punkduck wrote:We had a discussion about different topologies with blindsaypatten, so first thing is to see what is happening with your character when you change e.g. gender in MakeHuman from male to female. Use wireframe-mode in MakeHuman, it is the easiest way to make it visible.
This was the first thing I looked at --- see upthread -- and you are right, the topology changes a lot when you just age the human, without changing anything else. And where those edge loops shift is exactly where my jacket shifts when I age the human.
punkduck wrote: When I compared your baby jumper and my baby romper, there are not big differences. The structure is similar. One difference is that you do not use delete groups. You should use it, when your character is posed, otherwise skin might be visible outside. I used the baby + helper human and created two additional vertex-groups for the arms, because in T-Pose vertices of the sleeves try to stay near the body. I first thought of reworking your asset because I had exactly the same problem, but in the end I fixed this problem only in Blender (Nayka's left arm is in T-Pose, when you look at the picture).
Especially the romper/jumper ends on loops forming legs, arms and neck. And only the neck is deforming a bit, when you change gender etc. the other loops will stay in form. So this will work in most cases, only the texture might look funny. That's the reason for the positive result and it will work with nearly all overall-type clothes.
Y'know, I get so caught up in design, topology, UV mapping, etc, that I often forget to do the simple stuff, like re-assigning vertex groups after applying the Mirror modifier, and making Delete groups. Then I get all lazy and just do masking in Blender, as needed. But I will try to remember delete groups for stuff I share because not everyone knows how to do the masking manually in Blender.
Since the baby jumper worked well and fit most humans, I never did the vertex groups thing with it, and just kept the automatic ones created by MakeClothes.
But I have tried controlling the result with vertex groups before and the results have mostly been either the same as the automatic groups or a big ol' mess.
I have done many trial and error processes with regard to which vertices should be assigned to which groups to differentiate between the limbs and torso on the human and where they are in relation to the clothes as they often do not align with one another, especially when the poly counts between the clothes and the human are different. I can't ever seem to get it quite right for the armpit and crotch areas to deform well when posed --- or sometimes to look normal even when the human is just resting.
Any pointers in this regard would be greatly appreciated as the documentation, while quite useful and informative, is still rather sparse.
punkduck wrote:Sometimes I try to use rigid groups, like for spike collar or for some buttons and buckles and the cosplay assets of Wonder Woman etc. but also these have their limits, because you scale in x, y and z direction. The shield of Wonder Woman becomes oval and a button between the breasts of a female character is doing the same, when you enlarge the breasts and there is no space left in between.
I have had some great fun with the rigid groups thing and the weird results it can produce in some cases. But it is mighty handy for stuff like glasses and tools/weapons.
punkduck wrote:I've a rule of thumb:
- jacket, t-shirt, sweater, pullover, coat: use helper
- tight t-shirt: use body and tell the friends of big bust sizes to use blender to fix it unless you want a latex suit
- pants: use body (or helper, but then delete right/left vertex groups from the skirt, or create own groups leaving out the skirt!)
- skirt: helper, delete right/left groups from the red tights.
- hat, helmet, glasses: body, take rigid groups
- lingerie, underwear, swimwear: body
You should copy/paste this into the wiki. I understand that these are just general rules of thumb that might not work in all cases, but it is a starting point.