This post will be a bit long because I have documented my recent attemped and failure to create a simple clothing item for LaFemme.

As you can see, I'm using the LF-QuickSuit HI.OBJ in Blender, directly out of the Poser Runtime, not the exported version.

Just to make sure, I checked for linked faces (Crlt+L)

I selected the upper half of the mesh and deleted the faces.

Once again I checked if the mesh is properly welded.

I deleted some more faces to have clean edges to the mesh.

Now I saved two OBJ's, on with "Write Normals" one without, just in case...

In Poser 12, I load the default LaFemme, disabled the IK and zeroed the figure...

Time to import the OBJ File or the Clothing Item. I unchecked all options in the import dialog.

Front and back are looking fine, no pokethroughs, no distortions...

The Fitting Room Simulation worked fine, both the Prop and the Figure are set to Zero. For Figure Creation I used the Settings above.
After the Figure was created, I looked for the skinning methode, Poser Unimesh was checked.
The Prop of the Clothing Item was deleted and the new Figure was conformed to LaFemme.
The conforming Figure follows along with LaFemme, the mesh fits perfectly...

...and if I bend the Shin, the mesh breakes and crumbles like so...                           ...and the side ways movement of the big toe splits the mesh...

I have tried everything I could think of to solve this riddle, changed import/export options in Blender/Poser for the OBJ File.
The pictures are done during the tenth try, I changed the program to create the mesh from C4Dr12 to the latest Blender version, I updated my nvidia driver yesterday, the Windows 10 version is two week old, every update is installed.
I studied the older Tutorials from Tony Vilters on YT and the once who are avaible here on Rendo.

I'm completly in the woods right now. Someone here have a clue?

Rather than using La Femme to transfer the rig, use the Hi Res Dev Rig instead. Reason being, it's already set up for stocking feet and doesn't include all the extra toe bones that you won't need in your stockings.

There are morph injections for the Dev Rig in the Pose library, you will find them under La Femme > HR Dev Rig Injections. 

And if you have the La Femme Body Kit, there should also be injection morphs for the dev rigs included with that as well.

And even though you initially copy morphs and joint zones in the setup room, I find that weights transfer better in the Pose Room. So after you set up your stockings and return to the Pose room, you may need to load the Dev Rig in the Pose Room along with your stockings. Select the stockings, choose Figure > Copy Joint Zones From, and select the Dev Rig. Hopefully that might make things better.

@DCArt

Thank for your advice. I will follow it. Can't wait to see it work.

Do you think that the strange behavior of the mesh is related to what figure I'm using for rigging?

blackbonner posted at 11:49 AM Sun, 13 November 2022 - #4449102

@DCArt

Thank for your advice. I will follow it. Can't wait to see it work.

Do you think that the strange behavior of the mesh is related to what figure I'm using for rigging?

Partially.  I do find that weights and morphs seem to transfer better in the Pose room. Not sure why, but there you have it. 8-)

Usually, the first thing I do is make sure that my clothing object (the stockings in your case) already has groups in it, and that it is a completely welded mesh (in other words, not split apart at the body seams). 

I import that unified clothing mesh into Poser. Then, I use the setup room to apply the SKELETON ONLY. I do not check "auto group" (because the unified clothing object already has groups that I don't want to overwrite), and I uncheck "Copy Morphs From."

In your case, you want to copy the skeleton from the La Femme Dev Rig, unless you actually want to have individual toe bones in your stockings. The Dev Rog only has the "lToe" and "rToe" as the ending groups, it doesn't have all the other individual toe bones in it. 

Once you apply the skeleton to your stockings, return to the Pose Room.  Load the Dev Rig into the scene, and inject the morphs I mentioned previously.

NOW, do Figure > Copy Joint Zones From, and Figure > Copy Morphs From in the Pose Room. Copy the joints and morphs from the Dev Rig to your stockings.

Sometimes, yes, it does depend on what you are copying your skeleton from. For example, you wouldn't want to use the Dress dev rig on pants, and you wouldn't wan to use the "pants" dev rig on a dress or anything "dress like", like a long coat. The reason for that is, your dress-like clothing will try to snap to the left and right thighs of a pants-like skeleton and leave a real mess in the middle.

