Doble side mesh clothings no longer possible with new avastar and new blender ?

[Trinity Yazimoto]

Hello.

 

first im not an expert at all with mesh clothings. I"ve started learning blender in december, and after long weeks of work, i decided to give a try to Marvelous Designer. I know its not the best way, but for now it allow me to practice a bit. I have Maya 3d on my comp and will start to use and learn as soon as possible.

Till yesterday, i was using blender 2.69 and avastar 1.1.039. 

So far so good, i could rig, do fitted mesh without problems, and ALSO use the solidify modifier in order to make my mesh doble side. Because, i know some ppl will think its quibling, but i hate when a mesh is only one face, when you sit wearing a skirt and you see thru the dress from the inside, and im also an artist, so i do a lot of photography and depending the angle of my cam, this can ruin my photo.

So yesterday i upgraded my Blender to the 2.70 and my avastar to the 1.1.045.

i must say the new avastar is even more amazing than the first one. But i ended without being able to use the solidify modifier.

If i use it before rigging, then after the rigging i can't save as dae bec it says there are vertices still not rigged. It tells me to use the "copy weight" avastar tool, but i havent found it.

if i use the modifier after, It says its not possible. if i use it and dont apply it, the SL uploader doesn"t want my mesh at the first second.

 

i've tried to edit/mesh/normals/flip normals and i ended with a dress looking transparent from the inside.

 

I've tried to drastically lower the poly account with the decimate modifier (first ratio 0.4 and a second time with a ratio at 0.70) so i ended with less than half of the polys. Still it didnt worked.

So is there still a way to do my mesh clothing doble face or do i have to forget this one time for all :smileysad: ?

 

Thank you in advance for you help 

[Astrid Kaufmat]

hi Trinity.

That iussue has been discussed before.Double sided meshes are possible in blender as in any other 3d program.

The logic behind making a 1 face mesh double sided is to properly use the extrude features.

Extrude of course used before rigging it.

For istance if from blender you  create a plane  or a single polygon it would be seen from only 1 side and that's natural and pacific that happens this way, it depends fdrom the directions of normals.

If you select that face or faces on the plane  and extrude all together your mesh will become a like a box where all the normals must be allinied outside of it, then you can see it from both side.

similar for an open jacket imagine that it's like a curvy plane, selecting all the faces all together and extruding you'd get it double faced.

Same for a skirt.

Now the logic is that when you do this you will end also with doubling polygons and vertices. unless it's really neded you can still be cheap, avoiding double sided meshes  ( a part bleeeeeep who would lookunder skirts?)

 of course double sided mesh double vertices to rig, it doesn't mean that the rig process would be easier...

Also secondlife skirt ( the one we used for template clothes) is a mesh if you download and study it, but one sided mesh.. this iussue would have been the same that you had found there too.

maybe here it's more affecting your view cause you use alpha layers to adapt your mesh skirt to SL avatar , but this would work so far better if there were sliders avoiding alpha masks.

One example? for skirts you can use a skirt with a cap built at the bottom of it. of course you wouldn't find it natural, but many  3d models from games that I've analized were done this way, others just like the SL skirt without that cap under it either.You can push that cap a bit  up in the skirt so it would look double sided when they sit.

if you want to go for double sided then, try selecting all the face and extrude, but before that I'd first use retopology and polygon reduction on that marvelous deisgn cloth(not a must but you get easier life later).

maya like zbrush is a very nice ally for poly reduction and retopology

A good topology willmake your rigging and texturing job so far easier, so far less white hair growing, less head scratching.

Marvelous design is nice but it is a polygon hog maker itself, no matter what LOD you'll use some want to try to justify the abuse of polygons in this way. if I am in a club with you and you're at 15 meters from me you would bust my screen no matters what,first or later people would start yelling at those meshes with too many polygons.So be careful doubling the weight of a mesh coming from marvelous designer.

look at those pictures in this guide to Zbrush zremesher http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/lesson/topology/

that batman with 14K polygons is acceptable for a whole avatar complete character .Some clothes from marvelous designer would surpass that number of polygons so far .

Not all the things that are quick and easy are necessarily good. there are more ways to get the same result but with lower polygons. maya has a robust cloth maker system, blender too the logic behind is like in marvelous designer but you'd get better topology still editale .

What marvelous deisgner does is this

using this sewing system that all the other softwares from blender to maya use, with marvelous designer it's just more automatic, you do it skipping the logic process. It then becomes like that automatic UV mapping that is not always a good choice.

Zbrush could allow you to take an avatar and paint over it the mask (like a shadow ) of your clothes then get it out like an extrusion just in one click, after that you can bring it in your 3d program and use splines to add frilly parts, if you need to make a skirt with frilly edges.With Zsphere you could make roughly your  clothes or character shape then use the mask methods to poof extrude the clothes out from surface, still fastest, but under control and with logic something that would be low poly low lag.

