What is the 'best' clothes creating application or plugin for Poser 8 out there? I have photoshop 7. Is that all that I need? I see some pretty amazing stuff out there and I'd like to get on the path to creating my own. What do you all suggest having in my arsenal to do that?

you would need a modeler. Like Wings3D, Blender or Hexagon. I like Hexagon the best, it is not free but very reasonable.

the path to clothing in poser ..

A modeling program, and a UV tool , a texturing program, a rigging tool or tools,

And a whole lot of time to learn al the damn things and tools ...

Poser and photoshop you have .. so you need the rest..

I use MODO and Photoshop cs4 and a set of tools ..

there is NO best SET for this ...its not the Kitchen but the COOK that makes the best out of it..

Chris 

You can rig without extra tools technically, but it's a royal pain the posterior ;o). The big one is a modeling program. If you just wanna create textures for existing clothes, then you already have all you need - Photoshop. There are so many free modeling programs out there (they really must be able to export to .obj) that you can try them all and pick the one that best suits you. I use Roadkill combined with Wings3D to do my UVs - both are free. Some love Blender. There's also Anim8tor and a few others.

Laurie

Laurie, what program you use to Rig? Just curious.

Well, I've only rigged one thing so far...lol. And I used Poser for that ;o). I borrowed the rig from the V4 Dev and just deleted the bones I didn't need. Of course, there's cleanup to the .cr2 that needs to be done and the rig does not include the grouping, etc., etc.

Those other "tools" mentioned above will definitely make your life easier and much less stressful while creating conformers ;o).

Laurie

LOL ok just wondering, I know there is a system I bought for DAZ Studio but haven't heard of another one.

If the clothes are for personal use only you can cheat a whole bunch. D3D has a program where you load a character and set an offset, etc, and make a new mesh from the base mesh. I started this way, as the rigging seemed to be the issues you see posted the most about. I took the expanded mesh which had the right groups and made some simple shirts and pants and learned to rig, and learn about fall off zones and then conform first, then create my own clothes models later. Sort of working backwards so to speak.

For polygonal modeling and for grouping and setting material selections, all that stuff is best done in your modeler.  I never saw the need to external tools for rigging, whether for conformers or for custom figures.  You do need a CR2 editor for many common tasks but just getting the bones in I never saw anything really helpful in any of the various external tools.

Michaelab if you've never touched any of these tools, don't expect to be productive for at least a year, probably more.  It doesn't matter how much money you spend on tools or tutorials, it will take you a long time and immense mental effort to get beyond the very basic stages (and most people never even get that far before giving up).

1. Marvellous Designer to make the cloth - unbeatable - a dream come true

2. zBrush to clean up and making adjustments - Industri standard

3. UV mapper Pro to make UVs - tried and tested for over 10 years

4. obj2cr2 for rigging - saves hours, literally days of work

How long to learn it all? 2 weeks should be enough if you are not distracted by other things. (I have just gone through the process)

All this programs are very cheap exept zBrush but there is a 30 day version - try it out.

Vintorix you've been working on learning modeling a bit more than two weeks.

Two weeks? Are you a savant? LOL

I've been modeling for just over a year and I still feel like a noob ;o).

As for Marvelous Designer: while I've heard it does make nice clothes, I've also heard those clothes are more suited to dynamic cloth since it makes a Delaunay triangle mesh. That would also make it a nightmare to do the uvs. Unless of course the program itself does the uvs. I'd rather map the uvs on a model that's all quads myself ;o).

Laurie

pjz99,

True I  was already familiar with ZBrush and UVMapper when I started. But you need only to learn about 5% of Zbrush. The most difficult will probably be uv mapping.

I've used Hexagon for over 5 years, since DAZ purchased the program and ran it onsale for $1.99. I had an epiphany 6 months ago and now can model just about anything I choose to. I am enjoying modeling the human form now, which had eluded me for so long, and loving every moment of it.

Laurie,

Marvelous Designer's triangle mesh works well for dynamic clothing, and you get a very nice uv map for free. (Actually you make the 3d model from the  UV-map - not the other way around).

For conforming cloth you can just convert to quads in ZBrush. Nice and orderly.

I'm not talking about "how long does it take to learn the interface for Application X" and neither is the original poster.  Learning basic modeling technique takes EVERYONE a long time (imo at least a year and probably more).  Not trying to be discouraging, just realistic.

