What you're describing sounds like the "developer's rig" CR2 that often comes with figures. The one that came with V4 references a V4 geometry w/o head or feet, but the CR2 contains all the rigging info and basic morphs you might want to have in a clothing item. I use the "dev rig" as the "donor" when rigging a clothing item via the Setup Room, and I've also used it as the "base" in the Fitting Room.
The main advantage is that it has only the essentials, so I can just let Poser copy all the morphs into the clothing, whereas with a regular V4 (or S-16) as the "donor," I'd have to wade through lots of morphs to choose the ones I want to put into the clothes. If I later want to copy specific S-16 or V4 morph package morphs into the clothing, I can do that using Poser's "Copy Morphs From" command -- although I don't always know which morphs actually need to go into clothing for a better fit and which ones don't.
I have in the past used a Sasha-16 CR2 as the "donor rig" in the Setup room and as a "base" in the Fitting Room, but when I do that, the clothing inherits every aspect of Sasha-16's parameter dials, including all the extra dial groups that are there for info or organization only. Then it's kind of confusing to select the clothing item and see a parameter panel that looks almost exactly like that of the figure wearing the clothing!
I've thought about making a stripped-down version of a Sasha-16 base to serve as a "donor" for rigging clothing, with the extra parameter groups removed along with any morphs that shouldn't transfer into clothing -- except that I don't know which ones those are! Karina, is that what you're thinking of making when you refer to a "mannequin"? Basically a "dev rig" customized for the Sasha-16 version of V4? I think that would be handy to have, since you're probably the only one who really understands which parts of Sasha-16 might be useful to have in clothing and which parts might not!
I'd love to know how to make an "injection CR2"! While I was helping with beta testing, I kept updating my characters to the newest version, and it's not that bad to do it manually. But setting up a way to do it via a library file seems more efficient.
The way I do it manually is:
1) load the current character and (a) save her Morph Channels to the Pose library. I also take note of which morph packages I used to create the character (which I record in a notebook app). (b) save her material set to the Materials library 2) load the S-16 "starter" I previously set up with the newer version (which will only have the bare minimum of morph packages that I know I want on all female character), and inject whatever morph packages the character needs 3) apply the Morph Channels pose file and Materials set files I saved in step 1 4) re-parent any jewelry or hair from the beta figure to the newer figure 5) save the newer figure to the Character library (with a version indicator in the file name)
Because I don't always trust that Poser's Pose library has saved the info I need, I often record a character's morph settings by hand, which is a pain. There's also the issue that a beta 2-16 character might have S-16-specific dial data saved under a different name. So I'm hoping an "injection CR2" might help to make it more transparent what's going on in the process!
I've gotten pretty comfortable with adjusting falloff zones with the Joint Editor, but I haven't really messed much with weight maps and I don't even know what bulge maps are for, although I can make a guess based on their name :-) So I think I just need to do some experiments with editing the bulge maps and/or replacing a weight map to get a feel for how they work. I've used Poser's "weight painting" tools in other contexts, particularly the Fitting Room but also on Magnets I was using to make morphs, but in those contexts precision isn't super important, whereas I suspect it is so with joints.
BTW, I finally got the MayaDoll schoolgirl shirt to work before I read your reply, but your reply gives me a clue as to why my last attempt worked, and it's not what I thought it was. For the last attempt, I loaded the V4 Developer Rig and the shirt OBJ and used the Fitting Room to fit the shirt to the Dev Rig. I saved the shirt as a figure and let Poser auto-group it. When I tried out the shirt in a fresh scene and copied my S-16 starter's joint zones into it, it worked reasonably well (far better than it had been), so I figured I'd finally hit on the right combo of steps.
