Makeclothes producing incomprehensible messes as clothes

[maliyana]

I'm trying to make clothes for a character. My method involves exporting a mesh of the character, then creating the clothes on top of the mesh in blender, and finally using the mesh as the human mesh when I use the makeclothes addon. Unfortunately, this hasn't been working out lately. Attached are images of what I ended up with when I followed the steps above. The outfit is supposed to be a simple body suit that covers everything except the head, hands and feet.

Any suggestions?

[joepal]

It looks as if you did not assign vertices.

Each vertex on the clothing piece must belong to a vertex group which does also exist on the human mesh.

If you auto-assign vertices, you should probably use the base mesh with helpers in this case. That way you will get the vertex groups "right", "left" and "mid", which are usually sufficient. But for more control, you could create more groups manually.

[maliyana]

It looks as if you did not assign vertices.

Each vertex on the clothing piece must belong to a vertex group which does also exist on the human mesh.

If you auto-assign vertices, you should probably use the base mesh with helpers in this case. That way you will get the vertex groups "right", "left" and "mid", which are usually sufficient. But for more control, you could create more groups manually.

I had auto-assigned vertices. I tried to use the base female mesh and while the outfit was no longer a complete mess, it obviously didn't fit when applying it in make human because of the differing body sizes and shapes. Looking at my character and the base mesh, the only difference between the models is the size and shape, yet using my model as a base leads to the problem at hand. I mainly want to use this method so as to avoid the skin poking problem that often happens with outfits like this.

[Aranuvir]

The skin poking issue is best addressed with a delete vertex group to feed vertex masks... Still your clothing looks like a great mess with vertex groups. E.g. faces from the left hand seem to be stretched to the right foot and vice versa. I'd recommend to not use a posed model. Before running MakeClothes save a final copy, apply the whole modifiers stack and then redo your vertex groups very carefully...

[maliyana]

The skin poking issue is best addressed with a delete vertex group to feed vertex masks...

This leaves the breasts looking very angular and deflated.

Incidentally, punkdunk's "bandeau bra" doesn't use the delete group, and there is no skin pokage. So I know "stretchy" clothing is possible.

EDIT: Playing around a bit, I believe the angular breast issue has to do with the placement of polygons on the outfit. So I've tried increasing the amount of polygons. It looks better, but it takes 10 minutes to make the clothing file. Also, the armpits look choppy when I pose the character.

[RobBaer]

... Also, the armpits look choppy when I pose the character.

Yes, the armpit thing is a known issue, but we've had no modeler (or perhaps code redesign) to deal with it: http://bugtracker.makehumancommunity.org/issues/1034

Again the exact placement of verts (or altering mesh density) may help some with poses, but it is less than desirable right now. Another work-around is probably careful assignment of special vertex groups in trouble areas. Try segregating vertices belonging to the body and vertices belonging to the arm.

[punkduck]

The skin poking issue is best addressed with a delete vertex group to feed vertex masks...

This leaves the breasts looking very angular and deflated.

Incidentally, punkdunk's "bandeau bra" doesn't use the delete group, and there is no skin pokage. So I know "stretchy" clothing is possible.

EDIT: Playing around a bit, I believe the angular breast issue has to do with the placement of polygons on the outfit. So I've tried increasing the amount of polygons. It looks better, but it takes 10 minutes to make the clothing file. Also, the armpits look choppy when I pose the character.

The bandeau bra is modelled on the body, other clothes, like my medieval dress are modelled on the helper mesh. The reason is simple. The bra has cups, the dress not.
The piece of cloth tries to orientate itself at the nearest vertices available. About stretchy: Don't use a bandeau bra for "Russ Meyer type girls" ... looks ridiculous and does not work in reality

When you model on the helper mesh, make sure that the vertices you created are (nearly) not IN the mesh. Even then the helper has less vertices. Your clothes will follow this mesh and for big breasts the skin will peek through. But this can also happen when you pose a character with an average body.

Use delete groups, when skin is invisible, so don't use it for lace or transparent clothes. You can also create special (also non-rigid) groups for arm and body. I've done this for the medieval dress. Instead of left, right, mid, I created leftbody, rightbody, leftarm, rightarm.

A common problem is to assign the body underneath the helper to left, right, mid ... accidentally, because you press the button with the base mesh selected. Could be a reason for the 10 minutes. Throw the human mesh away and reload it in this case.