I'm thinking of getting zbrush to flesh out the chuck model to make my own versions, I have 2 questions I need to know before I try it. Please keep in mind I am very new to all of this and will need help understanding the technical side.

1) clothing: I've seen YouTube video of someone adding clothes to daz genesis model, from what I understand and can make out (it's more of a music with speed drawing video) is that the model is imported, a mask area is applied to the area (a dress) and then make a certain thickness and extracted or duplicated so have two layers. Obviously it need a bit of help, but I'm sure I can figure that out. My question is, if I make clothes for chuck the same way, using zbrush to mask the shirt area and ad some thickness and texture, do I need to do anything to ensure it will fit on different size actors? It seems that clone cloth adapts.

2) Color: I know you can extract the diffuse from an item and edit in Photoshop etc but I would need more control as the unwrapped shape makes it a bit confusing. Could I paint it in zbrush and export the whole thing? I would ideally like to shape clothes and faces in zbrush, add texture and Color, then import to iclone as fbx or obj whatever would be correct (?) which would mean I now have object, bump map and diffuse. I hope this is clear, as I say I'm still learning so unsure about a lot of things still.

3) bonus question: I also want to sell my work in market, do I need to do anything extra (to the clothes/actors) before I add them?

Thanks for your patience!!

P.s. I found warlord's video that show that what I want is possible here: http://youtu.be/Q6ogfR8z2Dw I just don't know what or how he's doing it.


- Mike

With the greatest respect, your questions suggest you may have some misconceptions in your understanding of characters used in Iclone and of Clone Cloth.

Iclone characters are created according to strict guidelines supplied by Reallusion to developers with 3DS Max. (Since I'm not one of those informed users I can only explain according to how it seems to me - and others may correct me if I'm wrong.)

The native iclone characters have upper body, lower body,etc. Those with clone-cloth (Clone Cloth is Reallusion's own name) have had those parts of the body built to include one or more cloth meshes also. So a clone cloth upper body can have a long dress down to the ankles. This can be paired with a lower body wearing trousers to make one avatar.

DAZ Genesis is a different kind of figure: the body is a one-piece mesh and clothes meshes, boots meshes, etc. are added over this. When the clothed figure is exported from DAZ to Iclone, the clothes and shoes, etc. are combined so that the character's limbs and clothes use one and the same skeleton.

You can make your own clothes for Genesis in a modelling package (such as Silo, Blender, Hexagon) and fit these to a Genesis character within DAZ Studio before exporting the whole figure.

The method of starting to build clothes by copying a portion from the Genesis mesh, which you speak of, may be against DAZ's terms and conditions. DAZ is very protective of its meshes.

The normal method of making clothes is to enclose the body in a cylinder and move edges and points to create the garment from the cylinder. A far easier but limited solution, which I haven't personally used, is to buy Dress-Shop2 for DAZ studio. It has only been released this week over at DAZ. This provides several basic clothes meshes for Genesis which can be cut to size and textured. If nothing else, it could be an inexpensive way to create clothing prototypes very quickly.

Zbrush is a full-blown, professional program with a price to match (as you will know). Its speciality is digital sculpting and I wouldn't personally see it as the best tool to use for creating clothes meshes.

You could try sculpting in a program which is free and has some similarities to Zbrush (with greatly reduced features, obviously) called Sculptris also from Pixologic. It is Zbrush's little brother.


Lastly, I posted some very poor and trivial renders recently in a video where I showed a figure being used as an animated prop. Poor though it is, it isn't a million miles away from creating my own figures and clothes.

Here is the link:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jZOq9iv27g

Warlords video makes it look easy and if you followed the method used in the vid you would not need to worry about clone cloth BUT and it is a big BUT, after you have created your character in Zbrush (you may want to look at 3dcoat aswell as its much cheaper and does the job just aswell) you need to rig the character and thats not easy. If you did not need the character to talk you could use Mixamo to auto rig the character then use 3dexchange pro to convert it to Iclone.

mixamo costs about $75 to rig per character.

To be honest with you there are big gaps in your understanding of how to get a character into Iclone.



I Make My Mates Do The CanCan For The Amusement Of Killer Robots