Re: Marvelous Designer

Quote - For conforming cloth you can just convert to quads in ZBrush. Nice and orderly.

I'm curious to see wireframes of results of this actually.

edit: in another thread, I'm not trying to clutter up this one.

I agree with pjz99. I was well over 30 when I started trying to get my head around modeling. No tutorials on the web during the early 90s. Raydream studio was the only modeler I could afford. Like I said the epiphany came 6 months ago, after almost 20 years I can model almost anything now.

Still not much of an edge modeler. but I can do faces box modeling then retopologize in Zbrush, so it's a wash anyway.

pjz99, " Learning basic modeling technique takes EVERYONE a long time"

It depends. 3ds max and Maya takes years to learn. On the other hand programs like Sketchup (for architecture) and Marvelous Designer (for cloth) can be learned in a few days, enough to get started.

"I'm curious to see wireframes of results of this actually."

OK, I start a new thread. I just been working on a Wintercoat (with fur lining), it is a WIP so take it for what its worth.

Hi All

Any further tutorial links for  wings, I have a couple form Dr Geep any others?

Paul, watch out. Vintorix gotcha by the coat-tails... anytime someone says "ya can't", there's always the bright young upstart to prove ya wrong. :biggrin: ooooooo I love this!

And Vintorix, don't let them give you timelines. Fly by what you know. You're a bright star... shine!

Aren't I just the PITA tonight... :lol:

ha ha, thank you RobynsVeil for your support.  I am a beginner true albeit not an young upstart but an experienced computer programmer (and humanitarian if I may say so) that sold my company and went into early retirement so I could consentrate on art. Of course it is a great advantage to have no distrations! :)

Yes, with Poser and Blender and, I dare say, Marvelous, you want to be able to hunker down and do the obsession thing. I know I would lose myself easily for hours in Bach and Blender ... and almost lost other things as well. Oh well, there's always a sacrifice, isn't there?

Good ON you! May 2011 be a bright year for you, Vintorix.

Quote - Paul, watch out. Vintorix gotcha by the coat-tails... anytime someone says "ya can't", there's always the bright young upstart to prove ya wrong. :biggrin: ooooooo I love this!

A bit longer than two weeks ago...  Look, I'm not trying to crush anyone's dreams, but seriously it doesn't matter how much money you spend on tools or tutorials, it will take you a lot of time and mental effort to get anywhere beyond the very beginning stages.  IMO (still) at least a year.

I should point out, even in May 2009 he was a good ways past the noob stage.

I'm afraid I'll always be at the noob stage, Paul... there's modellers like you and Vintorix and Fabiana and people of your natural talent, and then there's those of us who dabble but never quite make the grade.

Quote - I'm afraid I'll always be at the noob stage, Paul...

Until you stop saying that, it'll keep being true.  Persistence and effort are 95% of it, talent is 5%.  That's what I'm trying to get across about having realistic expectations :)

Actually it is a matter of a switch going off in your brain. That is how it was for me. I call it my epiphany and that is exactly what it was. Just like a light comes on. A combination of learning the program you choose to use, getting your mind around working in 3 dimensions on a 2 dimensional display and grasping the concept of turning a primative into an organic shape. The latter was my biggy

can somebody post the general workflow ?
from beginning to the end result....and which programs for which steps, and why.

Thanks :)

edit: so like why you need to do the uv part, or why you need cr2 editor...etc.etc

If you want to model clothing (general steps):

• Determine basic design, whether from a reference, or for an original design, whatever works (pencil and paper, 2d graphics program, or you can design right in the modeler like I do)

• Import an un-morphed, zero pose character figure (e.g. Simon or V4 or whatever) to build the model around, to ensure a good fit and ergonomics.

• Build the model of polygons in your modeling program of choice

• If you're only going to apply simple color to the model, you can stop here.  If you want to do anything with bitmapped textures or other material techniques, you want to UVmap the model.  Read the link and others like it, it's too big a discussion for a single paragraph.  Nearly all modeling applications include some form of UVmapping tools these days.

• Export the geometry to the target application's format (e.g. Poser, export to OBJ format); this is often a lot more complicated than you expect.  Several features in Poser require polygon groups be assigned (e.g. material zones, or body part groups) but Poser's native tools for assigning polygon groups are terrible for this purpose.  It's a lot easier to do these polygon groups in the modeler and then export them with the geometry; getting this to work can be a challenge.

