MakeClothes Universal Fit -- How I Got Pretty Close

[MargaretToigo]

Even when the results are a big ol' mess, it's still informative to see where the meshes break and warp on various body types in different poses.

Informative? For sure, but also a big source of frustration.

It's frustratingly informative or informatively frustrating, depending upon how many iterations of compiling and testing have thus far failed to produce the desired results.

Suffice it to say that it's never fun to see a clothing mesh get all distorted, but if you've got a pretty good grasp of how MakeClothes works and have studied the anatomy of the "human with helper" meshes, those distortions can also offer some clues about what's going wrong with vertex assignments.

I do wish I had done a few screen grabs of the various distortions, but I was concentrating on the task at hand and not really thinking about sharing my workflow.

So, sometimes it's a matter of trading off one set of flaws for another and choosing which set of flaws to go with seems to be a matter of which ones are easier to fix in Blender.

That's also my final conclusion when it comes to Make Clothes. It does a good job in many cases, but it has its limitations. One limitation is that rigid groups aren't as rigid as you might think.

No, they are not as rigid as I thought.

If you look closely at the pic I posted in the OP, you'll see that some of the shirt buttons are not quite round on the big and tall humans, that the brooch ranges from oval to circle depending on neck size and that the lower jacket button on the plus-size model is noticeably smaller than the top jacket button, even though it is still round.

Now, I don't really do photorealism myself -- note the uncanny valley effect on my shaded human models, who are even creepier-looking when their skin has some specularity -- so the accuracy of materials and how they reflect/absorb light isn't terribly important to me, even if it is very important to folks who are going for realism in their work.

I try to do semi-real for the clothes I share here and I usually provide spec and/or bump maps to help add to that semi-realism, but it's up to those who wish to make them even more realistic to do so. All my stuff here is CC0 so anybody who wants to can improve upon my work and share it far and wide.

When I actually produce something with my humans, they're shadeless, which negates the uncanny valley thing:

[wolgade]

It's frustratingly informative or informatively frustrating, depending upon how many iterations of compiling and testing have thus far failed to produce the desired results.

if you've got a pretty good grasp of how MakeClothes works and have studied the anatomy of the "human with helper" meshes, those distortions can also offer some clues about what's going wrong with vertex assignments.

This "pretty good grasp" comes with experience and experience comes with the "informatively frustrating" thing mentioned above. Your tutorial might offer a less "frustratingly informative" way. And now I'm quite sure that using an adverb in the last sentence is wrong. Anyway, I've got an excuse. English is not my native language.

I try to do semi-real for the clothes I share here

And they're good enough to make them more real.

This was done quite quickly, but wouldn't have worked at all with a crappy mesh.

[flute]

I'm sorry because I can not download this suit, which I like a lot. Is there a particular way to get ahead?
Thanks a lot.

[punkduck]

One of the interresting ideas of Margaret is to use the whole button tab (or placket as I learned now) on rigid groups. I have the same problems with single buttons. And you can still see it, when you download the sleeveless shirt, the buttons are created on different rigid groups, one button per group.

A rigid group is creating a 3-dimensional object, which is scaled independently in all 3 dimensions. Therefore diamonds will not stay diamonds and the shield of Wonder Woman becomes an ugly oval shield. This is one problem.

Now export the assets from MakeHuman and look what happened to the assigned weights of the vertices. It is not rigid any more. The shield is able to bend and the handle of sword or tennis racket also gets some torsion when you pose the hand. The diving cylinder grinsegold created was also put on a rigid group, but it deforms when you pose the character.

So somewhere I added the advice to add the sword or shield to a standard female and to save it without any change. Then in Blender

load your character first and then append the asset from the standard one
- or -
load the .obj file and try to do the material with texture directly in the system

Then assign the complete asset (or part of it) to specific weights, e.g. for a sword create the vertex groups metacarpal2.R and metacarpal3.R and assign all vertices of the sword using the values 0.85 (2.R) und 0.15 (3.R).

This way also works for a buckle or button, but it is no fun to take part of the suit from a character of changed geometry and the buttons from a second character with unchanged geometry. But I did this, when I also did a Harley Quinn character using the assets of O4saken. Of course, when you do the assets by yourself you can directly append it. But when you load the MakeHuman asset, then you can at least add some quality doing it this way.

Considering these problems and also knowing that especially newbies are not happy with all this information I must admin, that your suits work suprisingly good ...

For the texture: the best way of course is not to use textures which will deform in an unrealistic way too much, so unicolored versions or versions with thin stripes are a good choice. The other idea is, especially for female characters, to avoid eye-catching patterns in the breast region (unless you want to use that for a comic-like effect) and for the males among us, the same problem will occur on beer bellies

[wolgade]

@flute: http://www.makehumancommunity.org/wiki/FAQ:I_can%27t_download_from_the_user_repos,_all_files_are_saved_as_HTML

[MargaretToigo]

This "pretty good grasp" comes with experience and experience comes with the "informatively frustrating" thing mentioned above. Your tutorial might offer a less "frustratingly informative" way. And now I'm quite sure that using an adverb in the last sentence is wrong. Anyway, I've got an excuse. English is not my native language.

