Hello,
Good day to you and anyone you happen to meet.

I have been working with 3Dxchange 4 and the bonus resource pack and would like to know what the proposed clothing pipeline back to IC4 would be.

I have taken the Character_Base_for_Maya.FBX (a human) and modified it in overall shape; and use 3Dx4 to come back into IC4. This works. But he is naked. How do I dress him?
Besides being naked I have learned that my modified figure can take a G4 head, replace hands, shoes and hair and of course accessories. Good. The upper and lower parts can be exchanged with G2 upper and lower parts but the shapes distort and lose all the modification, so this must mean the meshes I modified in Maya are replaced.

My characters are designed in DAZ Studio but my thought was I would redesign, but lack of Vista/Win 7 64 bit support prevented me from using the 3DS Max plug-in in previous years. I want to buy the DAZ FBX Plug-in but the tutorial shows Victoria in IC4 naked. It is unclear if the 3DX4 FBX import will also bring in the DAZ figures conforming cloth. My gut says no.

I guess one could also endlessly edit OBJ files and rebuild a character’s parts (thus rebuild the avatars) with each change of costume, but I feel before I can complete my movie, someone will have built a better way in IC5.

I have been lurking since IC3 (sorry) was launched and my goal has been the same: make a movie with my own custom avatars (custom beyond what can be done in IC4 only). BTW my respects to so many of you and your generosity of spirit in these many posts (double to Mr .Edwards).

I do not wish to make porn so what is the best way to dress the characters that we can now create and/or bring in with these new tools. Imagine you wish to build a fat little Buddha with as much detail as the Old Tribesman example from the pack, how would you dress him?

Hi,

Depending on your experience with modelling you can edit the mesh of the avatar to create the clothing. This is the way that single mesh models are created (CloneCloth is double mesh). You would use the various tools of your chosen modeller to sculpt the shape of the mesh to the desired look of the clothing. There are some example videos in the Developer Center that show this process in action. They are for 3DS Max but the ideas can be used in most modellers.

If you don't wish to create your clothing from scratch then you can use the CloneCloth avatars as your starting point and expand them from there. You can export the CloneCloth avatars to OBJ format from 3DXchange4 for further editing in your modeller.

If you do wish to use the Daz Studio FBX Plugin then you will be able to dress your avatar first with the clothing you wish to use and then export to FBX. It should be remembered however that Daz avatars such as Victoria4 and Michael4 are very high in polygons. When you add clothing to these models the polygon count will be even greater. You will find these have a big effect on performance in the real time enviroment of iClone4. Older Daz avatars such as Victoria 1 & 2 will give better results though.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com