Marvelous designer

[Claire Asamoah]

Hello,

Is there anyone here who is using Marvelous Designer to do meshes outfits for Second Life and who would give me his opinion about this product ?

 

Thank you

[Chelsea Malibu]

I'd be interested in this as well since I have seen some things that look a lot like their templates.  If the animations plug in works as easy as their demo...I'd be all over this since Rigging is where I have the most problems.

[Maeve Balfour]

By the looks of this, I would tend to think it's primarily designed for high-end 3D mesh work (high-polygon meshes), specifically because of the way it generates folds and creases in the clothing mesh when it's draped onto the target figure. The amount of mesh resolution would have to be very high for it to work efficiently.

I would have serious doubts that it would be suited for the low-polygon, realtime environment of SL - at least, not without some heavy duty optimisation of the resultant meshes it creates.

However, it could possibly be useful for creating realistic meshes AS A STARTING POINT for SL optimisation, especially for baking out shadow maps etc (for usage on much lower resolution meshes). Again, there would still be a LOT of work required to get these meshes reduced to a usable, responsible level of detail for SL.

Considering the high price tag attached (if you planned on selling your creations, you would have to choose the Small Business Licence to be legal - US$699 ouch)... and the large amount of work you would most likely still be needing to do to get these meshes usable for SL.... I wouldn't bother with it.
If you were able to get these meshes properly optimised for SL, it would mean that you already possess the relevant mesh making skills to create these kind of clothing meshes from scratch anyway, which would pretty much negate the need for the big spend on this software (ie: Creating relevant low-triangle count meshes suited for SL).

The software definitely LOOKS LOVELY for sure... and definitely would be handy for some high quality results. However, the cost factor and work required I think negates the usefulness of it overall.
"Magical" 3D software like this is rarely a one-step solution - merely another tool in a meshmaker's toolbox.

Not wanting to rain on anyone's parade here... but I think it only fair to point out the potential limitations of this.
Personally, especially for users who don't know how to optimise meshes for SL (or how to create mesh at all), I would NOT recommend this at all. Not for the cost of it combined with the amount of work you would still need to do.

IF, however, this DOES have low-polygon conversion capabilities, I would reconsider my assessment. Just that as far as I can tell on the surface, it doesn't appear to do so).

I hope my input helps. :matte-motes-smile:

EDIT: Going by Gaia's post (below), it sounds as though Marvelous Designer DOES have low poly capabilities, so I stand corrected on that aspect. However, it's still pretty pricey for what it does, considering (again, relating to Gaia's post) it appears you will still have to do the weight-painting for rigging manually in a separate program.
So... nice software, for sure, if top tier results are what you are after... but a high price to pay in order to achieve it, not to mention the work still required.

[Gaia Clary]

Well, MD is a nice tool and in principle it does a good job. It has low poly capabilities although the settings are a bit hidden in the properties section of the tool. Look for

Scene -> 3D Simulation -> Cloth Shape -> Mesh -> pattern -> particle Distance

The nice thing is that you can control the particle distance for each cloth part individually, thus you can do some optimization by cutting your clothes appropriately.

My overall impression is that its not as easy to use as it looks, but you can get somewhere with a bit of practice. However i have not yet found a way to add weights to the clothes in MD itself (and i believe that it is just not possible to do cloth weighting in MD). So i transport the final MD mesh to Blender and there do the rigging and weighting.

Because of the high price you might want to check alternative approaches. Blender's cloth simulation comes to mind for example...

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

It's a cloth simulation program mainly, so if you want to get the draping of fabric over an avatar body, it works well for that, or for that matter, tableclothes, curtains, or other fabric that needs to hang on or from other objects.  As was pointed out previously, other 3D programs also have cloth functions.  Marvelous Designer's pro version (CLO3D) is made for real life clothing design and producing actual cutting patterns.  So the interface is optimized for doing that, and using real life fabric properties.  It's fun to play with, but it is likely overkill for most SL clothing makers, and you still have to export the model and do rigging separately.

You might want to take a look at Blender's Cloth simulation first, since that's a free program.

[Claire Asamoah]

Thank you for your answers Is cloth simulation much better in Blender 2.6 than in Blender 2.49b ?

Also on this picture : 

 

 

On the right it is a work I've done with blender. On the left a work by somebody else.  The frame is completely different and seem to be more suitable for clothing with folds. Is it possible to obtain the same frame with Blender or should I use Marvelous Designer to get that ?