• Import the model into the target application (e.g. Poser) and make sure all your groups etc. are correct

• If the garment is to be treated as dynamic cloth, go to the Cloth Room and set up your simulation (see gobs of tutorial info from Phil Cooke and elsewhere)

• If the garment is to be treated as a conforming figure, go to the Setup Room and rig it (look for tutorials on this, there are many)

A CR2 editor is just amazingly useful for many Poser content creation tasks, there are so many applications that are harder without one.  Some tasks can be done within Poser but are just awkward; many tasks are simply impossible in Poser's native toolkit (removing junk materials, rename shader nodes, mass import or removal of morph targets, etc).

Anyone thinking it takes years to learn how to model, just look at me. I downloaded Wings 3D for the 1st time about 8 months ago, 1 month after starting to mess around in Poser. Yes, it does take some tutorial watching and reading, but I think it was time well spent. Before Wings tho, I proved it was possible to make some pretty detailed props using nothing but Poser primitive shapes and a little texturing. I'm not an expert in any area by any mean, but I'm more of a Jack-of-all-Trades. Just remember, practice, practice, practice (and read, and practice some more.) And last but not least, use the most important resource tool you have at your expense, the forums! If you don't know it, chances are, someone around here does, and even more, you're probably not going to be the only person wanting the answer to your question(s). One side note, I do it the hard way and use Poser to rig my figures and conforming clothes, so I can't tell you what utilites would benefit you, but one day I hope to get something to make my life easier :o)

i like the summary ...very nice :)

PJZ99:

What are some good cr2 editors?

Best one by a huge margin

If you spend money on any single tool for Poser content creation, outside of modeling/texturing tools, spend it on that.

So that will rig clothes, or assist in the rigging?

For making a mesh (obj) into conforming clothing, nothing beats PhilC's obj2cr2. It completely takes the pain out of the setup room because, well, you don't go into the setup room at all. All popular figures are supported and Phil's even provided a way to support custom figures.

An ABsolute must-Have for anyone making conforming clothing... well worth the pittance he charges for it.

That's a tool that allows you to not learn rigging, as long as you are willing to fit your designs to one of the premade rigs.  Not that that's bad, if you're just plain not interested in learning rigging, but it requires that you compromise to fit the tool - if you learn how to rig for yourself, you don't have to compromise.  Any tool that applies a premade rig falls into the same category imo.

I agree with RobynsVeil. PhilC's obj2cr2 is an absolute must-Have.  You still need to  do a few simple dress and t-Shirts manually though, to understand the process (which is not difficult).

When pjz99 doesn't agree, we must examine his background.  And if you do, you will discern that pjz99 favor a minimalistic style with very simple mesh, easy to group. It is his style quite simple, nothing wrong with that. However if you try to rig the more complicated models from Marvelous Designer with overlapping cloth and what not, life is too short to forego obj2cr2.

This little incident illustrates how important it is to know a persons background before evaluating his views.

Well, I've already learned to rig, I just want a little help. Sooner or later I will spring for PhilC's obj2cr2, but until then, I will have to do it the hard way.

Quote - When pjz99 doesn't agree, we must examine his background.  And if you do, you will discern that pjz99 favor a minimalistic style with very simple mesh, easy to group.  However if you try to rig the more complicated models from Marvelous Designer with overlapping cloth and what not, life is too short to forego obj2cr2.

You are greatly in error.  It would be good if you don't advise on topics you don't understand, e.g. my own work.  Stick to what you know.

Thank you for illustrating exatly what I meant. Then perhaps you can manually group and rig the model from Marvelous designer you got from me, and tell us how long time it took. So we can compare your efforts with Phil's obj2cr2 output.

Gentlemen.

if we can zip our trousers up please, we have a person asking about how to make clothes, so lets stick to that shall we?

Quote - Gentlemen.

if we can zip our trousers up please, we have a person asking about how to make clothes, so lets stick to that shall we?

So true... Only help I can offer would be in dynamic clothes really, and some rigging. I'm just barely out of the kiddie pool when it comes to this stuff.

The point that is being missed (probably intentionally) is that if you stick to premade rigs and don't learn how to rig for yourself, you are constrained to work within the premade rigs.  The basic fact is that you will be compromising to the tool and limiting yourself.  Grouping and rigging the aforementioned coat is not the issue, it's grouping and rigging something like this (nudity) that no premade rig is going to be suitable for.

pjz99,

Aren't you ashamed to actually misinform the beginners like the orginator of the thread? Making things appear more difficult than they really are? Actually today with Marvelous Designer and obj2cr2 a beginner can get started and make some models without any modeling skills at all.

