Characters and clothing?

Hi

I have another quick question about Characters. And that is characters and clothing. So far I have created characters with their clothing built on the main character. AKA the shirt is the body and the pants are the leg. But I was goign to use a model provided in order to get a better looking head and bone structure. The only problem is I don’t know how to “cloth” these models. (And I am not trying to make THAT kind of a movie). I mean I could create objects around the legs and call them pants and even link them directly to the bone structure but once the leg moves how do you make sure the “skin” does not go through the pants, I am sure it is some sort of constraint but I don’t know what or how to do it. Any Suggestions.

BlackManta :Z

standard practice is to delete the vertices that are beneath something and will not be seen. however, if you wish to keep the original faces, you could try using ipo drivers. go to the orange site to read up on them.

hymm ok that makes sense…Does that ever mess with the armature, I mean say a “woman” model has a short skirt on, will the lack of upper legs cause problems when she walks? Or will the skirt mold appropriately?
BlackManta :Z

some things can be accomplished with weight painting, but if you want the skirt to take on the shape of the leg as the leg contacts it, you are going to have to specify the shape and the timing. look into shape keys and ipo drivers.

With some tweaking, I have rigged lots of clothes, including short skirts, with the transfer weights script. In this old model for example, I deleted the hidden faces and the clothes still keep the shape of the body:

http://arc.0daymeme.com/Yz/pose01jpg.YzR8qR4WACvu6B_V8ElhC.thumb.jpg