It's considered stilted by many American editors, but it's technically correct English.

I learn from my mistakes, but I learn even more from my successes.

And they're good enough to make them more real.
This was done quite quickly, but wouldn't have worked at all with a crappy mesh.

Well, thank you.

One really Good Thing about how MakeClothes works is that it's very picky about what kinds of meshes it will and will not work on, which forces you to try and make meshes with the best topology you can -- or suffer the squishy-squashy consequences.

I get a real thrill seeing other people improve upon my stuff.

[MargaretToigo]

One of the interresting ideas of Margaret is to use the whole button tab (or placket as I learned now) on rigid groups. I have the same problems with single buttons. And you can still see it, when you download the sleeveless shirt, the buttons are created on different rigid groups, one button per group.

When I first did the placket plus all buttons in one *group thing, I didn't expect it to work as well as it did.
At that point I had already tried numerous other combinations of vertex groups, both rigid and regular, all with fair to poor results, so my thinking was heading toward the outer walls of the proverbial box.


I like your sleeveless shirt a lot. It works very well after doing the button weight thing in Blender. Select a button using "L" -- or whatever else works -- then shift-select one vertex on the shirt fabric behind the button and copy the vertex weight. If one button or another is all squishy, I delete it and copy a non-squished button to move into its place before copying the vertex weight.

MakeHuman is amazing in that it gets you halfway to production, a solid basis for fine tuning in Blender. I mean, how many hours would it take to just make the human and clothing meshes, let alone UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging and weighting them?

A rigid group is creating a 3-dimensional object, which is scaled independently in all 3 dimensions. Therefore diamonds will not stay diamonds and the shield of Wonder Woman becomes an ugly oval shield. This is one problem.

It makes sense as there are only three points of reference on the human mesh -- which is the minimum needed to get such an algorithm to work at all -- for whatever size and dimension of any rigid object.
Four or perhaps even six points of reference might help things hold their shape, but that's not how the current code works -- and it would probably be quite a task to change it.

Now export the assets from MakeHuman and look what happened to the assigned weights of the vertices. It is not rigid any more. The shield is able to bend and the handle of sword or tennis racket also gets some torsion when you pose the hand. The diving cylinder grinsegold created was also put on a rigid group, but it deforms when you pose the character.

On humans that are outside of the range of average size, age, proportions, etc, things aren't terribly rigid in MakeHuman, either:

Ronda in MakeHuman

Ronda in Blender

Nevermind the breakage around the waist as that's a separate issue, which smooths out well when rendered with a subsurf of two (the above pics are screen grabs).

Take a look at the buttons and brooch and how they look about the same from MakeHuman to Blender -- specularity aside.

But when I didn't use any rigid groups for them, the jacket buttons (especially the lower one) were not just slightly distorted in terms of roundness, they were a squashed up wad of vertices that didn't even remotely look button-like.

So somewhere I added the advice to add the sword or shield to a standard female and to save it without any change. Then in Blender

Sometimes, it's just more efficient to add things like props, hats and glasses in Blender. I do this all the time for assets I that have too many tris/ngons to redo for MakeClothes.

MakeHuman all by itself is a lot of fun to play with but you need Blender (or some equivalent) to take all that fun and make it into something useful.

Considering these problems and also knowing that especially newbies are not happy with all this information I must admin, that your suits work suprisingly good ...

Well, they do now thanks to all the advice and info I've gotten from you and other folks here.

MakeClothes is not for newbies. Some pre-requisite knowledge of Blender, modeling, vertex groups, UV mapping, etc is essential to being able to understand what MakeClothes does, how it works and why it doesn't sometimes.

For the texture: the best way of course is not to use textures which will deform in an unrealistic way too much, so unicolored versions or versions with thin stripes are a good choice. The other idea is, especially for female characters, to avoid eye-catching patterns in the breast region (unless you want to use that for a comic-like effect) and for the males among us, the same problem will occur on beer bellies

A good UV map prevents a lot of texture distortion, but it doesn't eliminate the problem of all fabrics looking spandex-like on heavy characters or when average sized characters are in stretched/bent poses.

Solid colors and small prints do work best, even though in reality large prints and bold stripes are rather flattering on plus-size humans.

[punkduck]

I like your sleeveless shirt a lot. It works very well after doing the button weight thing in Blender. Select a button using "L" -- or whatever else works -- then shift-select one vertex on the shirt fabric behind the button and copy the vertex weight. If one button or another is all squishy, I delete it and copy a non-squished button to move into its place before copying the vertex weight.

I did the same with O4Saken's top for Harley Quinn. Last not least we need one version of the object without distortion.

