CREATING DYNAMIC CLOTHING FOR DAZ STUDIO

THAT ACTUALLY FITS YOUR FIGURE

Two methods

Spearcarrier, that's me

CONTENTS
Introduction
Method One Refitting existing dynamic clothing to fit a different character
Method Two Refitting conforming clothing into fitting dynamic clothing
What to do if everything is falling apart.
What to do if Dyncreator won't convert your prop.
A note about material zones and the geometry editor

Introduction

It helps if you have the following items. You may not need all of them, especially if you're willing to
think critically on how to get the same results I am getting.:

• DAZ Studio. I work with DAZ 4.9.1. (not optional)

• Blender (Optional)

• The dyncreator script, found at renderosity (not optional)

• Virtual World Dynamics (VWD) engine and the DAZ studio bridge, also found at
renderosity
 • Crossdresser 4, found with EvilInnocence

• Poser Pro, I have Pro 2014

This tutorial assumes you already know how to use all of the items in my little list above. This is
mostly because I'm lazy and don't want to write a book explaining each and every little function that I go
through. Really it's not so much as a tutorial so much as a rundown on my process, to be honest. You can
also do like me, if you don't know, and look up how to do a function if you come across one you're not
familiar with when the times comes. That sometimes works.
Moving along.
I don't know about you, but when it comes to getting dyncreator to convert existing dynamic clothing
for poser to the DAZ format it's hit or miss. When I run dyncreator on the types of props it's actually
meant for, I get about a 50% success rate. The other 50% is me watching a bit sadly as the prop I really
liked simply won't convert no matter what I do. Also for me there's an even bigger problem: the dynamic
clothing I find is never meant for the figure I want to use. There are no Bunnygirl dynamic dresses,
nothing at all for Himeko... and all the cool things for Aiko 3 have faded into the sunset. You can work
real hard to get something that's meant for V4 to fit your Melody for A3 model, sure, but that's an even
bigger task. Especially when the darned dynamic prop simply refuses to stay the right size no matter what
trick you do. Even the tricks that work on other props.
I've come up with these methods after a lot of experimentation because for the life of me I couldn't get
it to work. It's a very simple process that takes only a few minutes, and if you're lucky you get dynamic
clothing that actually fits your figure and not some other figure you don't want to work with.

Method One
Refitting existing dynamic clothing to fit a different character

I am given to understand you can use VWD to refit clothing you want to be dynamic inside their
working window. In my case, however, VWD doesn't like to work. It throws a fit when I try to work with
hair, it loses UV mapping, and often it crashes. This situation isn't uncommon for me: I'm always telling
people that if you want to find something wrong with your program or code, I am the person you want to
run it. Because I will find problems. Or rather, they will find me.
 They say you can also refit clothing in the Optitex
engine, but the truth is DAZ's dynamic cloth ignores it
when you resize a shirt to, say, 85% of its size.
(Which is about the right size difference between V4
and Kururu.) Clothing will go back to its proper size
while draping in most cases.
Anyway, what if you don't have VWD? That's
where this method comes in... but I made it only for
pre-existing dynamic clothing to work with the
Optitex dynamic cloth plugin with DAZ. You can
fight the situation using the engine's settings... or you can simply provide a shirt that fits. I prefer to have
clothing that fits, just like in real life.
Step one is of course to load your model and to load the clothing you want to fit to the model. When
initially testing this out, I loaded mato's Kururu and a shirt and pants set meant for Victoria 4. The size
difference was enormous - kind of like trying to shop in a real clothing store.
After resizing the shirt to be about Kururu's proper size, her arms still poked through because her
default zero pose is slightly different from Victoria's. Not a problem. Although some props won't let you,
this prop was being very cooperative. I simply moved the arms using deformers in DAZ Studio.
Once I had the shirt pretty much fitting around her, I made everything but the shirt invisible by using
the scene tab. Then I exported the shirt as an wavefront obj from DAZ.
I went ahead and exported it into my geometries folder. I figured, I might as well cut to the chase and
under normal circumstances it would need to be there.
My export settings are pretty
straight forward. I tell DAZ to export
for poser. I tell it to read original
materials, use original node names, and
to ignore invisible nodes.
Then I deleted the shirt prop and
reimported my new shirt for Kururu.
Now it fit. But I wasn't done.
From here I ran the dyncreator script
on the shirt. For me, that didn't work
and I had to go to another step covered
at the end of this tutorial. If you're one
of the lucky people that has a high success rate with the script, you will get a dynamic shirt right then and
there.
The good thing about using this method is that when converting, you can tell the script to use the
Optitex UVs. You don't always want to have the UVs in your object - it causes some real crazy issues if
your object doesn't match the code by shape somehow. But with this, you're simply converting over an
Optitex built prop. Having those UVs in there is really nice.
As you can see from my following image. I told Kururu to take a walk. Things worked beautifully.

