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PC+ Cloth Frenzy

This particular page is was dedicated to clothing Genesis 1 figures with only PC+ items (but have since been using those techniques to outfit All of the Genesis lineup of figures! - editor).

The reason for this is to demonstrate how different an experience can be shopping this way, than it would be shopping for clothing for any other figure. I'm fairly certain that the Genesis Auto-Fit works fairly well out-of-the-box for many things. I wouldn't know because I was so hyped about using Genesis in the Carrara 8.5 Pro beta, that I bought all of the various generations icon shapes very early on. See Genesis 1 Rocks for more information and links on that stuff.

So check this out. You've heard me say that Genesis 1 is the only unisex figure of the bunch, right? Well that might have turned into a bit of a nightmare for artists trying to make female clothing - or clothing at all, for that matter. But for us, the consumers we have a unique advantage to be able to use pretty much any conforming clothing from generation 3 (M3, V3, etc.,), Generation 4 and Genesis 1 (generation 5) - and we can use male or female clothes (for the most part) for either male or female characters. That's Huge! Let's look at a quick example of what I mean:

Freak Primitive is made for the first generation of The Freak, which is part of the Generation 3 family. So my Generation 3 Iconic Shapes works for products made to support him - fitting wise.

I actually bought this for free during one of Daz 3D's immense PC+ Sales, and I got it for Dartanbeck and some tribal people I'll be using. I actually have a few clothing items along this line.

As a test, I tried it on Rosie 5 and it fit very well. I tried it on some of my monsters made using Genesis 1. Worked great!

Did I mention that I got this for Free?

I'm a PC+ member (probably for the rest of my life!) and looking at this right now, it's $1.99 USD for PC+ members. That's almost free! A lot of great PC+ items are like that. Even when they rise to $2.99, 4.99, 6.99, etc., they are all very well worth the price you'd pay if you weren't a PC+ member - so getting it this cheap almost feels wrong - at first. Then we get spoiled! LOL

I should also mention that, another cool thing about the Iconic Shapes, we can actually dial those shapes up in Genesis - so we could make this character using Genesis if we wanted - and why not? The Freak will never not be awesome!

Beyond the ability to Auto-Fit Generation 3 and 4 clothing, and Generation 5 just works (because genesis is generation 5) there's another great benefit to PC+ Sale Item clothing - using methods discussed in Modeling for Genesis and Content Creation Tools, we can use these products to actually create our own, custom clothing items without even having to really model anything - just tweak!

The more difficult part about modeling female clothing for Genesis 1 is that the Genesis base shape is that of a male, and quite featureless. So if we model the clothing using a female shape, the shape we used for the modeling process must be removed in the transfer rigging process. It's automated so it's easy, but we don't always get the results we want, so then we have to go back and tweak some more and try again, etc., - which is also fine. When we want something custom, we're usually willing to go through at least a bit of a process.

Introducing VWD (Virtual World Dynamics Cloth & Hair)

By its name we can tell right away that VWD is a cloth and hair simulator, so we expect to use it for clothing and hair that will be flowing with the movements of the character - and it does that quite well. But we can also use it sort of as a conformer without poke-through. Did you know that?

I was using the "Assistant" in VWD and when I hovered over the box: "Tie All Vertices" a tool tip popped up saying that this will use a soft sort to tie all vertices - works well for items that should fit the character, like a t-shirt, for example. Hmmm.

Since then I've discovered that we can use this and soften the fabric to make things still flow around a bit, just not travel too far from the original location, which looks really good for a Lot of things. But we can also stiffen the fabric a bit and, if we didn't ask it to collide too close to the mesh, it will fit naturally to the shape of the figure and follow it as if it was 'perfectly' conformed - and with my several generations old GTX 1660, it calculates nice and fast too!

So while we're shopping incredible prices (or even free) for clothing for any of three generations, we should also keep in mind that we can truly remodel parts of them if we have VWD.

In Plugins, you'll see that Fenric's plugins have all been made available to us for free. Install these and you'll have the ability to Edit > Fenric > Unlock Figure, when the Model or Actor line is selected. After that, with it still selected go Animation > Detach Skeleton and drag the Model or Actor out of the hierarchy (rig) - turning the model essentially into a static object - no longer a conforming figure.