The Dark Sorceress WIP - Bodice model could I group and rig manually in 5 minutes - and I'm a beginner too.

Quote - The point that is being missed (probably intentionally) is that if you stick to premade rigs and don't learn how to rig for yourself, you are constrained to work within the premade rigs.  The basic fact is that you will be compromising to the tool and limiting yourself.  Grouping and rigging the aforementioned coat is not the issue, it's grouping and rigging something like this (nudity) that no premade rig is going to be suitable for.

Or, we can just go a build a new figure from scratch, thus removing all the issues that V4 brings with her. For those that agree with that suggestion, I can recommend a site for you: CG Society are looking for exactly your mindset. :biggrin:

For the elitist modeller, true: nothing like struggling with the setup room. Which I've done. And learned bugger-all. Then, I found Obj2Cr2 and was able to move on. If my objective was to learn rigging, then I would have failed my objective. As it was, I succeeded: creating conforming cloth with the least amount of effort.

Relax, Paul... we're here to have fun, not re-invent the wheel. Rigging clothing in the Setup Room is daunting. I spent many a fruitless, pointless hour in there, with no help from the manual or this forum, either. I finally decided: why not make life easier using a tool that works, when the point isn't to learn jcms and ercs but to make an item of conforming clothing?

I don't look for the easiest way to do things in all cases: after all, I've chosen Blender to model in, not Wings or C4D (which I can't afford - few that I know can). That should say something about my willingness to explore concepts. I've also editted Cr2s in NotePad++, but JEEZ, isn't it ever so much easier in Poser File Editor? Hmmmm???

Get my point?

When a beginner gets started he doesn't want in depht information special cases or exemptions from the rules. He just want information over how to get something finished in the shortest amount of time possible.

And the title of the thread implies: beginner, doesn't it? Not someone who wants to learn how to rig figures: someone who wants tools to make clothing.

However, if you are prepared to put together a rigging tutorial, I'll be the first to beat a path to your door to get it, Paul! Seriously! I haven't found one yet that speaks English i can understand (uses human-decipherable language) so that concepts gel.

ah. so, to chose a metaphor, you think instead of showing someone the kitchen, the utensils, the ingredients and how to bring them together, we should show them the ready meals in the freezer and the microwave.

sorry, but I disagree. it's better in the long run to teach them properly, an approach which can be used with many many programs than teach them one method restricted to one program only.

It bothers me that this is turning into "my workflow is the best workflow" rather than "what do I need to learn to be able to model and rig clothes".  I don't know how to say it simpler than I've already said it multiple times:  If you rely on a premade rig and don't learn to rig for yourself, you are compromising yourself to the premade rig.  There's nothing insulting or rude in saying this, and Phil Cooke would agree with me I'm sure (because it's basic truth).  If you're OK being limited in this respect that's fine.

Quote - The Dark Sorceress WIP - Bodice model could I group and rig manually in 5 minutes - and I'm a beginner too.

If you have nothing but smacktalk please just shut up.  You're being rude and spreading bad advice.  Thanks.

I don't know about anyone else, but I think I've benefited from learning the "hard/long' way(even tho if I had the money I woulda bought obj2cr2 a LONG time ago lol), helps me understand a little more about what I am doing. When I 1st started Poser, my initial idea was to make a comic book, with some animated parts. I may still do that someday, but my interest has grown so much further then just loading figures and making "art." Now that I think about it, if I wanted to persue my comic book idea, I could do it even better now that I can make just about anything I would need, including custom costumes, etc...

But what it all boils down to is, you get out of it what you put in. Every bit of effort you take learning a different aspect, be it rigging clothes, making morphs, texturing, modeling, well, anything, you get back in the the long run. It opens up way more possibilities for you.

"teach them properly" means: answer the request. If someone asks me the time, I'm not going to tell them how to build a clock.

The OP asked: "What is the 'best' clothes creating application or plugin for Poser 8 out there?" The OP didn't ask how to learn to rig. Op wants an application or plugin. I answered that request.

If you follow PhilC's posts, if asked a setup room question specific on to how to use it, he answers the question. He doesn't tell the user "oh but, you could do away with all that hard work... etc" and plug his products.

I'm answering the question.