It makes sense as there are only three points of reference on the human mesh -- which is the minimum needed to get such an algorithm to work at all -- for whatever size and dimension of any rigid object.
Four or perhaps even six points of reference might help things hold their shape, but that's not how the current code works -- and it would probably be quite a task to change it.

Even though one can create an algorithm for MakeClothes considering e.g. six points and calculating some form of average value, the reason of these three points is simple. The 3 index numbers are used in each line of the .mhclo file (first 3 columns). Otherwise you will find different values. MakeHuman itself does not know anything about something "rigid".

But when I didn't use any rigid groups for them, the jacket buttons (especially the lower one) were not just slightly distorted in terms of roundness, they were a squashed up wad of vertices that didn't even remotely look button-like.

And a high resolution, like you used for the buttons, even creates worse effects than a low resolution.

Sometimes, it's just more efficient to add things like props, hats and glasses in Blender. I do this all the time for assets I that have too many tris/ngons to redo for MakeClothes.

Yes, I guess it makes sense to upload these assets directly. Meanwhile we have "custom content" for that. I once did this, when I added the "modern glasses" to show how you can convert these glasses from optical ones to sunglasses.

http://www.makehumancommunity.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=13745

A good UV map prevents a lot of texture distortion, but it doesn't eliminate the problem of all fabrics looking spandex-like on heavy characters or when average sized characters are in stretched/bent poses.
Solid colors and small prints do work best, even though in reality large prints and bold stripes are rather flattering on plus-size humans.

Well, narrow-minded as I am, because I am only able to create these model-like characters , I did a render with the suit. Evi now finished her last shooting. Here she is, just leaving the town hall. Obviously as a representative of a conservative party.

Impossible in real life? Not at all ... at least not over here.

Danish Nikita Klæstrup has worked as a fashion model for several years, including topless pictures. She also was a member of Young Conservatives until after the 2015 general election.

Back to blender: I did not have to change a lot, only the lower button was hovering in the air, but it was completely round, so I pushed it to the body. I changed it a bit in the breast region. But I always must do that. Did you notice: Mindfront created a dress (F Dress 02) smaller than the bust size of the character. Using the delete groups you cannot really notice that.
The last thing I've done: I pushed the collar a bit down.

The changes took me 5 minutes. Looking for a conservative politician who is also a model took me one hour . So the suit is quite perfect

[wolgade]

the reason of these three points is simple. The 3 index numbers are used in each line of the .mhclo file (first 3 columns). Otherwise you will find different values. MakeHuman itself does not know anything about something "rigid".

Thanks for this statement. I could have known by sinply start thinking or having a look at a mhclo-file, but I never took the time to investigate how MC does the rigid magic. Simple answer: No magic at all. MC connects every proxy vertex to a triangle on the human. Usually every proxy vertex gets its own triangle. Rigid vertices share the same triangle.

[MargaretToigo]

Last not least we need one version of the object without distortion.

Usually, there is at least one button that isn't too badly distorted.
But if they all look bad then I just import the .obj and use the buttons from that, seeing as how I have to copy the vertex weights, anyway.

I mainly run into glaring problems with clothes distortion on humans that are outside of the average range of weight, age, proportions, etc.
There is little to no distortion of clothing -- and clothes fit best -- on humans that are close to the default settings for weight, age, proportions, etc.

Even though one can create an algorithm for MakeClothes considering e.g. six points and calculating some form of average value, the reason of these three points is simple. The 3 index numbers are used in each line of the .mhclo file (first 3 columns). Otherwise you will find different values. MakeHuman itself does not know anything about something "rigid".

Indeed, they may be called "rigid" in the documentation, but they are not, really.
Vertices assigned to *groups with three points of reference do behave differently from those that have only one point of reference, but it's not behavior I would call "rigid," like you can make things rigid in Blender by assigning all their vertices to one vertex group.

And a high resolution, like you used for the buttons, even creates worse effects than a low resolution.

Now, that is interesting as I would have thought it was the opposite, that higher resolution meshes would hold their shape better than those with lower resolution.
But perhaps the more vertices there are in a mesh, the more vertices there are that can potentially be assigned incorrectly by MakeClothes.

Well, narrow-minded as I am, because I am only able to create these model-like characters , I did a render with the suit. Evi now finished her last shooting. Here she is, just leaving the town hall. Obviously as a representative of a conservative party.

That's so cool. I really enjoy seeing other people's characters wearing something I made. And she looks fabulous, the sandals work great with it.

Everyone needs at least one formal conservative suit, regardless of their profession.

I make all kinds of humans, including some that many would consider "hotties" -- both male and female -- but clothes usually fit them quite well (large breasts aside), and my focus these days has been on getting clothes to fit humans that are outside of the average.

The changes took me 5 minutes. Looking for a conservative politician who is also a model took me one hour . So the suit is quite perfect

I always expect to have to do some adjusting in Blender, even if it's just the materials and textures.