Rigging for Multiple Mesh Bodies

[Fanta UwU]

SO, I figured I ask here since this is more fashion related and figured creators who make dresses and pants, etc, go here more often.

But my question is... How do you take a piece of clothing and rig it without having to redo the ENTIRE thing for a mesh body and then rig it/resize it (either works maybe?) for a different body.

I have Belleza, Maitreya, Slink, and Alice (hoping to get Legacy!).

I have a beautiful dress I made in Marvelous Designer 9 and then transferred and rigged it in Blender, then exported seamlessly into SL. (I need to work and practice on my textures)

I have it rigged for Belleza Freya natural currently but I want it rigged or however it is done for the rest of the bodies too such as Maitreya (especially that one as most use that one it seems and is their first mesh body).

TLDR; How do you rig something to multiple bodies without redoing the entire garment from scratch and hope you get the same results.

https://gyazo.com/3e40cb456ee2b7b46682c862e423b052

Link above is the garment/dress in question. I absolutely love it, the design of it, and am so proud for what I still consider myself a beginner just by experimenting with things. ❤️ 

Edited November 18, 2019 by Muiregwen

[Janet Voxel]

You’re probably better off asking in the Mesh forum. It is a technical mesh question and probably has multiple ways of doing it.

[Orwar]

   Rigging is a separate process from meshing. You create the mesh first, and then you rig it to fit a body - in some cases, bodies may require the mesh itself to be manipulated to fit it properly, which is more work. There's also so many bodies, that it can't be expected that all creators cater to all of them, especially since rigging for just one of those bodies will cater to the majority of the market, with every other body just holding a small percentage of the market. There are occasional polls from various creators and blogs, and whilst it's been a while since I looked at one, Maitreya was by far the most popular body, whilst some of the Belleza and other brand bodies were down in single-digit percentages.

[Janet Voxel]

I think she gets rigging and modeling are separate. I think she’s asking how to rig the same mesh for a different body. Ie the mesh is made, but she wants to resize and rig in the least painful way possible.

The less technical answer is this: import your different bodies into the same file as the original, but on different layers. Duplicate and move your items to your other layers. Resize by using proportional edit and/or lattice deform modifier. Transfer your weights to the copy, weight paint where necessary and you’re good to go. It’s still going to be involved until you get it all down, but that’s the most basic way to do it.

I’m saying to ask in mesh, because the more technical people will break it down better (with pictures!) and it will be easier to find if someone has the same question if someone asks a year from now.

[MaxMare]

As crazy as it sounds you are actually supposed to redo/adapt mesh for each body, there is no way to just use one mesh without adjustments (in most cases, especially for tight fitting garment)...I talked to some fellow creators (who offer multiple sizes) and most start with Belleza Isis for female clothes, meaning you model your mesh with this body as a template then adapt to each size using various tools ..Here is a good video showing the process in Maya, but general idea is the same no matter what software you use

Adapting mesh size to different body

If you are going to use MD mesh as is/ without retopo, then you may as well just keep the pattern & general settings and import one body at the time, simulate and you will have a perfect fit, BUT MD meshes tend to be very messy with dense topology...this may be frown upon by professionals, but realistically speaking, majority does exactly that....

Bare in mind you still have auto alpha script at your disposal (and even custom alphas now with BoM update) so your meshh does not have to be a second skin, you can save your self some work by taking this into consideration when rigging... you should know what alpha cuts look like for each body, you can`t rely on BoM alphas yet, not everyone switched to using that option..

Hope this helps!