Be patient with learning this, and ask questions whenever you can. A lot of us have been there done that, but keep at it. It's worth learning!

Also to add: When you save your rigged figure to the library, it's going to save an OBJ file that IS broken apart at the seams. What you will have to do is open the CR2 in the text editor and change TWO references for the OBJ to your good, welded and grouped one. When it comes time for you to do that, ask again 8-)

The thing with the broken obj file is a big part of the Tony Vilters videos, he explains it in great detail. I have followed his tutorials to the point, that is the reason why I was so disappointed and clueless as my mesh ended up like this. But you are right, the one thing you learn if you work in 3D is patients. Sounds a bit strange I know, but I use Poser since version 5 and I never had the need to create a clothing item myself. Let's say I thought it can't be so difficult 😂.

 

blackbonner posted at 1:15 PM Sun, 13 November 2022 - #4449107

The thing with the broken obj file is a big part of the Tony Vilters videos, he explains it in great detail. I have followed his tutorials to the point, that is the reason why I was so disappointed and clueless as my mesh ended up like this. But you are right, the one thing you learn if you work in 3D is patients. Sounds a bit strange I know, but I use Poser since version 5 and I never had the need to create a clothing item myself. Let's say I thought it can't be so difficult 😂.

 

Two things I will add to DC's excellent advice. I always assume when transferring weight maps that they or their bulge maps may need to be tweaked afterwards. At the very least I think they can always use some smoothing since no 2 objs have exactly the same mesh. The second is the JCMs, again for the same reason the JCMs may need to be tweaked using the morph tool. Open the morph tool and select the JCM that is affected by you movement and use the brush tools to remove any poke thru you may encounter when you close the morph tool it adds the tweak to the existing morph so when you re-save the project the modified JCM is included and will operate as you modified it.

 

If you're not creating an asset to sell, you can use the grouping tool to select the leg parts for the stockings and assign them a new material called Hose. The thighs would be broken into two materials, one grouped for Hose and the other your skin mat. (Or even three mats to include a stocking top.) Then in the Material Room, use your skin mat on Hose. Next, add a layer to the Hose mat and add your hosiery material there. The hose layer can even be partially transparent or with a transparency map to show the skin mat underneath.

Thanks to all of you. I will use the next days to do some testing and learning. I have never worked with weight maps, so it may take a moment to wrap my brain around this topic. I assume that by smoothing weight maps you mean using the joint editor for painting the weight map, right? I have read about it, but it looked terrible complicated, so I avoided it. My fault, I guess.

Hi everybody, as promised, I did some testing and I'm glad to show you folks my results so far.

Here it is, my first conforming clothing item ever.
It really fits LaFemme, even in poses with higher levels of bending to the legs.

Thank you very much, this was only possible with your useful advise.
I'm curious, @VedaDalsette mentioned something about selling stuff, do I have the rights to make it a freebie, or even sell it?

blackbonner posted at 10:16 AM Mon, 14 November 2022 - #4449172

Hi everybody, as promised, I did some testing and I'm glad to show you folks my results so far.

Here it is, my first conforming clothing item ever.
It really fits LaFemme, even in poses with higher levels of bending to the legs.

Thank you very much, this was only possible with your useful advise.
I'm curious, @VedaDalsette mentioned something about selling stuff, do I have the rights to make it a freebie, or even sell it?

Do i understand this text passage you quoted right, I can share my Item as a freebie, but I can't sell it?
That also means, if I want to sell stuff, I have to create the whole geometry by myself, right?

I mean, that's fine with me, sharing is a good thing after all.

Generally if something can't be used as a merchant resource that means it can't be redistributed as a freebie also. To compound this, if something is permitted as a merchant resource that means the derivatives are intended for sale items only. Not freebies.

