Beginner Mesh Clothes Creation

[EmberSH]

Firstly I wanna say I'm really sorry, I'm sure this has been covered a thousand times in a hundred different ways but I'm not hitting the right search keywords to find what I'm looking for. 

I want to try to get into making mesh clothing but I don't know how to make it adjust with body sliders, or anything about the 'weight' stuff people keep talking about when I find related guides. 

I have Maya LT* and I know how to do basic modelling on it but only static mesh stuff. (And I would be texturing on Substance Painter ideally if that's relevent) 

Can anyone direct me to some resources (or explain if they can) where to even *start* with this? I know it has something to do with DevKits (?)
Most tutorials I can find are either 'First I'm going to show you how to make a box' or 'Now as you know [words I have literally never heard]' and I'm struggling to find anything between the two.

* I know a lot of people would recommend blender but I'm learning Maya as part of a course and so I'd rather master one program than half-know two if possible

[colleen Criss]

 

[EmberSH]

Thanks but I'm really looking for Maya. 

I opened up the Kemono dev kit and I have no idea what I'm looking at, it's nothing like the tutorial I saw (which was I think Maitreya) 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

32 minutes ago, EmberSH said:

Thanks but I'm really looking for Maya. 

I opened up the Kemono dev kit and I have no idea what I'm looking at, it's nothing like the tutorial I saw (which was I think Maitreya) 

Go to the Display menu and select Animation > Joint Size... then input a lower value (about 1/10 of your current setting).

[EmberSH]

Thank you SO much. This looks much more like something that might function now XD

[StarlanderGoods]

On 2/15/2022 at 5:01 PM, EmberSH said:

Firstly I wanna say I'm really sorry, I'm sure this has been covered a thousand times in a hundred different ways but I'm not hitting the right search keywords to find what I'm looking for. 

I want to try to get into making mesh clothing but I don't know how to make it adjust with body sliders, or anything about the 'weight' stuff people keep talking about when I find related guides. 

I have Maya LT* and I know how to do basic modelling on it but only static mesh stuff. (And I would be texturing on Substance Painter ideally if that's relevent) 

Can anyone direct me to some resources (or explain if they can) where to even *start* with this? I know it has something to do with DevKits (?)
Most tutorials I can find are either 'First I'm going to show you how to make a box' or 'Now as you know [words I have literally never heard]' and I'm struggling to find anything between the two.

* I know a lot of people would recommend blender but I'm learning Maya as part of a course and so I'd rather master one program than half-know two if possible

Im a blender type of person, but a lot of the concepts are shared. To avoid the "now make a box", tell us where you are at, and what is your short term goal, and we can point you in the right direction.

[Salt Peppermint]

I made rigging tutorials for Maya. they are a bit dated but the concept is still the same. you do need the body kits to make your clothes fit them

 

I def need to make new ones. also please note, the dress in this one particularly is too high poly to be uploaded for the game. however the process of rigging / skinning remains

[Salt Peppermint]

On 2/17/2022 at 12:53 AM, EmberSH said:

Thanks but I'm really looking for Maya. 

I opened up the Kemono dev kit and I have no idea what I'm looking at, it's nothing like the tutorial I saw (which was I think Maitreya) 

this is just the joint size that needs to be set. it's differnt from kit to kit. go to diplay - animation - joint size and just lower the number in there. it's only a display setting and will not effect skinning at all. usually most kits work best with approx 0.02 - 0.5 joint size

[EmberSH]

Oh my gods that's actually the video I've been trying to work from 😂 You're my hero I'm having such a hard time finding anything for Maya you've been a lifesaver. 

Actually while I've got you I have been having an issue making the texture paint thing you use actually run on LT 2020 - Any off the top of your head ideas? I accidentally flooded it all white and haven't been able to undo. I was SO close to messaging you on YT to ask for help but the video is so old now that I figured it would be rude

[EmberSH]

4 hours ago, Salt Peppermint said:

I made rigging tutorials for Maya. they are a bit dated but the concept is still the same. you do need the body kits to make your clothes fit them

 

I def need to make new ones. also please note, the dress in this one particularly is too high poly to be uploaded for the game. however the process of rigging / skinning remains

Oh my gods that's actually the video I've been trying to work from 😂 You're my hero I'm having such a hard time finding anything for Maya you've been a lifesaver. 

Actually while I've got you I have been having an issue making the texture paint thing you use actually run on LT 2020 - Any off the top of your head ideas? I accidentally flooded it all white and haven't been able to undo. I was SO close to messaging you on YT to ask for help but the video is so old now that I figured it would be rude

[EmberSH]

On 2/17/2022 at 6:54 PM, StarlanderGoods said:

Im a blender type of person, but a lot of the concepts are shared. To avoid the "now make a box", tell us where you are at, and what is your short term goal, and we can point you in the right direction.

Right, sorry. 

So I'm pretty confident in the modeling itself, it's the things like bones and weighting that I don't get. Like if I had to make a dress for a mannequin I'd be fine the issue if making it actually work with a mesh body in SL. So I think it would probably all come under rigging stuff? I'm not sure if that's exactly right but I'm looking to make the jump from solid models to stuff that actually behaves like clothing and won't clip the moment people move. 
As an aside to that I probably need to understand how Devkits etc work, I'm sorta plodding through based on what I can work out from tutorials that are already past the stage of 'This is what you're doing' because the only one I've found so far that goes through the startup thing was on blender and was talking about multiple programmes I'd never heard of. 

