Issue about creating clothes

[Anstrah]

Hello,

I am triyng to create a dress, but when I click on the "Make Clothes" button, I obtain a error message:



I checked the clothes and it seems there is no problem:



Here are my objects and vertex groups:



I obtained the body by extracting it from the helper and created a delete group on this body but I am not sure to understanood well if it was I had to do...
Here are my dress on the body and the Make Clothes settings I used:



It's the first time I create an asset, so I probably made a mistake... Could you tell me what is wrong, please?

Thank you in advance!

[jwc]

It's not clear to me what's happening, but thanks for posting that information, it helps eliminate some possible issues.

These are additional items that you may have already done:
(1)
The body must contain the same vertex groups as the robe.
Note the body can have multiple groups assigned to each vertex, unlike the robe
(2)
The body must be selected and "Mark as human" clicked
(3)
Similarly, the Robe must be selected and "Mark as clothes" clicked
Then "Make clothes" can be clicked

This is a short video, at about the 4 minute mark MakeClothes is demonstrated.
You can check if there are any differences from your procedure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xATm4zRloPQ

One of the experts might be able to supply additional suggestions based upon the error message "Context missing active object"

[Anstrah]

Thank you very much for your answer! Indeed, I didn't understand the body needed to be marked as human and have the same vertex group as the robe...
But since the robe is not a part of the body, I don't understand which vertices I have to define as the robe. Have I to "merge" the robe and the body so as to obtain one unic object, and then, to select the robe on this new object to define it as the robe vertex group, or have I to select the human body parts where the robe will appear?

I read the topic about vertex group (http://www.makehumancommunity.org/wiki/Documentation:MakeClothes_Vertex-Groups), but actuelly, I didn't understand well how it works...


Edit:
I tried by assigning all the vertices of the body to the robe group/ I finally could create my asset, but it appers weird on MakeHuman. The base mesh looks screw up, but it is normal on blender.
Here are screenshots of the base mesh I used to create the dress on blender:


Here are renders I obtain on MakeHuman:


As you can see, the dress seems to be screwed up. But when I reimport this dress asset from MakeHuman into blender, by the commands "MakeClothes2" -> "Import clothes file", it is not screwed up:


Once I reimpoted the dress into blender, the base mesh is not screwed up, only "thiner" than the "original" blender dress. I suppose it's thiner because I used the SubdivisionSurface modifier, but I don't understand why it appears screwed up on MakeHuman...

Could you help me, please?
Thank you in advance!

[jwc]

Hopefully some background about clothing vertices will be helpful.

A problem with modeling clothing occurs when trying to make a single object fit all possible variations of human body.
This does not occur in the real world. For example, a child is not expected to comfortably wear a grown man's suit.

MakeClothes has some different methods to attempt to solve this, and they work reasonably well.
The first method is the delete group.
This vertex group on the human body disables the visibility of the vertices that would usually be covered by the clothing.
This is very useful for tight objects, like waistbands, and rigid objects, like shoes. It is less useful for transparent objects like lingerie.
With delete groups, as the body is moved and modified, if the clothing is "close enough", it will not show patches of skin, but appear as expected.

A second method is based on how the position of each clothing vertex is calculated.
Each clothing vertex belongs to a single vertex group, and the human body must have vertex groups with the same names.
When a piece of clothing is created, for each clothing vertex, the offsets from the closest three vertices in the human body group of the same name define the cloth vertex position.
Then in MakeHuman or MPFB, as the human body shape is modified, this offset (and scaled) position is used to move the cloth vertex.
As the body gets smaller, the cloth vertices will get closer, and as the body gets larger, the vertices will get farther apart.

This has issues with making sure the best human vertices are selected, for example the inside of a sleeve could be closer to the torso vertices than the arm.
That is why it is useful to have multiple clothing vertex groups, say left_sleeve, right_sleeve, left body, and right body for the clothing.
Since the body can have multiple vertex groups on each vertex, the shoulders can be in both sleeve and body groups, allowing MakeClothes to select the best vertices for the clothing.

Of course, all of this is dependent upon the number of vertices involved. More vertices created a smoother result, at the expense of compute time for render or game engines.

The best results come from using a body model that is close to the desired shape, as this reduces the amount of distortion in the final object.
For game engines, fewer vertices and large delete groups, maximize the game speed, at the cost of extra distortion.

Finally, if your project is Blender based, don't get too distracted by the view in MakeHuman, as the render engine is not the same.

[Anstrah]

Thank you very much for your answer! So, if I understand well, my dress appears screwed up because I used only one vertex group to define it, is it that?