It's pretty clear that the objs involved with LF and LF pro may not be redistributed under any conditions. However if you were to retopo said objs, the original Geometries no longer exist for redistribution or extraction from a product of those Geometries. If you are unfamiliar retopology, whether manually or via an automation, you would want to find a unrestricted freebie quicksuit and utilize that as a springboard for content creation. I haven't seen any. If the target is a commercial product there are Merchant Resource meshes, notably a Body Suit by Afrodite Ohki available in the marketplace, that may be utilized as a MR for commercial products... not freebies. Unfortunately the mesh isn't contiguous with the feet.

I use Zbrush, or Mudbox for autoretoplogy. For manual retopolgy I use Retopoflow in Blender, a paid add on. There is a free auto retopo solution called instant meshes that actually isn't bad. It has edgeflow guide drawing features. Generally you want to retopo a high resolution mesh down to a lower poly count that's workable. You'll get better results. Generally.

So what does all of this mean? It means that unless you retopo your stockings, and redo the process of grouping, uv mapping, etc etc, they are for personal use only.

Example of retopo process using Blender and Mudbox I posted a few months ago...

LF Retopo

...or you could manually model something and shrinkwrap it.

Thanks @primorge.

That's a bit disappointing and it explains why LaFemme lacks content. This copyright police makes it extra difficult to create content, at least in my opinion. But I think I will give it a shot, because despite this problem that was the reason I made this post, it's fun to build an item and see it work. 

I'll just mention that there's the Bodysuit for La Femme and L'Homme that is a merchant resource. It doesn't go down the feet but still, mesh AND rigging can be used to create content from.

By the way, V4's copyright policy was MUCH more strict than LF's, and still there was no shortage of content for her.

LF has less content because she didn't have all that time to shine AND Poser is not as full of creators as it was back then.

@Afrodite-Ohki first of all, thanks for the recommendation of the bodysuit, I will have a look at it.
As I mentioned before, this is my first successful attempt to create an clothing item.
I'm a constant member of Rendo since 2003, gosh, time fly's. Since that time I use Poser, back in those days it was Poser 5 I belief.
You are right about Victoria 4 and it's rich content eco system. This lead to the dilemma me and I think many other Poser user face today. We did not need to build new stuff, we just purchased it from Rendo, Daz or other stores.
Today I have to ask for advice if I want to create new items for my library, because I never had the need to learn the skills to do rigging, weight mapping etc. There are technical issues and obviously Copy right law issues I have to observe.
Last year I had a very bad time in my personal live, some health issues and a fucked up job situation.
I needed a brake from my daily routine, so I left many things behind, including Poser, my favorite hobby.
Nowadays I'm better and I thought about making a new start with Poser.
I know about the situation Poser has gone through over the last 10 years and I was tired to hear that it is dead software and that there is nobody left who bothers creating content for it.
I have always created scenes and all sorts of props so I know my way around in C4D and Blender. Modeling was always fun.
Given the situation that La Femme lacks content and content creators, I thought it would be a good idea to start becoming a creator and make some content.
So, brace yourselves, I will come back with more stupid questions about all the fun stuff.
I hope you don't mind.

2001 here :D damn, I was 16 back then. Geez. Picked up Poser from version 1, came free with a magazine, with a demo of Poser 3. Then it was all downhill from there for me LOL!

I'm glad to know you're doing better, I hope your life and health keep improving!

Can't wait to see what you'll create. I'm having a bit of hope that we'll see more action around here when next Poser version comes around. Hopefully.

And bring those questions on, we'll help when we can!

I really hope the best for the next installment of Poser. My personal goal is to have a complete outfit for LaFemme ready in January. Any suggestions about something that hasn't hit the store and it's missing? As far as I can tell, there is a lot of casual clothing and shoes. I think her wardrobe could use something special, unique. We'll see... 

blackbonner posted at 9:42 AM Wed, 16 November 2022 - #4449346

 Any suggestions about something that hasn't hit the store and it's missing? As far as I can tell, there is a lot of casual clothing and shoes. I think her wardrobe could use something special, unique. We'll see... 

Yes she's really lacking in the fantasy and sci fi sides. Or historical things. A lot of things really.

My suggestion honestly would be for you to try making something you're comfortable making, specially if it's your first attempts!

Thanks for the advice and suggestions. I was thinking in that direction too and I already have something in mind.