But then you mentioned that the "further away from the figure body mesh the clothing is, the more inaccurate it becomes," and I realized what actually must've made the difference. In this last attempt, I let the Fitting Room run just a smidge of "Tighten" on the shirt, thus moving the clothing mesh closer to the figure's body. What I like so much about the MD schoolgirl shirt is that it ISN'T form fitting and in fact has a loose, almost baggy cut. For my teenage characters who like to wear baggy clothes, that's the kind of uniform shirt they'd choose. But I can now see the problem with clothing items that are too baggy!
I was wanting to make a boxy school blazer for the girls to wear (probably from an M4 suit jacket), b/c all the blazers I have or have seen are ridiculously form fitting. But now I'm thinking I'll have to work out a solution for clothes that are meant to be pretty far from the body.
One more thing: when I use an S-16 figure as the "donor" rig in the Fitting or Setup rooms, the clothing item acquires ALL the parameter info and groups from the S-16 figure, which is not ideal (given how tedious it is to delete parameter dial groups manually). I suppose I could strip all of that out of an S-16 and save it as an "S-16 dev rig"? Are there any of your custom morphs for S-16 that would be particularly useful to also have in clothing? I don't usually copy V4's FBMs into clothing b/c the only body changes I make in different characters are based on scaling, but I only just thought to wonder about the custom morphs.
I've been going through various "school uniform" items I'll be using for a project to see how various items fit and how well they adapt to S-16 (2019)'s rigging. I've been using Poser's "copy joint zones from" menu command on blouses, jackets, shoes, and socks, and the S-16 "copy joint centers" pose file on skirts, and for the most part that's all it takes to get a good fit.
But a few blouse items are not cooperating, esp. around the shoulders, and I haven't yet figured out why. The problems happen when I use S-16's Easy Pose arm dials (which I LOVE, BTW!), so I'm thinking maybe some clothing items just can't adapt to the way S-16's shoulders and collars are working together? I get two kinds of issues: (1) pokethrough at the top outer edge of the shoulder; and (2) crumpling of the mesh along the top of the shoulder and into the collar of the blouse. The first type happens on nearly all of the blouses I have by 3DAge, but I found it easy enough to make "loosen" morphs, and then I discovered I can also fix it by going to the blouse's collar actor and dialing in a bit of bend.
The second type I have yet to find a solution for. I tried messing around with the Joint Editor, thinking that maybe I needed to shrink the collar bend weightmap on the blouse so that arm up/down woudln't reach all the way into the blouse's collar, but I think I just made things worse b/c I don't really understand what's going on.
I initially came across the seocnd type of issue when I tried to re-model and then rig a "school girl" blouse from the old figure, Maya Doll. I tried various ways of grouping (manually, auto) and of rigging (Fitting Room, OBJ2CR2, Setup Room), and every method produced the same result of a lifted arm basically crushing the blouse's collar. So I figured I'd done something wrong in the process, until I came avross a blouse for V4 that did the same thing.
So that left me wondering: what is the best way to model and rig clothing for S-16 (whether the mesh is created from scratch, repurposed from another figure, or a V4 item that needs fixing)?
For example, do you model and rig to the "original" V4 and only apply S-16's rig (joint zones) when you're ready to conform the clothing item to an S-16 figure? Or would it be better to model and rig directly to the S-16 figure instead (using a base S-16 as a "donor" rig in the Setup Room or as the base in the Fitting Room)?
To what extent might you need to modify the S-16 weightmaps once they've been applied to a clothing item, and how do you figure out what/how to modify?
I'm asking as someone who wants to figure out how to make a few of her own clothing items work better with Karina's fantasticaly useful S-16 version of V4, not as someone who plans to offer V4 clothes for sale!
In an effort to avoid using Aiko or Girl FBMs as I set up an existing character on a "fresh" S-16 base, I found that I could use a few of S-16's SCALING dials to get a similar shape (narrower waist, fuller hips).
But when I loaded a "fresh" uniform skirt for the character (which is the skirt from V4's Classic Dress 2 with a custom plaid texture), I found that the skirt did not "follow" S-16's Hip xScale and Hip zScale values. I had already applied the "Copy Joint Centers" pose file and had checked "Include Scales" when conforming, and the skirt did follow other scaling. The only relevant FMB dialed in was Bulk, which the skirt came with.
