Mindfront wrote:Thank you for taking time to do this detailed inspiring guide.
Making own vertex group assignments is the most tedious part in the entire clothing creation process, but necessary if the clothes have more details.
I'm glad to be of some assistance. There isn't a whole lot of documentation on MakeClothes, especially how to use own vertex groups and *rigid vertex groups, so I hope this helps to clear up some of the mystery.
Asymmetrical clothing meshes with details and embellishments (like buttons and brooches) are all unique in structure and design, and each needs to be analyzed and tested individually.
The more experience one gets making various types of assets, the more effectively one should be able to analyze and test different vertex group assignments.
Mindfront wrote:Have you tried Blender's new Surface Deform modifier? A very good and fast help to make the clothes to follow the body without weight painting.
I've got Blender 2.79 installed, but I haven't played around with it very much thus far -- I've been rather obsessed with MakeClothes lately.
A lot of the new features seem to be about improvements to Cycles, which I don't use very often, but I will definitely have to have a look at the new Surface Deform modifier.
Mindfront wrote:It's very simple to make your "semi-real" clothes to look almost real if needed and I am very happy for your contributions as it makes the freedom of choice greater.
Well, you've got the photorealism thing down, the renders on your thread about skin textures are incredible. Getting the skin right is a large part of staying out of that uncanny valley.
MakeClothes forces you to create good topology. It won't even run if there are tris, n-gons or vertices with too many poles.
And even when you've got an all-quad mesh that follows all the rules, it's not gonna fit or deform well if its structure is noisy and/or inconsistent.
Mindfront wrote:in most cases the less topology the less weird deformations as so far experienced but then one have to think about the texture as when a low resolution mesh is subdivided the texture along the uv seams can be ugly deformed.
It seems that, like a lot of stuff in CG, it's a six of one, half dozen of another situation that depends upon what something will be used for and how much of it will be seen up close.