Normal and Occlusion Maps

[MTKnife]

I'll go ahead and try to explain it a little better, particularly since hair works the same way as clothes.

When you use MakeClothes, at some point you have to load a target object ("Load Human Mesh"). These come in two basic varieties, with helpers (e.g., "Average Female With [sic] Helpers") and without (e.g., "Average Female"); the obvious difference is that the "With Helpers" objects include not only the human body, but a bunch of vertices that represent different types of clothing, and hair. Thus, just below the waist, if you examine the human mesh closely, you'll find three layers of vertices: the body itself, a tights "object" that lies just on top of the body, and a skirt "object" that conforms to the body in places, but stretches over it in others (between the legs, to be precise).

For the modeler, the obvious use of these targets ("human meshes") is to fit clothes; if you use the "with Helpers" versions, you can also use the helper "objects" as templates for creating clothes (this works well for skirts or hair, but with shirts, you run into the problem that the edge loops don't coincide with where you'd want to put seams). However, the targets also serve another purpose: when you hit the "Create Vertex Groups" button and then the "Make Clothes" button, the program calculates the distance between each vertex of the item of clothing and nearest vertices in the human mesh, and then uses these relationships to deform the item of clothing when the body moves.

I haven't looked at the source code to examine the algorithm, but the bottom line is that, if the vertices in the clothing are associated with vertices in the human mesh that have a very different shape, bad things tend to happen. To avoid this problem, you have to do three things before you hit "Create Vertex Groups" (I said two things before, but let's break it down):

1. Select the human mesh, and go into "Edit" mode. Select only the vertices that make up the appropriate helper object (or in some cases, like a long coat or a dress, objects). This can be tricky to do by hand, since some objects cover others (the "Hair" object makes the upper part of the "Tights" object, which is used for shirts, especially hard to work with), and you can't just delete the stuff you don't need, since this fouls up the program. Fortunately, each helper object has a stand-in material with a different color, and there's a handy "Show Selection" button that automatically selects the most commonly used sets of vertices ("Body", "Tights", "Skirt", "Coat", and "Hair"). Doing this will eliminate a lot of the "wedgie" effect, which is due mostly to the skin-tight contours of the body itself and the tights helper in the area around the crotch.

2. Unselect all the vertices that aren't directly underneath the clothes in question. Thus, if you're making a short skirt, not only will you not select the layers of body and tights vertices beneath the skirt helper object, but you'll make sure that skirt helper vertices that lie below your skirt's hemline (or above its waist) also aren't selected. This step eliminates some distortions that occur for clothing whose vertices are far away from the body.

3. Finally, get rid of vertices in "crevices". For reasons I don't grasp (better understanding of the body than of clothes on the part of the sculptor, probably), the shapes of the helper objects don't correspond very well to real clothes in certain places. Specifically the upper tights follows the contour of the skin between the breasts, and the lower part of the tights dips into the "crack" between the buttocks, and clings skin-tight against the area where the legs join--as if it were painted on. The skirt helper at least stretches across the space between the legs, but it, too, dips into the crack between the buttocks, rather than stretching between the buttocks like a real skirt would. Unselect the vertices in question: fortunately, they're easy to find, because they all lie at or near the center line of the human mesh (that is, points whose "X" value is 0, and which lie on the plane that divides the left and right sides of the body). You might want to substitute other points that don't lie directly beneath the clothes, but which don't dip into the crevices. This step should eliminate almost all of the wedgie effect not eliminated by step #1.

[o4saken]

@ MTKnife

Wow - thanks for the detailed explanation..

[duststorm]

I'll go ahead and try to explain it a little better (...)

Good hints.

Indeed, for most clothes you have to use these helpers, and you have to make sure that your clothes are fit to them, don't expect MakeClothes to do that for you magically, it's your responsibility (by that I mean you actively need to check what vertex groups are assigned to basemesh and your clothing, and correct if needed, if you see that both body and helpers of the basemesh belong to the same vertex group, then most likely something is wrong).
Make sure that you make your fittings consistent: don't make it fit a vertex to the body, and the neighbouring vertex to a helper. Different body types will make helpers and body drift apart, causing tears and gaps in your clothing.
Stick to one, eg the skirt helper, and make sure (by only vertex grouping vertices on these helpers) that your clothes are only fit to that specific helper.

Gaps in clothes usually arise when you have inconsistencies in the MakeClothes matching, eg you didnt fit a skirt to the skirt helper, and therefore some of its vertices are fit to the left leg, some to the right leg. This will create these horrible effects. Bumpy surfaces are also an indication that you've been fitting to inconsistent helper geometries.

The L key is very handy in Blender for selecting vertices that belong to one helper.
But there are preset buttons foreseen in MakeClothes as well to make vertex grouping a bit easier.

[o4saken]

OK one last attempt at the skirt thing... Created the Clothes and the tested in MH, and NO WEDGIE... so yay thanks all for the help esp @ MTKnife
Now its just to texture and create normal... want to try and get this one quite detailed, esp the sleeves and collar, then add some folds.

[o4saken]

Here is the result of my latest attempt at the skirt... i made an error in that i should have done my seams while it was still simple, but i forgot and then made it all frilly, after which i couldnt get a decent unwrap.. thus in some places the texture is a bit messed... however i did try and hide as much of that as possible.

[learning]

i want to move on to trying hair.. think i might have more luck there, also because most of the "design" is done in photoshop - i get to use my tablet and draw..

Can't wait. Hair is something we can't get enough of apparently.

[o4saken]

So a while ago i said that i want to start doing hair - since then i have played around and seen how i would go about doing this and what with my little experience is possible.. I have yet to create a complete hair style - rather just bits and pieces but i am liking what i am seeing.

So now to create a finished piece... but what - i cant decide if i should do a male hair style or female - long - short. if this comes out good then i will obviously make a variety.. but for now i thought i would turn to the community for suggestions - what i would like is that if you (someone) could upload a picture of a hair style that you would like done (something interesting).. no promises that it will come out perfect but i will give it a try.

so for now i will create and post the first response that i get - after which if people do like it then i will once again open up the suggestions for more.

[joepal]

Long hair is more interesting, but also more difficult. For long hair you'll most likely need multiple layers of mesh and carefully applied alpha for it to look reasonably natural, and you'll need to consider rigging and weight painting. For short hair you can get away with an opaque texture and being 100% statically aligned with the scalp.

But from my point of view there's no difference in desirability between the two otherwise. We lack hairdos, period.

[o4saken]

I found this instructable (link below, and then link to the free programme) looks really good, and easy way to fix mesh issues to be able to export to MH.
haven't tried it myself because i am at work - will try this coming weekend - else if someone else tries then please let us know how it goes.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Turn-Tr ... -to-Quads/

https://memento.autodesk.com/about

[o4saken]

Was thinking to do some makeup overlays - this is just something i did quick at work, could do a much better job at home with my tablet..
if anyone is interested, please let me know then i will work on cleaning it up and creating others.

Quick render:

Makeup layer:

Testing with Specular as suggested....

I do like how it is looking, but one definately needs to have a drawing tablet, i just cant get the edges smooth without one. So yes, something i will be doing this weekend then. and will include a "hopefully" good specular map