Mesh is like scripting it gives people big power, but big power comes with responsabilities. if a script works it doesn't mean that it couldn't be lame for people around you, same for meshes.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

You can still use solidify. You likely have verts with no weights because of how you transfered or copied weights. Also, I would make sure to apply all modifiers, except the armature modifier. You can also check your normals by using the Backface culling option. You can also use Avastar to find your unweighted verts.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

Well first, thank you Astrid and Medhue for your quick answers. 

Im going to try what you say Medhue and i have a friend who gave me a 2 hours lesson this morning by screen sharing, so i m going to try to fix.

@ Astrid. my dress looks like this : 

So im not going to extrude each face.

As i said ive already reduced the polygons ammount and it s now less than half it i was in MD. Close to 1/3 .

i think i can still reduce the underdress amount of polys.

i dont need a lesson about responsabilities of creators, i'm myself really well aware of that, and i'm really careful when i create, specialy for my textures and everytime its possible (most of the time, btw) i lower my textures to 512 size and even less when its about to texture a tiny object.

Who will see the transparency from the inside of my dress ? not only the ppl who want to look my panties (and who will fail since i wear an alpha layer) but me when i do photographs, or every other photographers. 

I'm also a graphic artist and i can tell you there is nothing more ugly when you do a pic that things like that. Of course, i could fix in pshop, but for the ppl wanting absolutely to do no post-processed pic this will be impossible.

Also, according to the shape of the dress you see it just when you look at your avi normally. I have a dress, where the bottom is a bit upper in the center of both side (between my knees). so when i look at my avi from face, i see a missing part of the back from the space between my knees.

I know, maybe im a bit too much perfectionist, but it ruin my look.

About MD, as i said in my OP im really well aware about the pb of the polys ammount. But no everyone can learn fast and has time enough to learn blender full time. I have a full time job,  i have a sl shop, i m artist and i have my own gallery, im also part of several events. So even if im single without kids in rl, i end giving my whole time when im not at work or sleeping for working for SL, whatever it is for art or for fashion. I try really hard to add to my schedule hours for learning, but mind you, the process is longer, since i cant learn blender full time for let's say, several weeks in a row. On top add to this that tutorials in french (my native language) are rare, so it slow even more the learning process.

Does this mean that non native english speaker with full time job shouldnt do meshes ? Maybe... but i'm trying nevertheless.

I said in my OP, i know that MD has big amount of polygons. I said, i lower it after i import my object in blender. I said i use MD only for now in order to practice and i havent said but i do now, i have already maya 3d on my comp. I havent tried it yet. Even if i learn fast and have a great ability to learn, my brain has some limits like for everyone else. Im not going to learn software after software without knowing a bit more about the firsts im still learning.

Now if you know someone nice enough to teach me on a long run, im ok. 

Well for now im going to try the several possibilities ive been teached this morning and Medhue's ones aswell and will let you know if that fixed. 

Thank you again both for your help :smileyhappy:

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

[...] i have already maya 3d on my comp. I havent tried it yet. Even if i learn fast and have a great ability to learn, my brain has some limits like for everyone else. Im not going to learn software after software without knowing a bit more about the firsts im still learning.

---

So you buy $3500 worth of software, don't care to open it and don't care to learn it?

[Trinity Yazimoto]

i havent said that.

i said im not going to open it right now bec i dont feel to start learning another software while im still in process for learning 2 other ones.

Of course, im going to open it as soon as possible. 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Ok, you just sound a bit like my father, who always bought cars without test driving

[Trinity Yazimoto]

yeah im often told im bizarre lol, but anyway the topic is not about my own psychology but about my dress.

so, ive reimported it in blender but as unlinked. so it came in 4 parts : the underdress, the top ruffled part, the front ruffle part and the back ruffled part.

ive lowered the poly amount and solidified each part separately. my dress was 93 k polys from MD, it is now 27341 WITH the modify included.

So far, thanks to Medhue i found a way to find the unweigthed and zero weigth vertice, so im correcting this manually. 

i still havent uploaded it in the beta, so idk what it will give. I will see... 

but indeed, i start considering i should give up everythign about blender and md and start again from zero with maya, what should be the more sensible decision .... I will see...

[Gaia Clary]

Hi.

Avastar does no longer let you export meshes when they have issues like unweighted verts for example. I think this is the better way, because now you are forced to take care of that before it starts costing money :matte-motes-sunglasses-1:

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

But i ended without being able to use the solidify modifier.

If i use it before rigging, then after the rigging i can't save as dae bec it says there are vertices still not rigged. It tells me to use the "copy weight" avastar tool, but i havent found it

(see #1).

if i use the modifier after, It says its not possible.

(see #2).

if i use it and dont apply it, the SL uploader doesn"t want my mesh at the first second.

(see #3)

---

• #1: I have changed the message in the info box to:
  
  You may Consider using the available Weight copy tools
  from the Weight Paint Tools shelf to fix this.
  
  That should make it more clear where you can find the tools.
• #2: Can you tell what exactly you get from the tool in this case ?
• #3: Does the SL Importer indicate any problem ?

