Mesh Clothing, Rigging and standard sizes workflow

[RiverLennoxx]

I am not one to ask for help, this one tho, I can't figure out on my own. Have been reading a lot, watching just about every video tutorial that's out there.

So here's my situation: I have been teaching myself how to create, rig and weight paint clothing. So far, so good. It was a fun adventure! Now I have my clothing, all rigged, weighted, calling out to be uploaded to SL. But then there is the standard sizing thing... I can't seem to figure out the best workflow to create these!

Is it best to create them after rigging? Do I just copy the rigged XXS and fit it to an XS and so on? Do I leave it on the armature or do I unbind? What are the things that I need to concider when I start moving verts on a rigged and weight painted object?

Or maybe I need to import a fresh OBJ and resize that to fit all other sizes and then rig those seperately and copy the weights from my original XXS? I have been breaking my brain to figure this out and in what order to do all this!

Now I have watched the video by Siddean Munro on You Tube, she uses shape keys and that looked like fun, but she resizes an object that has vertex groups but no shape keys. When I copy my object and unbind it from it's armature, it still has shape keys. Maybe I am missing something there? Lots of tutorials around about creating SL mesh cloting, and I think I watched them all, the sizing thing still is a bit of a black hole to me. 

I am using Blender 2.73, Avastar addon, standard sizes are in my shape presets. Not a total noob in Blender but go easy on me ;) I would very much appriciate any advice or help, links to any tutorial I missed, pls bring em on! 

 

[Chip Midnight]

If you've rigged for fitted mesh there's really no reason to do diffeent sizes any more. The workflow for fitted mesh is to model to the default shape and rig to the collision bones, then the mesh item will conform to any shape, including the standard sizes.

I can't speak to Blender because I don't use it, and I'm not sure if Blender has equivelant tools, but for what it's worth here's how I generated different sizes for mesh clothing in 3ds Max. I used the standard size avatar meshes to create morph targets so a single rigged avatar in Max could be morphed to any of the standard size shapes. I'd rig my mesh clothing to a medium size and then save the vertex weights so they could be imported again later. I'd then use a skin wrap modifier on the mesh item so it would conform to the avatar as it morphed to a different size. I'd then snapshot the mesh with the avatar morphed to each of the standard sizes, add a skin modifier to those snapshots, and import the vertex weights I'd saved previously.

[RiverLennoxx]

I am not using fitted mesh for now. I will be trying that out next. This object is skin tight so I did not intend to make a fitted version.

I did read about Maya having a tool too to make the sizing thing easier. Didn't know 3ds max had one too.

Thx for responding

 

[Chip Midnight]

You may be able to do something similar with the Mesh Deform modifier in Blender.

[RiverLennoxx]

Never tried that, I will look into that! 

Thanks again!

[Solaris Neiro]

I'm new to making clothing, but what I do is rig the outfit and then resize them using shape keys. I learned the shape key technique from:

 

You can also download the shapes here (if you haven't already) https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Standard-Sizing-Package-Updated-Male-Female/2894727

[FaolanNeverwood]

I rig the XXS completely, Shift+D to duplicate, and 'M' to move to the layer (I use the top row of five layers, one for each of the standard sizing bodies and the five layers directly below them for each size of the garment) I'm using for my larges. (I never unparent them from the armature). Then I pretty much follow the Siddean Munro tutorial to the letter to make the shape key sizes. (She does make shape keys, she adds the first shape key, a 'BASIS,' then adds a second shape key named large and sets the value to ONE before sizing, then drags the slider down to create the next size down, and creates a new shape key from that mix - I reccomend watching the video on fullscreen if you didn't already). I duplicate the shape keyed garment to my Medium, Small, and X-Small layers (I don't bother with the XXSmall shape key since by this point, I already have a fully weighted XXS), and delete the shape keys (the shape key you want to keep should be the last one you delete). Then, once I have my sizes, I upload each one to beta and wear it with my alpha layer and corresponding shape and tweak the weighting on each size as needed. Once everything is weighted correctly, I line what needs lined and export/upload. Hope that helped