Method Two
Refitting conforming clothing into fitting dynamic clothing

This first thing you gotta do is find the outfit you want to convert. Crossdresser works with the cr2
poser format, so if you thought you were done with getting poser items for your DAZ library think again.
I have tried to use Crossdresser to convert newer Genesis items for other models, and that's always causes
severe problems so I can't say if this works for newer cr2s converted from dufs or not. Let's just stick with
legacy stuff for now, and if you want to experiment later I say go for it.
 Step One

First, find your item. I will be needing this

babydoll outfit for a future project, so I'm choosing it
with high hopes.
This means it's time for me to get the item sized to
fit. You could probably use the method I talked about
under Method One to do this, but I like using
Crossdresser 4. The reason is that I will not only get a
dynamic piece of clothing out of the deal, but a
conforming one as well. Plus, it's easier. =^-^=
I will be converting it to fit Bunnygirl, even though
BG isn't the figure I'll be needing it for in the future. I
just happen to have BG open in my DAZ window and am stuck on her for now.
In the following blurry graphic (I have no idea why it looks so bad) I'm converting the top. I have
chosen legacy for my algorithm, but I have no idea if that makes a difference or not. I have since switched
to using standard for the algorithm because it seems like those clothing props have a higher conversion
rate with the dyncreator script.
I've pretty much got all of
the items checked under
options. You're converting a
conforming piece to fit a new
model, so go ahead and set the
program to do it right so you
can have a working
conforming item. If this makes
a difference in the future I'll
change the tutorial.
One thing, though. Make
sure to check "weld object".
This is because some items
after being converted fall apart
at the seams when being run
through the cloth simulation.
Some people weld the clothing in Blender manually, but if this is cuts the work flow I say take it. I'll go
through how I weld things together in another section of this tutotial.
So far I've had one clothing set fall apart at the seams after being converted using Crossdresser. The
rest have held together.
And convert!

Step Two

Now you have your converted items, hopefully. If Crossdresser hasn't crashed *again*. (sigh) Load
them into your scene and fit them to your figure. Being able to do this makes things real convenient if you
have your figure already in something other than the default pose. The clothing will conform and be ready
to go.
Once fitted and parented, you're going to take away their magical conforming powers by turning them
into props. You could probably do this part without conforming them first to the figure, but better safe
than sorry.
To convert them into a prop, you go to edit, figure, rigging, then convert figure to prop.
If you're feeling insecure and are afraid of the crash weebles taking your machine, you can export your
object just like you did for method one at this point. You probably should also save your scene.

Step Three

Now that you have your items

turned into props, it's time for the final
step.
Select your item in the scene tab
and run the Dyncreator script. Yes,
you read that right.
If it works, you've got a new
dynamic outfit that just happens to fit
your figure!
Woot!
But what if it doesn't work? I'll
cover that next. But first... Bunnygirl
in one of her new hand me down
outfits.
 What to do if everything is falling apart.

WARNING: YOU NEED TO BE BLENDER CAPABLE FOR THIS PART. I'M BARELY
CAPABLE BUT CAN DO IT. HOWEVER I CAN'T DO IT TO THE POINT I CAN TELL GUIDE
YOU BY HOLDING YOUR HAND. YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.
If your newly created dynamic outfit falls apart, you're going to want the prop sewn together at the
seams. When vertices are not linked, they drape wherever they want because their friends are not holding
their hands. Disloyal buggers.
I am given to understand there's a quick option you can try. Go to Sharecg.com and find a little
program called PropViewer. It doesn't install; you just run it.
Once you have that open, find the obj to your conforming prop - say a shirt - and open it in
PropViewer. Then hit weld. Apparently this won't help with buttons and extraneous bits like that, but it
should help with the seams.
I've always had no luck at all with converting a prop after welding it in any fashion, but others talk as
though this works great. So I figured out another method (or two) using Blender (because it's free). But
I'm not an expert at Blender, so I'm just going to vaguely give you an idea of my process and hope you
can follow along.
 Obviously we start by importing your obj you generated to create your prop. Make sure you have keep
vertical order and polygroups selected.