 

[Trinity Yazimoto]

oh thank you Gaia for your answer. i sent an email to you earlier this morning and smth in your online support too.

so for # 2 it says i have unweighted vertices on my dress (tons) and to use the avastar's copy weight. of course said like this i didnt suspected it was the weight tools and was looking for something in the avastar tab.

For #3 right after it let me choose the file in my harddrive, sl said there is an error with my file and cant import. i cant remember, i have deleted this file, but if i find time, ill retry it to tell you.

 

Edit, for #3 it says "there is a problem with the analysis of the file. check in the log." Well, in french... and since i dont know where i can check the log... 

[RipleyVonD]

There's notihing wrong in being too much of a perfectionist. Being an artist myself I love that personality trait.

I would make two copies of your dress.

Rig one dress while its single sided, then copy the weights of your single sided dress over to your double sided dress. 

Vertices on both sides should be weighted, tweak and double check weighting.

I've seen Gaia has a video showing how to copy weights from one mesh to another.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

oh, but mind you you have almost the solution !

right at the moment i was about to give up after 48 hours almost non stop working on this pb.

I had to fig out how to copy the weight since i had no idea about how to do it and all what i can find about it on the web is in english and voice (i can understand if its writen but when its talked i barely understand).

So after a bit of searches i ve finally figured out how to do. 

it works

Except i miss now a flounce lol... Well, i see it in blender, but i dont see it in sl.. The dress still looks cute. So if i cant figure out what happened to this flounce maybe ill do with your solution.

Thank you so much. Not only you gave a solution that works, but also you gave back to me all my enthusiasm. )

[Trinity Yazimoto]

and for not letting the mistery of the missing flounce unsolved, lol, i found out that it was bec one material missing.

when i exported my dress from MD i added a color to each part for being able to select it more easily in blender and adjust everything. then i made it all white, but kept the materials. when i wanted to save as Dae, Avastar asked me to not have more than 8 materials, so i deleted some randomly and since it s  just for a test i didnt care.

Now how can a material deleted, make a missing flounce, im not the person with the answer lol...but that's it.. after deleting all the materials and test in the beta grid, my dress has the normal amount of flounces.

well still work to do on it but im really happy it worked

[RipleyVonD]

I'm happy I was able to help.:smileyhappy:

But I can't seem to understand what the word flounce means. Oh right, thanks image search. lol

It is best to learn asking for help, there are alot of tricks and solutions that make 3d modeling easier.

[PochaHotNess]

Sorry for being lazy and not reading all replies... but just wanted to mention that you can not have shape keys if you want to solidify. 

[Medhue Simoni]

I haven't read this whole thread, but I get the sense that you want to use solidify to create a back side of your clothing. This will add a bunch of polygons you don't need, and will also cause you more problems with weighting and parts of your mesh folding over each other. Here is a trick that I learned to make it look like your clothing has a back side.

 

Nowadays, I tend to extrude twice, creating an edge around the end of the clothing. Here in the video I only added 1 extrude, which is not as nice as using 2 extrudes.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

yes Medhue, i have your video bookmarked from my Google + in my other comp (and miracle, lol, i may say i almost understand everything you say :smileywink:), and ive thought about it at first when i saw the solidify wasnt working.

I haven't tried bec my dress is a lot more complex than a tee shirt and i dont know if ill be able to make that on the frills.

But i can give it a try, why not ? im not counting anymore the hour of works im giving on that dress lol....

But when u say you extrude twice. do you mean you add one horizontaly and one vertically ? like if you had more thickness ?

 

[Medhue Simoni]

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

But when u say you extrude twice. do you mean you add one horizontaly and one vertically ? like if you had more thickness ?

 

---

Yes, I'm adding what looks like as thickness to the clothing, but not like you are thinking. In the video, I make 1 extrude and pull that into the body or clothing. When I say 2, I mean I extrude once to kind of give the clothing thickness, then I extrude again exactly as I do in the video. So, the first extrude is a very slight distance from the original edge, and the 2nd is like I did in the video, pulled into the body.

I feel for you with those frills, as it is not going to be easy if you use solidify, at least to rig. I recently had to do a dress with bows on them. They only looked good if we used solidify, but both bows were on major joints, with multiple bones pulling on them. Eventually, I gave up and detached the bows from the dress. I just attached the bows afterwards in SL. It worked out better that way anyways, because all that bending of the joints made the bows look weird too.

[Sassy Romano]

When there are more than 8 materials, some of it won't be imported, that's why it uploaded fully when you deleted materials.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

well, indeed, even after transfering weights, the solidified dress is not correctly weight painted.

I'll prob keep that dress for when ill be more experiented with weight painting. idk. 

It's probably a bit insane from me to start with so complex dress. But well, that's a good training anyway. 

So for now, im probably going to start a new mesh simplier and will keep this one for later.

Thank you really much for your help Medhue

[Trinity Yazimoto]

yes, ive noticed that.

ive deleted by myself some of the materials before importing, but didnt realized that then the one deleted will be missing lol.

now i know