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Pharmacist

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 4:47 pm    Post subject: NOTES Reply with quote

[center]Hello,
I thought I would post a tutorial for how to make a skirt in 3ds max, so that it could be available for all of the beginners to try and learn basics of meshing in 3DS max:D.

I am a very beginner, but I am understanding the tools used in this tutorial pretty well. I am not the best in this, there might be better tutorials (which I could not find), and there might be shorter ones. I am making prompt reference to all online resources I used.

Rules: 1) Please DO NOT send me a private message to either the forum or my page asking me for help. I am a real life student.
2) As I said, I am a beginner. My skirt is working enough for me. My tutorial does not have to illustrate every single step. But, I am sure that it may be helpful to any beginner.
3) For big developers and meshers, I am not looking for being an expert in this. Please do not undermine my effort in this.

I am going to simplify it as much as I can. Making a skirt, pants...etc can be easily divided into 3 steps
1- Edit poly, material Editor
2-Weight in Phyisque
3-Unwrap the UV template.
Note: the following website is great for tutoring 3DS max: (http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/sv_home.php.) It is amazing for the aforementioned steps.

So here we begin. I am going to show the steps in details
A-The female weight file can be found here (http://www.imvu.com/Developers/Female04_Anime01_WeightingPoseMASTER.zip)
B-download, unzip, note the following

Never delete any of the things associated
C-make sure you have 2 (256x512) JPG images one colored, one white. Name them for the body parts you want. Put them in a folder with the name of the body part you want to create

(Do not make them with the same name: for example, for the skirt name it (skirt.jpg, skirtOpacity.jpg) for right sleeve name it (Rsleeve.jpg, RsleeveOpacity.jpg) etc.)...I Hope this is clear.
D-Starting to create, most of the meshers start with cylinder, sphere, or cone. I am going to start my skirt with a cylinder.

Note: To save time, make the four views as this top, left, front and perspective :

There are many tools to the very right bottom of the 3ds max, you can use them to fix the views

E-Now back to our cylinder, we have to resize our height segments, width segments, by resizing the height and the width of the cylinder itself
Note, in any normal top template, you will find the side segments are (14) so keep your skirt to 14 side segment. for better results make it 28. make any height segments. preferred not be less than 10

F-Now in the modifier stack, make sure to select (EditPoly). Then select vertex.


Drag your mouse to select the very top line of vertices, click delete in your keyboard to delete the cap as you will never want it in your skirt. make the same to the very bottom line.
G-Select the whole mesh, in case you feel the mesh it too wide, then select resize tool



H- Using the select tool, select the upper line, move it up, the lower line, move it down, etc., that is to make it tall enough to cope with the avatar!

turn the vertex option off by clicking on it, move the mesh to center it in the avatar

I- Now as we made a choice by choosing 28 side segments, we must delete 14 vertices of the very top line in the skirt mesh (use remove option for this). Remove a vertex and leave one in succession.

like this:

ended like this

J-Using the resize tool, resize the first 2 lines, make them smaller, the 2 under them less smaller, to end with a smooth skirt.

Now a very important note, we need a complete height segments of our skirt to meet the center of our avatar (line A should be exactly facing the line B)

So, turn the vertex option off. Select the rotate tool, rotate it slightly to be exactly facing the center of the top.

At this point, my computer crashed, had to start over, so the mesh might be a bit bigger. no worries Very Happy
H- Now we want to "overlie" the first line of the vertices of the skirt on the last line of vertices of the female top. We do not use the welding tool so that the two meshes keep them separate, i.e. NOT one mesh. So we are going to use "toggle snap" tool and select each vertex alone, move it to the corresponding vertex in the top. you will find it moving directly and easy. no worries Very Happy

ended like this
.
So now the vertices of the skirt are perfectly aligned to the top.
Now make the material editor as in this tutorial (starting at part 2) (Do NOT export right now) (http://members.shaw.ca/m00s1/comps/comps.htm).
Part 1 is over, editpoly, material editor
[/center]
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Last edited by Pharmacist on Thu May 27, 2010 11:26 am; edited 6 times in total
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Pharmacist

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 5:01 pm    Post subject: PART II: The Physique Part Reply with quote

[center]Here we will continue. I would like to add a very important note about material editor, which I did not pay attention to it, so I made horrible mistakes in the beginning.
I-When completing the material editor steps (specifically when you reach to the naming step) we find that in the link I gave, she named it torso[0]. The [0] part is important, as when naming the lower body we will name it bottom[0] because we want these two parts to have same material. but when adding a skirt, you should give it name (skirt[1]), Right sleeve (Rsleev[2]) for left sleeve we want it to be same as right sleeves so name it (Lsleeve[2]). I hope this is clear as this is a very important step.


--------------------------------------------------------------------
The weight in physique part is an trial and error process based on some rules of thumb. I mean try different weights, move the animation button in the 3ds max, see the avatar from all views, so you will know where exactly you need to work more. One of the rules of thumb, the vertices welded together must have the same weight. Another rule is vertices on any line of symmetry must be weighted to the bones on both sides of this line of symmetry.
NOTE: NOT AFTER ADDING THE PHYSIQUE MODIFIER YOU CAN RETURN AND PLAY WITH THE EDIT POLY MODIFIER.
MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS COMPLETED REGARDING TO EDITABLE POLY AND MATERIAL EDITOR.
This following tutorial is perfect for initializing the weighting process. (http://www.imvu.com/creators/education_center.php?tutorial_id=2225422).
Here are some important notes about the vertices colors you might see in case of adding physique modifier:

For example, the vertex selected now is assigned to more than one bone
(actually 4 bones)

Here is an image for many colors

It is one rule (based on my experience on this). I concluded it in this photo

NOTE; USE THE ANIMATION BUTTON EVERY TIME YOU MAKE CHANGES SO THAT YOU CAN SEE AND OBSERVE THE DIFFERENCES.
*Your weight in physique may depends on trial and error process and your common sense.