1. You have to find the loose seams. At some point you're going to have to find them the
manual way (I do this by telling DAZ to use a smooth shaded wired view and viewing my
object before deciding if it needs welding.). However, sometimes you get lucky and can us a
short cut. So first you load your geometry object - you know, that nice prop you exported into
your geometries folder - in Blender. Then, under edit mode tell blender to select nonmanifold.

What usually happens for me is that all my seams and edges are selected. This is great, because
selecting those things manually sucks. Then I unselect the parts I do not want to tamper with and look at
the highlighted parts. If I'm lucky and the parts are, say, the seam where a sleeve meets a shoulder I'm
good to go. However, this doesn't happen often. So....

2. I guess we'll be selecting our parts manually. Darn. This is why I stopped to look at the model
before exporting it into Blender for tweaking. When I have to select them manually, I will hold
down shift, alt and J when clicking where I want to go. That will light up an entire line of
connected vertices like a Christmas tree. Yay!

So from here let's assume I have a shoulder and sleeve seam selected. I try not to do this, but
sometimes from here I might hit ctrl and then the plus symbol on the number pad to expand how many
vertices are selected. I will only do that once if I can help it. My goal is to have a minimum selected.

3. I have two choices on what I'm going to do. The neatest choice to make to get these guys
connect is to hit W, which will bring up the special menu. From within I select "bridge edge
loops". If things are selected neatly, what should happen is Blender will actually create faces
and sometimes add vertices to connect the lines. So select carefully when using this command.

There is another method I'll use sometimes, but since I learned how to use bridge edge loops I try not
to because it can be messy. With my two lines selected and ready to be welded, I will then subdivide. And
I don't just subdivide once. I subdivide those babies like rabbits loving in the spring. I want a lot of points.
Although I don't recommend you go too crazy here.
Then I tell Blender to remove duplicates. When I do this, the points find each other and the seams are
pretty much sewn together.
Sometimes it takes more than one try, of course. There are different settings you can put with each one
to get varying degrees of welding. If you don't do enough your prop will have holes in it. Do it too much
and you get a mess. This will take experimentation per prop.
You want to avoid having your mesh cross through itself.
 When you have your object just the way you want it, you might want to consider decimating it. When
your object is too large it will crash things. Or at the very least, it will take forevveeerrrrrrr to drape. Do
your best to keep things simple. To decimate I will sometimes use the clean up command in the mesh
dialogue.

What to do if Dyncreator won't convert your prop.

Quite frankly, I hate it when this happens. I just want things to convert simply and easily, but I rarely
get that satisfaction. When it happens I feel like throwing a party.
There are two ways to get dyncreator to work. Well, three if you have the time and patience. For two
you will need Poser or VWD.

The first, if you don't have either of those programs, is to go back to your object in Blender and
tweak it repeatedly until finally the script takes hold. Sometimes exporting the object from DAZ
after importing it and trying a whole new wavefront object helps. Another thing that sometimes
works is to decimate the file so it's even smaller with less vertices. I have no advice for you
there.

The second method will be to use Poser. Import your object into Poser, clicking weld identical
vertices and unclicking all other options. Once you have the object in poser, you want to export
it back out again.

When I do this, I select all options except the one telling Poser to export it as a morph.
Then I reimport the new object.
The best I can figure is that doing this cleans out some of the stuff that Blender puts in the file. Which
is helpful because that stuff can really interfere with things.
Then I turn my new figure into a smart prop and run it through the cloth engine to test its dynamics.
(There are excellent tutorials out there covering how to do this.) I know it's a good prop when the cloth
engine goes without a hitch. If not, I know I have to tweak the file in Blender because it's probably too big
or something.
Now that my smart prop is saved in my library, I hop back to DAZ. I load my new dynamic prop and
run dyncreator.
And then sometimes the item *still* doesn't convert. That's okay - I still wanted to do that because I
had to make sure it was going to drape well in the first place. Now it's time for me to turn to VWD and
the third method.

