FVerbaas! Very convenient!

For future reference, enclose the argument of the print expression in parentheses, so it still works in Python 3.

Also, special points for the retro-MacOS line endings.

jroulin posted at 6:48 AM Sun, 20 November 2022 - #4449650

odf posted at 3:47 PM Sat, 19 November 2022 - #4449604

I'm still not sure what to do about my MD clothes for Antonia. I'd like to share them, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on making them digestible for Poser.

If you want to shear some of them to me I will make them dynamic for Poser and give them back to you so that you can upload them on the free stuff item (Antonia needs some suport in the Poser world). Files can be in MD format or obj. 

Thanks, that would be great!

Let start with one cloth set first and you choose the one you want. You can send me the link to the cloth by sitemail or here.

Neat script, FVerbaas! Very convenient!

For future reference, enclose the argument of the print expression in parentheses, so it still works in Python 3.

@jroulin: How about we try a sweater? This is in MD .zpac format, fitted to an avatar using this A-pose.

Let me know how it works out! Also, feel free to make any modifications needed to make the item work better in Poser's cloth room.

Started to play with. Think I need to lower the resolution and  work on the trims.

Going back to the standard pose is also better to facilitate the import in Poser

Started to play with. Think I need to lower the resolution and  work on the trims.

Going back to the standard pose is also better to facilitate the import in Poser

I look forward to see what you come up with. I had a play myself tonight in the cloth room. The result is in my gallery.

jroulin posted at 5:42 AM Tue, 22 November 2022 - #4449836

Started to play with. Think I need to lower the resolution and  work on the trims.

Going back to the standard pose is also better to facilitate the import in Poser

I look forward to see what you come up with. I had a play myself tonight in the cloth room. The result is in my gallery

Here is the first result. I did not change the trim exept for one material zone for each of them. Poly was set to 20 and quad in MD before exporting. Used subdivision level 1 in Poser.

I feind the sholder a little lage but all in one it is working not bad at all

It looks promising.

Looking good, jroulin!

Not sure if the doubled-up fabric I use for hems and trims and waist bands and such makes any sense in Poser. In MD, It's stabilizing the fabric and makes a nice, thick edge. There might be better ways to achieve these effects in the cloth room.

Looking good, jroulin!

Not sure if the doubled-up fabric I use for hems and trims and waist bands and such makes any sense in Poser. In MD, It's stabilizing the fabric and makes a nice, thick edge. There might be better ways to achieve these effects in the cloth room.

I think I'm getting the hang of dynamic clothes. Now if only I could get rid of the cloth self-intersection between her legs.

When generating the simulation do you use the cloth self-collision?

When generating the simulation do you use the cloth self-collision?

odf posted at 6:19 AM Sat, 19 November 2022 - #4449584

FVerbaas posted at 5:35 AM Sat, 19 November 2022 - #4449582

I never use the fitting room for fitting. I make the fitted geometry elsewhere (MD, preferably) and use the fitting room as an easy version of the setup room. 

Yep, I used the wrong word there. I also don’t use the fitting room for fitting. I meant that the copying of morphs and weights to the conformer, which is a fantastic feature when it works well, produces all kinds of bad artefacts for me, especially with JCMs. My feeling is that I can probably get decent conformers with not too much hand tweaking if I keep the mesh resolution low and the distance to the skin high, but that’s very frustrating when the original MD garment is nice and tight with a lot of lovely detailed folds.

If you want something good for rigging you'll have to retopo the clothing, or at the very least see if MD can create quads instead of tris. 

jroulin posted at 3:56 AM Wed, 23 November 2022 - #4450065

When generating the simulation do you use the cloth self-collision?

Yes, I do.

First you should see if when importing the cloth, you are not already very close to penetrate the clothing itself. If folds are very close together the algorithm of the Poser cloth room can be a little confused with self-collision.

For this case I am giving some rigidity at the clothing in MD2 and some pressure when simulating so that the skirt is going away from the Figure and you get less folds. In Poser you can also add some Fold Resistance. This will help to reduce the speed of collision but it will also looking a little les fine on the final simulation.