I found this link have Diagrams detailing the vertex weights for tight cloths: (http://www.psychodogstudios.com/betterbodies/downloads.php)
Another rule of thumb "the more the weight the more the effect of the bone on the vertex".

By this part 2 will be peacefully finished.
[/center]
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Pharmacist

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 5:03 pm    Post subject: Part Three : Unwrap The UV Template. Reply with quote

[center]As a note regarding to the Weight in physique part, I would like to remind you the weight in physique in case of IMVU meshes locates between (0-1).= It is very sensitive to any changes. and you will notice that.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, I thought It was an easy part, but I found that the UV maps for composite products ( the normal top and bottom mesh ) were already edited and no action has to be added.
UV map is the standard term for texture coordinates associated with each vertex in the mesh. For our mapping of the skirt, we will use cylindrical mapping, since it is the natural choice for the skirt since it is derived from a cylinder.
But for something like a skirt, You will have to do more actions. Very Happy
J-As shown, add UV unwrap modifier to list (NOW NEVER THINK TO PLAY AROUND WITH EITHER PHYSIQUE NOR EDIT POLY MODIFIERS), click to extend the modifier, select face, then click the button (edit) down there.

K-A window will come up. It looks like a map. now drag your mouse all over that map, it will turn red.

L-Now click on the button that says (cylindrical):

See the Yellow thing (I meant) it is the enveloping yellow cylinder around your mesh. You can move it up and down to be on the exact location that matches your mesh, you can resize it as well.

M-Now you see the green line over there, its name is (seem) and you need it to be on the center of the back so use the rotate tool for this.

After feeling fine about centering the seem line, click on the cylinder button to turn it off, and click any where so now you can see your map.

As you can see, there are some vertices out of our dark blue box, so they will not appear in the uv map that we will save, so select from the UV unwrap modifier the option (vertex) and try to get them inside the box.

As an end product:

N- Now click tools, choose render UV map:

A window will pop up, make the size 256x256, then click render uv template

A window will again pop up with the templates, click save as JPG.

O- Now export as in this tutorial http://members.shaw.ca/m00s1/comps/comps.htm
[/center]
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 5:12 pm    Post subject: NOTES Reply with quote

Frankly, I missed very important points that I would like to clarify.
A-About the Editable poly modifier, It means that you modify and change the shape (morphology) of your mesh so that it can cope with your needs and these kinds of changes are mainly easily done if you have used 3ds max before and know how to play with vertex, edges and so on.

B- About the Physique modifier, We can make some changes to the skin composite meshes we already have on the avatar, like make the chest smaller, thin waist ..etc and this will not change any of the physique properties for each vertex, so you do not have to play with the physique of the skin composite parts.

Well, The weight in physique is to tell every vertex what bone should it be moving with (i.e. How far the bone will effect the vertex that aligned to it).

Once I clicked the physique modifier, I do the following steps:
1- Attach to node
2- Pick the pelvis node as a root and initialize the process
3- Select the vertex or the bunch of vertices I want to weight----->vertex is now blue (plus blue shaped)
4- Click assign to link (link is the yellow very thin thread in the bone) and we generally name it the bone.
5- Click on that link ( bone )-----> vertex is now red (plus red shaped)
6- Click lock assignment ----------> vertex is now red (box red shaped)
7- Click type in weight button and that is when a window will pop up so if you want to assign it to one bone the vertex will remain red box shaped. If you want to assign it to more than one bone, the vertex will be dark red shaped.
I follow the steps in this tutorial exactly (http://www.imvu.com/creators/education_center.php?tutorial_id=2225422)
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 7:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You are so AWESOME!!! Thanks so much for this tut! I am going to try it this weekend. It at least gives me a starting point and maybe I can go ahead and try to make something.
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 9:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great tutorial!! I love you!!!
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 2:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nicely done Smile
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 3:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wow.. <333.. im trying to learn how to mesh!!.. and i loved this tut.. <3333.. thank you so much <3
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 3:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

fantastic... Bookmarks.. just what i need :DDDDDDD Gives mega hugglez to pharma
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you so much all Very Happy. Hope really this is helpful!
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you so much for this. Smile I cannot get the snap toggle thing to work properly, meaning, when I am trying to snap the skirt vertices to the top vertices...it is not happening for some reason. Sad It will go all over the place...but not to the top vertices..Sad
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dreamy wrote:
Thank you so much for this. Smile I cannot get the snap toggle thing to work properly, meaning, when I am trying to snap the skirt vertices to the top vertices...it is not happening for some reason. Sad It will go all over the place...but not to the top vertices..Sad


You are welcome!
Are you using the (3d) snap toggle option?!
Right click on the snap toggle button and make sure the (Vertex) is marked!
I hope this will help.
After using the snap toggle, turn it off by clicking on it ( turns gray).
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Embarassed I'm embarassed, the vertex snap toggle was not on. Sad
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

it is OK Very Happy Good luck developing!
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you so much, i will work on this tutorial...hopefully i would come up with a mesh of my own soon; can't thank you enough.
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