If you read the new products forum, you might know that I'm working on a jacket styled from the movie Dune for Nikitacreed. THis is not a comercial project so I'm moving the thread here where, hopefully, themore experienced clothing makers can jump in with comments. Attached is a pic of the jacket as it stands now. I have the basic jacket modeled and confroming (mostly). I have to admit to a cheat, Mike's collars are invisable. When I lower the arms the jacket collar section, at the arm pit, indents and he pokes through. Can't seem to stop it any other way. If anyone has any ideas let me know. If it would help I'll post a pic with the collars turned on. I need to "attach" several items, such as braid and emblems on the forearms, eplets on the shoulders, medals on the chest and braid (which has me cringing at this point). See the original thread for stills from the movie. I'm going to try to make them "smart props" so they can be changed to give the jacket several different looks. Let me know what you think at this point. Thanks. mike

I was going to ask, "Which Dune movie?", but I visited the Product Showcase thread and see that you're working from the wretched first film starring Kyle MacLachlan and Sting. Wish I could help, but I'm still puzzling out the mysteries of joint parameters and spherical falloff zones for my first Poser character. Poor Sabrina's shoulders keep mutating whenever she shrugs. Looks good, so far. Should be fantastic after texturing.

Only in our Poser Community do people seem hell-bent on rendering the skin inside the clothes when they can't be seen anyway. I think that is about erotic fantasy fullfillment. If the skin in under the clothes it is more real. Anyway, Looks great. My advice is to scale the arms tighter and then export the scaled version as your new obj. Poser clothes always want to looks chubby. Some people model clothes that are very bubble-gummy. Others make the mistake of having the cloths float too far off the skin. Get the fabric as close to the skin as possible. Scaling and morphing in Poser will take care of that. Then just export the obj in it's zero position preserving all the groups. Delete your .rsr afterwards to fully replace the obj. Details make all the difference. This looks great. Add as many extra details as you can possible think of. (Seams, buttohole stiches, linings, etc.) Hope this helps, Anton

actually i liked the first dune film :-)
any way your work look good so far to me

i wish i could get my head wrapped around this process of making conforming clothing.

Thanks for the compliments! Little Dragon, I think the first movie had some thnigs going for it, I actually liked the more art deco feel to the whole thing. I think the stillsuits were closer to my concept from the book. I liked the SFTV version because it used a mini-series format and followed the book more acurately for it's story line. Of course neither really got ornithopters right! I want to take a crack at those sometime in the future. Pheonixrising, thanks for the tips! As for the skin under the clothes, I gues my idea is that if the clothes mostly work like the real world (over the skin) then they are "right". I'm afraid that if I negelct the skin underneath too much I make the clothng move in noe realistc ways. The other reason is for designs that allow the skin to show through when yoou want it too. Things like "ripped" cothing etc. ad easie with tranparencies than entire new models. Still I think it's ok if you do need to hide some areas. Without collision detection for morphs, it's a nessacery evil. It just needs to be document for the users. mike

Ohhhhh! It's really looking good Mike! =OD Thank you! Thank you!!

Trav, this is neat... the first Dune movie had great costumes. And a military-style tunic is missing in Mike's wardrobe, anyhow. i have a question for the more experienced clothing modelers--hey, anyone's more experienced than i am!--which is why do so few of the clothes that are supposed to be tailored have actual tailored-looking shoulders on them? The puffy/floating look makes them look like doll clothes, kinda. i gather that following the body mesh when composing the clothing parts is the basic reason, and maybe it's just extremely hard to do? But i've always found this doll-clothes/dolman sleeves thing unsatisfactory. OK, i'll stop whining now...

As a historical note, the high collar military jacket of this type is the direct forerunner of the standard suit or sport jacket. If you fold the collar of your suit up, the notch in the lapel is what separates the standing collar from the front of the jacket where the buttons are aligned. the button hole on the lapel is the top button of the old military jacket. The high collar is still being worn here and there in the more formal style of military uniform including the USMC's blues.

Well, here are the latest renders of the jacket. It's mostly done (Nikitacreed please contact me by IM or email). All of the "trim" except the piping on the collar and cuffs are smart props, so they can be added or deleted. I still need to make the cording. I'm thinking of that as a seperate figure so it can move right. I might need a while for that though. My question relates to the areas pointed to by the red arrows. After reading Pheonixrising's post I tried to tailor the shoulders and arms a bit. They look good in the static position but as you can see, they distort a lot when "bent". Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks for any comments on advanced, thay are more than welcome. mike

Here's the second pic in a "posed" postion. mike

Ahhh... now i see why tailoring is hard! i wonder how BillyT managed it for his motorcycle jackets. BTW, that's coming along very nicely!

I suggest you lose the stuff on the sleeves or at least make them such that they can be removed or enhanced. A model such as this has utility in representing a whole class of military style uniforms of the last 200 years that may not have such decorations on the sleeves.

Tapering the collars a bit might blend the area in question. Hard to say. Biggest shortcoming of most poser cloths is that everything looks like it is floating. I would try to get the cuffs closer to the inside cuff on the ends of the arms. The cording is fine but is floating a bit off the mesh. Looks good, Anton

Ohhhh...this looks so great Mike! It's just awesome!! I really appreciate you doing all this! =OD

Huolong, I have the cords as part of the mesh because they didn't move at all well any other way. The insignia are smart props. I DO have the jacket mesh without them or the collor trim, as a seperate mesh. PheonixRising, I can eleminate the "seam" at the mesh level. I was trying for a suit jaket look and was surprise by the way it stretched aroung the shoulder. I'm wondering if fooling in the joint editor might bring it back to the point of the shoulder, but I hven't found the right combination, if there is one. THe cording floating may be an optical illusion. Looking at it in wire freame it seems to be partially imbedded in the sleeve mesh all of the way around. I'll double (triple) check it. Thanks for the comments. mike

Okay, I was thinking it might be the joint parameters. If the clothes are much larger than the figure the cr2 came from them the zones might be too small to catch all of the arm. Work from a copy and try enlarging the mat spheres for those areas. This get's very tricky. Too much change and the arm will no longer align with Michael Properly. Be careful not to move the center points. Anton Ps: If you are still modelling I highliy recommend rolling the edges of all ends and not have then just stop abrubly. I use to do this and never will again. Rolling the edges really makes the mesh look polished and refined. Just give the rolled edges a material of their own like "Lining" so people who transmap can make it disappear if needed. Just some ideas. This is really coming out nicely.

I think you should make one for Vicki and then sell them as a pair. Cuz I would buy them ; ) Matching Uniforms are super spicey IMHO. - Gazzy!