Daz+ Cloth Frenzy
This particular page is dedicated to a particularly fun way to really increase the variety of clothes available to us in our libraries through the power of being a Daz+ Member.
All of the items within have been obtained via my Daz + Membership over the years either at an exceptional discount or even free!
Check this out. We can always shop for clothing that we really want at the time, but with our Daz+ Membership, we get deals throughout the year and often even opportunities to grab some fun stuff for free if we check the store often.
Grabbing up deals on clothing made for any generation of Daz Figure can really be a boost to our creative process when we're trying to build 'that special outfit' that's completely unique or just some garb to toss onto one of our background characters.
Since Genesis 1 came out and Daz 3d introduced the idea of Clones that enable clothing to better Auto-Fit from one generation to the next I've been keeping my eye out for and collecting these clones for as many combinations as I can.
The result is fantastic. I can happily buy clothing made for Michael 3, for example and apply it to Genesis 8 Female! It's truly amazing how often this sort of workflow helps me to realize all new fun and convincing costumes for my favorite characters - inspiring me and getting me more in tune with my entire collection - making me more efficient when it comes to outfitting other people that need to be in the scene as well.
Once I convert something and I really like the outcome, I make a wearable preset of it - either individually or as a complete outfit, so I can apply it whenever my heart desires.
Let's take a look at some of the clothing I got Only using my Daz+ Membership benefits:
dForce Rocks! I like to collect as many dForce items as I can - for my main characters or others, simulated cloth just really helps to make animated scenes look more alive, and dForce simulated garments look a Lot more natural and believable for stills as well.
I'm not even using Genesis 9 in my main workflow yet, but I did grab the new Genesis 9 Clones for All product by MMX, so any of my Genesis generations can use this!
Many Daz+ Sales Events throughout the year will have Stacking benefits. Buy this and get a better deal on that, sort of thing. That's how I got my hands on this, and I was happy to do so. A real Win Win for me!
New dress, hat, boots, necklace... and this one comes with a GeoShell for the dress too for adding stitches to any fabric!
X Fashion Sport Swimsuit and Bikini Set for Genesis 9
I got this set for free during one of the Daz+ events.
Having both styles, this pack will be really beneficial for mixing and matching with other garments to make some unique attire.
Keep an eye out at the store. This one (and some other items) required that we 'buy' a freebie every day for four days. Collecting all for granted the full product.
With Daz+ every day of the year is a sale. But sometimes we happen upon some really amazing offers and freebies!
dForce CB Ryi Set for G8F & 8.1F
Love This! Bought from my Wish List
...and this is just the tip of the iceburg!
I wonder if you're seeing the potential here.
Even just these few items can really spice up our creative costume creation endeavors!
See all of the dForce? It's fun to see how different artists set their dForce products up to work in simulation or for stills.
And then we can tweak those setups and work more with them!
Daz+ Anniversary Sale Goodness!
While these are not Daz+ Items on any given day, Daz+ Sales Events sometimes have what's called "Daz+ For A Day" - a selection of non-Daz+ products that Daz+ Members can get at Daz+ Item pricing. This year I got the jean jacket, last year the torn jeans (comes with torn shirts too)
Whew! Cool Stuff! More to come soon!
For now, let's look at some legacy stuff. Keep in mind that we can easily change this older stuff up with some nice new Iray shaders - I often do so using the maps that come with the product, if they're really cool and fit with what I want. Otherwise I also use my Daz+ Membership to collect Iray Shader sets that are Really Handy for changing this stuff up even more!
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 Daz+ 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 Daz+ member (probably for the rest of my life!) and looking at this right now, it's $1.99 USD for Daz+ 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 Daz+ 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 Daz+ 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 Daz+ 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 Daz+ 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:
and Villager Clothes for the Tunics
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 Daz+ Sale Items ($1.99)
Pretty Cool!
Remember, we can put these on Genesis females too!
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
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!
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.
More addons available too
Check out this Bundle for $1.99 Daz+
Each item within also has expansions available in Daz+