There are several things I am not sure to understand:
- I thought the clothes shoud have only one vertex group, but from what you said, if I understand well, it can have several vertex groups, can't it?
- About the delete group, have I to create only one delete group for the entire dress, or have I to create as much delete group as there are vertex groups on the dress?
- For now, I used the entire body the define the "robe" group on the human, but if I understand well, it should be more relevant to use only the vertices where the dress will appear, should it? In this case, should it be relevant to use the same vertices for the delete group and for the "robe" group on the human?

I have also a question about modifiers I used: I used the SubdivisionSurface and the Mirror, but I didn't apply them. If I don't apply the Mirror modifier, is there a risk it cause issues when I will move the character? For example, if the character has a non symetric movement, does the Mirror modifier risk to oblige the dress to have a symetric movement, and create an issue with the human non symetric movement?

For now, my project is not especially for blender; I am trying to create illustrations for the novel I am writing, and I didn't choose yet which software I will definitivly use. I think to use as much MakeHuman as Blender and Daz3D... For now, I am trying to learn how to create assets for MakeHuman, by training on "simple" asset like a simple dress. When I would understand well how to do, I would like to create more complicate assets for my charaters...


Edit:
I tried to use a T-pose in MakeHuman to see what it would happen, and this is what I obtain:


The mesh is completly broken and I really don't understand why...
Could you help me, please?

I also tried to create vertex groups for the arms on the human and on the dress, but I receive an error message:

So, I suppose I really misunderstood somthing...

Thank you in advance for your reply!

[jwc]

Each clothing vertex has its position set by the three closest vertices on the body that belong to a vertex group with the same name.

This means each clothing vertex must belong to a vertex group, and must belong to only one vertex group.

The error message points this out:
"This object has vertices which belong to multiple vertex groups"

This does not mean there has to be only one vertex group for the entire piece of clothing.
As long as each vertex follows the rule above, even an extreme example, each vertex in a different group, should work.

The warning message could be read as:
"then assign them to only one group per vertex" or "one group each"

If you look at the list of checks performed, you see the rules that must be followed:

All vertices belong to a vertex group.
No vertex belongs to multiple groups. < Violated
No vertex is assigned to a non existing group.
All vertex groups exist on human.


Second issue, distortion
The mirror and subdivision modifier can be applied to the clothing object during design, but MakeClothes does not have a corresponding function.
While making a piece of clothing, two things are created (ignoring color/texture).
The first is an object list with all the vertices, edges, and faces.
The second is an offset list with the offsets for each vertex, as mentioned above.

The existence of a vertex (subdivision applied/not applied) and it's current position (mirror applied/not applied) at the time the clothing is created is all that matters.
As mentioned before, any movement of the body or alteration of the body size can then introduce distortions.

One of the experts should comment here, but it looks like your dress could be improved by using the skirt helper -
see: http://static.makehumancommunity.org/as ... ction.html

[Anstrah]

Thank you very much for your reply! I created a vertex group for the "torso part"of the dress, and one other for the arm part, but the issues are still there: the dress appears swewed up whatever the pose I use, and it is broken when I use some poses like the T-pose.

I wonder alos for the "skirt part" of the dress, which part of the body do you recommand as vertex group? Should I use only the legs, and create a "skirt" group with the legs of the body to correspond to the skirt part of the dress, or should I use also the torso?


Edit:
I tried to create an simple skit extrated from the helper, without any modification. I called its vertex group "torso" so as to use the torso group of the body part of the helper. The skirt is not screwed up, but when I use the T-pose in MakeHuman, it's broken, like for my dress so I don't understand what I did wrong...


After that, I added the SubdivisionSurface to the skirt, and I overwritted the asset. This time, it appears screwed up:


Do you have an advice, please?

Thank you in advance for your help!

[Elvaerwyn]

Greetings,
I apologize for being late to the party. However I fear you are by far over complicating this process for yourself. A simple skirt made from helper is as simple as this process...

-Open blender
-Open the makeclothes panel
-Under the Human category, spawn in a predefined human with helpers.
(import pre defined human, use drop down to choose human with helpers-female)
-Mark your human as human, and mark your skirt as clothes with the mark buttons in addon panel.
-Now, on your skirt in the vertex panel(vertex groups) Add a category called helper-skirt/change to edit mode on skirt(assuming there are no vertex groups so if you have added any at all delete all of them if they are present!) go ahead and select all vertexes and click assign on the newly created helper-skirt vertex group.
-if you want to have the skirt cover up parts of the legs you need to also add delete groups but that will be dealt with later lets just get this skirt working on a model for now.
-Go back to object mode and select your skirt and give it a name if it has none and make sure the clothes directory is checked to go to.
-hit make clothes
-Go back to makehuman and pull the newly created skirt up on a female model and test it works by putting her in a pose.
Get back to me with your results please and we will go from here.

Elv