The weird thing is that it isn't just a case of the skirt not scaling up to match the figure's 102% values on Hip x and z scales. The skirt actually seems to shift slightly on the +x axis, so that only the right side of the figure's hip pokes through the skirt mesh, as you can see in the attached renders.
I have a feeling the problem might be in the skirt's rigging, rather than in S-16's, but I don't know enough about how these things work to figure that out. I ended up just setting the character's Hip scaling back to 100%, which is fine, but I still want to know what causes this kind of problem and how best to resolve it. (So that 20 years from now, I'll finally be skilled enough to make V4 outfits that work exactly the way every user expects them to, if there are any users left...! )
After working with props and other stuff for a while, I've just started to work again on the characters for my webcomic novel, and I've encountered a problem with V4's clothes that may be specific to the SASHA-16 version. So I'm hoping for a little insight from other S-16 users!
The problem is with the way some tops (i.e., shirts or tops of dresses) distort below the breasts, particularly when the figure uses certain FBMs. I've battled with the problem in the past, with limited success, but I think the key to solving it lies in understanding what causes it.
Before SASHA-16 came out, I was using the Nerd3D-WM version of V4 (which has nice weight-mapping but lacks all of S-16's other nifty features). I transferred most of my main characters over to S-16 early on, but today I went through the process of transferring my last remaining main character -- and that's when I discovered that the clothing fit problem might be related to S-16.
One of this character's "stock outfits" is the Veranil top and skirt from the DAZ Store, and when the Nerd3D-WM version of the character is wearing the Veranil top, it has only a slight distortion under the breasts. But when I put the top on the S-16 version of the character, the distortion was dramatic enough that even a dark texture couldn't hide it! (See the "smooth shaded lined" renders I've attached.)
Here are the steps I followed:
- Loaded the Veranil top from the library (from original CR2) - Conformed it to the S-16 V4 character, with boxes checked for Include Morphs and Include Scales - Applied Karina's "S-16 Copy Joint Centres to Clothes" script to the top - Used Poser's "Copy Morphs From" menu to transfer the character's FBMs to the top (Bulk, PearFigure, Voluptuous, Aiko4, and AikoStylized*)
*These are the FBMs I use most often in my female characters, and I don't use any PBMs b/c they cause too much hassle with fitting clothes (at least for my purposes). The FBMs are typically set to values between .2 and .4, and I "transfer" them to an S-16 based figure by dialing the values in manually. (I save a library preset to transfer head morph settings, but not body.) My "base" S-16 has only Morphs++ and Aiko4 loaded.
When I saw the distortion in the Veranil top, I zeroed the character's FBM dials and dialed them back in one at a time, which allowed me to see that Bulk and PearFigure do not contribute to the problem, while Voluptuous, Aiko4, and AikoStylized do (as does Girl4, based on a previous experience w/ another character).
If I was doing one-time renders of single-use characters, I'd either avoid using the problematic FBMs or use Poser's Morph Brush to smooth out the area after posing the figure. But those aren't options for characters I intend to use over and over in a webcomic, esp. since they all use some degree of Aiko4 (for a slightly more stylized look). I tried switching the top to unimesh and using SubD, but that made no difference.
So now I'm trying to figure out: WHY does this happen with my S-16-based characters, and what's the best way to solve the problem for the V4 tops that distort this way?
If the problem is in the geometry of the tops, I'm willing to try and fix it in my modeler, but I'd need to know what I'm trying to fix. If the problem is in the Aiko4 and Girl4 morphs, I could try making my own FBM with a similar shape so I no longer need to use either of those (for bodies, anyway). If the problem is coming from the rigging, then I don't mind messing around with the Joint Editor, but I'd need a clue as to what I should be aiming for!