With all my items in the scene, I load VWD and go through the motions of importing the prop I
 want to drape dynamically. Here again there are some really good tutorials out there, so I won't
need to go into this part.

For me I can't use VWD for draping itself, and truly I find it too limited for my purposes anyway, but
it has turned out to be an absolute lifesaver because... when you've got your stuff imported and ready to
go, you'll notice that VWD has created yet another prop in your scene.
Sometimes VWD will pop up an object import dialogue while doing this. Make sure to tell it to read
materials. I don't know why that option is always unchecked, but if you don't do this you run the risk of
losing your UV. Do it. Dooo iiiiit.
Then close VWD and use your dyncreator script on the VWD object. When it comes to the VWD
objects, dyncreator has converted them without an issue each and every time. Knock on wood.

A note about material zones, Optitex UVs and the geometry editor

The minute you start having to import your object into Blender and Poser, things are going to askew
when it comes to your material and geometry zones. Thank goodness for DAZ's geometry editor.
Before converting your prop−but after you know for sure that this convert is The One and you're going
to marry it someday−I recommend you go into your geometry panel and tweak your zones. Get those
vertices grouped where they belong!
So you want your sleeve zones marked as sleeves, your legs, etc. etc. Optitex uses the surface areas as
its control zones, so being able to do this can come in handy when it comes to its UV control.
When you run dyncreator, you will be asked if you want to include the Optitex UV or not. Sometimes
I choose not because its incompatible with just about everything. My biggest reason for hitting the no
button, however, has to do with the clothing itself.
Some articles have specific shapes - say a small waistline - and
I want it to keep that small waistline. When the UV comes into
play, the cloth behaves like it's supposed to in the draping engine.
This can be good. This can also be bad. I may not want my
clothing to drape loose and freely. I may want it to stay
unrealistically in shape, especially considering most of my work
deals with tooning.
In the image to the left you can see just such an article of
clothing without the UV map.
Without the UV you lose the ability to tell your clothing article
to shrink or to tell the cloth to cling to the figure. As I am making
clothing that actually fits my character, this isn't a problem for me normally. The articles will still go
through a draping simulation; they'll still have wrinkles and fall with gravity. They just also won't drape
loosely around the body like an oversized t-shirt, which I swear to you is the Optitex default movement.
Somewhere in the code the code writers put "oversized worn out thin cloth t-shirt" as the overriding
command.
The drawback is that I can't make clothing, well, shrink to fit another character. In DAZ if you have an
article of clothing that you shrink to fit someone, in the draping cycle it's going to expand back to its
original size. This is why you'd tell it to shrink in the controls... without the UV you can't do that.
However, I often can put a smaller article of clothing on a bigger character by changing size and drape
and have things turn out just fine.... without guessing at which is x and which is y in the controls.
When the UV works with the article of clothing, I then play with two versions (one with and one
without) to see which one behaves better. In the rare case I decide to keep and use the UV map version, I
have slightly greater control in the dynamic engine.
If you know how to set your geometry surface zones, you have even greater control. As I mentioned
before, Optitex uses the surface zones for their
controls. With the ability to tell one part of an
outfit to shrink with the rest acting like denim, you
have the potential to change your outfit's overall
cut and style.
There was a flowing gown I converted recently.
It took the UV map so I looked at the dress to
decide what I wanted to do. The original surface
zones had the entire torso area of the dress as one
zone, but I decided to separate out part of it into a
corset zone on the obj and run the converter again..
When I draped the dress, I shrink the corset as
tight as it could. I told the top to cling to pull it up.
When I had things where I wanted them, I
loosened the top and draped again. The result was
a form-fitting dress that looked different from the
original it was meant to be. See the image to the
right to see the resulting poster art. (And yes, prints
are for sale.)
Can you tell where I put the corset zone?
 I'm sure there will be more to add to this tut as I learn and go along. But for now... this is what I've got.
I'm open to suggestions and teachings from folks. Together we can make some kick ass art.
And that's it!

Happy Converting!