Second if the mesh density is very high it can easily penetrate the cloth and when on the other side it will be again outside the clothing so again how dose the algorithm knows it is inside?

Here I am using a particle distance of 20 in MD2 and export the geometry with quads. I am also exporting it without Trims. I am adding those with Blender on the low-res Geometry so that the poly count is low on the base cloth. To get high resolution in Poser I am adding a subdivision level in the properties of the cloth. I also would try to get a version of the Skirt without the Trim at the lower part. Sometime it is also helping for the self-collision.

In general, Skirts with a lot of folds are very difficult to run and again if you want, I can looking at it to see if it is the settings in Poser or the geometry that is wrong.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 6:46 AM Wed, 23 November 2022 - #4450073

MD produces triangulated meshes, right? Those are bad for rigging in any program, they're made to be simulated as dynamic clothing only.

If you want something good for rigging you'll have to retopo the clothing, or at the very least see if MD can create quads instead of tris. 

The main problem is that the automatic copying of morphs that Poser does works very badly when the mesh density of the target is larger than that of the source. I'll try to illustrate after work tonight if I have time.

First you should see if when importing the cloth, you are not already very close to penetrate the clothing itself. If folds are very close together the algorithm of the Poser cloth room can be a little confused with self-collision.

That's a great point. I'll see if keeping the folds further apart from each other helps.

Here's my problem with the fitting room in one simple picture. The solid mesh is Antonia, the wireframe on top is a sock that I turned into a conforming figure. Both figures have the knee bend JCM manually set to 1 (i.e., without actually bending the knee). It's hard to see here, but the zig-zag on the sock actually goes not only out, but also in, leading to poke-through. This is with the mesh density of the sock matching Antonia's pretty well. It gets much worse when the conformer has a higher density.

I am not in conforming figure so can not help a lot here but to avoid the zig-zag to get in I would try to apply a subdivision level to the socks so that those corners/folds are rounded down a little.

Just asking myself, increasing the thickness of this pattern in MD could maybe also help. Keeping the trim like they are would still give the impression the cloth is well adjusted.

I'm not sure I fully understand if this is just a rigging/ bending problem, or if you're talking about morphs since you mention both the fitting room and morph copying. If it's related to copying morphs, it looks like it's something that can be fixed by using the smooth brush to edit the copied morph.

RedPhantom posted at 7:43 AM Thu, 24 November 2022 - #4450175

I'm not sure I fully understand if this is just a rigging/ bending problem, or if you're talking about morphs since you mention both the fitting room and morph copying. If it's related to copying morphs, it looks like it's something that can be fixed by using the smooth brush to edit the copied morph.

Of course, I could use the smooth brush to fix it, but if it's a morph (including JCMs) and I'm working with a higher density mesh in the conformer, the smoothing will eradicate all the fine detail I would have wanted the higher density for in the first place. It's less of a problem with weight maps, because there the smooth brush applies to the weights, not the shape, so details are preserved.

In summary, assuming I have a figure that's fully weight-mapped and doesn't need any JCMs to be transferred to clothes, then yes, it's mostly a morph problem. ;-)

Just asking myself, increasing the thickness of this pattern in MD could maybe also help. Keeping the trim like they are would still give the impression the cloth is well adjusted.

odf posted at 7:48 PM Thu, 24 November 2022 - #4450228

If that doesn't help, I'll also try your pressure idea. That might actually be good for skirts in general, but this particular one will still have a lot of folds even when I do a full Marylin Monroe on it.

That was an interesting one. I ran a bunch of tests last night, and it turns out the self-intersection is pretty resistant to whatever I do in MD. Extra collision thickness, lower mesh density, pressure, all to no avail. It's just that her legs push into the folds of the skirt, which have nowhere to escape to. Decreasing the fold resistance helped because there's more freedom for the cloth to get out of the way of the legs. I imagine increasing it enough for the folds not to get between the legs would help, too, but I'm not sure I'd like the look. I'll try it out later today.

Changing the animation might also help. Keep the legs together at first until the skirt has settled a bit, then slowly pull them apart and let the folds ease in.