I hope that helps ❤️

[StarlanderGoods]

@EmberSH Okay, yes, it´s all rigging stuff, lets start with Devkits, what do they have and what are they good for.

A devkit will usually have a Mesh Body, and a Skeleton. some dev kits will bring other stuff, like multiple bodies or examples of clothing, nevermind all that, just focus on one Body, one Skeleton.

The Skeleton. It is what SL uses to animate the avatar, when you play an animation in SL, it animates the SKELETON,  the skeleton has "Bones", those are points to where you can attach things, we will go into more detail later.  The information about weight, in a devkit is NOT in the skeleton.

The Body. The body in a devkit it has all the information specific to that model. The clothes you make have to fit that Body.  Even more important, the BODY has the weight information, just keep that in the back of your head for later, Body=weight information.

----------------------------------  Intermission----------------------------

Okay, Weights, there is a lot of technical stuff about it, I will try to keep it simple.   Weight is a VALUE that tells a particular polygon (the vertices actually) to move as if it were part of a specific bone.  If you make a bracelet, and you apply a Weight of 1 (max value) to all of the bracelet, while you have the Right Arm bone selected, the bracelet will move with the arm.
When you rig a mesh, EVERY vertice of the mesh, all of it, has to have a weight value.

Limits on Weights: There are two big factors to consider. No polygon from your mesh can be affected by more than 4 bones at a time. And the max weight of any polygon from your mesh is always 1.   In the case of joints, where a polygon might need to be rigged to two different bones, like Upper arm and Lower arm, so the elbow area will have a part that is mixed "Upper arm with a value of 0.5" and "Lower arm with a value of 0.5".   Those polygons will be equally affected by movement from the upper and lower arm.

-

Okay, thats not an arm, but it´s good for an example. You can see in colour what the weight is, Red means the weight value is 1 (the max) so it wont be affected by other bones, and it becomes weaker as it turns into light blue.

On the left, you can see the mPelvis bone selected, and on the right the L_UPPER_LEG bone selected, notice how they blend.

 

------------------------ A devkits Purpose --------------------

The idea of a Dev Kit, is to transfer the weight information from the Body provided by the Dev Kit, onto the mesh that you create. This is an automated process, but you will want to do some manual cleanup afterwards.

Up is a picture of the DevKit, with the same bones I showed before selected, mPelvis and L_UPPER_LEG, just for comparing it to the pictures of the rigged mesh.

 

I could go on forever, but if you have any specific questions or doubts, Id be glad to try to answer them.

[EmberSH]

@StarlanderGoodsThat all seems to make sense. It'll be a while until I can test it because the mesh dress I was working on WAS playing ok with the rigging stuff and has at some point decided to stop moving with the body while I was cleaning up the shape and won't let me bind it again so it'll have to wait until I can make a new mesh I guess but that all seems really clearly explained so I imagine once I get things working again it will be super helpful. 

Thank you so much

 

[Salt Peppermint]

3 hours ago, EmberSH said:

Oh my gods that's actually the video I've been trying to work from 😂 You're my hero I'm having such a hard time finding anything for Maya you've been a lifesaver. 

Actually while I've got you I have been having an issue making the texture paint thing you use actually run on LT 2020 - Any off the top of your head ideas? I accidentally flooded it all white and haven't been able to undo. I was SO close to messaging you on YT to ask for help but the video is so old now that I figured it would be rude

I would need to know a bit more specific what your issue is there. is it only to get the colour ramp? that can be toggled in the tool settings when you weigpaint https://gyazo.com/7694abc6ad4cab7ac4f01a2d1d0fabcd you need to make sure "gradient" is checked or you will see the weights in black&white.

there are differences in functionality of Maya LT and the regular of course but I would have to look those up in detail, so it could be that as well. From what I remember (but this was years ago) when I looked into the specifics , the LT version did not have everything I needed even for SL, so I went with the regular. And in case you don't know , since a bit now Maya offers an indie version for a yearly price about roughly 250 USD ( depending on the country ) , which is the complete full version

[EmberSH]

@Salt PeppermintSeems like the issue was Maya because a load of stuff stopped working that was fine when I reloaded an earlier save version so either I did something stupid or Maya did and honestly that's always a 50/50 toss up XD 
I was using black and white because I was scared to mess with options too much so being able to use the colours now will still be helpful though ❤️

LT seems to be the indie version - That's about how much I'm paying in GBP and I don't see another option in my searches at the moment. 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

1 hour ago, EmberSH said:

LT seems to be the indie version - That's about how much I'm paying in GBP and I don't see another option in my searches at the moment. 

The indie version is essentially the full version of Maya, the only difference being what the license allows you to use the software for, whereas Maya LT is a cut-down version and mostly only contains features specifically aimed at game developers, etc. rather than the entire range of tools available in the full version.

Autodesk don't make it easy to find the indie version of Maya on their main site (most likely because they'd rather most of their customers keep paying two grand a year instead of a few hundred) but you can get it here https://makeanything.autodesk.com/maya-indie-united-kingdom.  Just scroll down until you find the "I'M ELIGIBLE!" button, then click it.  The text on the button will change to "GET MAYA INDIE TODAY" and if you click it again it will open the standard Autodesk checkout page in a new tab and automatically add the Maya Indie license to your cart.

[Salt Peppermint]

Fluffy explained it perfectly!