While in this state, we can add or remove polygons, change the material zones, pretty much (very much) do whatever we want to the model. This is handy for making altogether new clothing items as well as to make a smooth, dynamics-ready garment that doesn't get all of your morph information crammed into it to make it skin tight. For example, a t-shirt will often turn out much more realistic this way that to conform it.

Before doing any of this, however, do keep in mind that VWD also works on items that have been conformed to the figure.

We'll talk more about these sorts of customization, dynamics and using the Content Creation Tools to make new figures in the near future - as this article is priming us up for all of that.

While Stormwind Capes for V4 is not a PC+ product, it does help to show how smoothly VWD can simulate cloth.

This is frame 126 of an animation - an animation that turned out looking great!

This product for V4 comes as props that are meant for Poser's Cloth Room dynamics.

Let's Go Shopping PC+ Style!

We all have different needs and varied tastes. That said, the way I have been shopping lately is almost opposite of how Daz 3D wants me to shop. By default the store shows Newest items first. So I'll go People and Wearables, check the PC+ Only box and then start from the last page and work forward, looking for things I might like to mod into a costume or something that I might like just as is - or even something that contains a certain something that I might need - like a necklace or shoes, for example. At PC+ prices, I don't mind buying a complete set of clothes for 1.99 or 4.99 simply because I think the necklace will work cool with one of my animations.

So let's see what I found and decided to buy. Keep in mind that I have limited time and resources, so there's an incredible amount of other goodies between the lines here!

M3 Tunic Pack and M3 Hooded Cloak have a lot of possibilities for these sorts of things, and have texture expansion packs available to turn them into Kings Court and Kings Court 2 variations. I like kits like this - especially at these low prices - and sometimes we might even see them for free in the PC+ events throughout the year.

More expansions for these:

All great additions to a complete set of clothes that looks great as is, and can be modified into nearly anything - even with a cape/cloak!

Kings Court 2

All of which are also PC+ Sale Items ($1.99)

Pretty Cool!

Remember, we can put these on Genesis females too!

Lotus for Aiko 3

Versatile set that includes tank shirt, jacket, skirt, undies, boots and blades - these conformers include a plethora of morphs making sets like this pretty nice to have.

First of all, using VWD for conforming items, we can use morphs first and then run the simulation, setting friction, distance and the type of cloth, etc., so this morphing set can really be fun to try.

Secondly, with all of these morphs, we could also run these using Fit-To without VWD. I've discovered that Aiko 3 conforming clothing generally works quite well with Rosie 5 - perhaps because of the Generation 3 Iconic Shapes.

This set also has a couple of expansion packs available:

Again, all are PC+ Sale items for $1.99

Scout for Michael 3

I recently grabbed this one to use in a kit bash sort of way. A little less versatile, the boots and gators are attached to the pants. But the shoulder bag has morphs to open the bag several different ways along with shaping morphs.

Although we don't really need shaping or movement morphs fro goggles in Carrara, having them is just another boon to the kit.

I really like the gloves and pants/boots in this set, and with Rosie and Dart about to go flying around in harsh conditions riding open-top vehicles, I really wanted the goggles to try. I have several, but these look cool too - and, hey... they are always on sale for $1.99!!!

Wow. As I scroll forward from the back page looking for the Download button (so I know it's one that I bought), I'm seeing that I still have a LOT of collecting to do! So many cool things that I'd love to try on my characters that I don't have. I really like the stuff I do have though!

I just wanted to mention this because you really should see all of the other stuff I'm passing up!

Cool Fever for A3

Really cool outfit, and it fits great using Fit-To! With morph options to help, it's still so incredibly simple to make tweak adjustments to fitting and shape in Carrara.

This image on the right isn't how Rosie looks anymore, but it shows how I've saved the outfit (just the top) to my browser.

The top isn't run through VWD - just conformed using Fit-To in Carrara.

She's holding her dynamic hair cap, then I draped it! LOL

Those cool pants come from Pretty3d's Cool Blue set. I made the red and the white leather shaders for Carrara years ago - still holding strong!

So you get the idea. There are a lot of possibilities to be had by collecting a bunch of inexpensive clothing sets over time. The more you build the library, the better options you'll have when it comes to decking out your next agent, homeless person, alien, monster, innocent bystander, etc.,

So let's just look at some more - and these are all for generation 3 or 4 - we won't get to Genesis and beyond just yet.