My first POST ever!!!
I would like to have a character for an animation that isn’t always wearing the same thing all the time to simulate the passing of time… Do I model the body and then add the clothes or do I have to remodel the body every time they have to wear something different and redo the rigging of the character. Or can I just make the character and model the clothes and make them a softbody? And any useful tips for setting up a character for animation…
And also the reason I put this under animation is because I want to be able to animate the clothing…
PS How do I get this thread to stay at the top…
PS Is there a way to get this thread to stay at the top of my screen at all times, I think it’s called a sticky thread?
well, if they are shy, you might have to turn your head, or put up a plane or two and make a dressing room. If it’s a female model, you have to be sure it is a size too small and that she likes the color. 
Cloth would be the best answer, but the last time I checked it has some issues.
So, in ED, Proog’s coat was a character that was animated to follow his rigging. Generally, the clothing mesh can be childed to the armature and deformed like the base mesh.
You can just change textures/materials for shorts and T-shirts, and no-one would notice they are the same mesh with different colors. You will have to eventually give them a wardrobe, shorts, long pants, that sort of thing, but one mesh with different textures will go a long way.
But will I have to re-rig the character? By cloth do you mean softbodies?
And do you know how the professionals do it?
For example, should I model the clothing as part of the body and when the character needs different clothes for a scene just re-model their body?
The clothes object can just be an independent object using the same armature modifier that the body uses. It can be in another layer to easily be hidden or it can appended from another file as needed.
To rig the clothes you can use the “Copy Bone Weights” script to copy the rigging from the body and then tweak, if needed. Even if you choose to use softbodies you will have to rig the clothes.
I don’t exactly understand… So I model the clothes independently by themselves and use the same bone as the character to move them… And then just use the same bone weight? (How do I do the last part if what I have said is correct, and do you think I fully comprehend this method of clothing… And is this how the professionals would do it? THANKS!!!)
Could someone please give me some instructions?
Buy Bugman’s book:
I don’t mean to be rude, but you didn’t read the question… Or either you don’t know what is really contained in the book… I own the character animation book, it is the INTRODUCTION to Character Animation… When it shows you how to model a basic character it models the clothes as part of the character, I want a simple way I can change clothes for each scene…
So far I am thinking I am suppose to model the character and texture it and all, then add clothes by modeling the clothing as a separate object and then use the same bones as the character to deform it, but how do I copy the weight painting from the character to the clothing so they match (Someone described this earlier but didn’t explain exactly how it was done or achieved…)… I want to be able to change their clothing for different scenes, could anyone help… I don’t know if I even need to do the weight painting, but I need to make sure when the character moves they don’t move thier arm partially through the sleeve… And nothing unnatural…
Thanks…
The ‘professionals’ are really just guys with maybe a few more years of experience. How they do it depends on the project; there’s no magic way that the pros use.
You are really asking two questions:
- Should you model clothes as part of the character, or separately?
- Should you animate the clothes using a rig or softbodies?
For question #1, in my opinion it’s easier to model clothes as part of the character. This avoid various clipping/fitting issues, and saves you work, since you aren’t wasting time modeling a perfect body that nobody will ever see. Of course, if your animation calls for the character to add or remove clothing, then you have no choice but to model it separately.
For question #2, it depends on what choice you made for question #1. In order to use softbodies, you must model your clothes separately from the character. In that case, the physical simulation will save some time in animation, but the softbodies will also take more time to set up.
In my opinion, if your animation is long and involves lots of movement, it’s probably worth it to spend the time setting up a softbody system. If your animation is short, it will take less time to just animate it manually.
BTW, this is a forum, so there is no way to make threads stay at the top. A sticky thread is reserved by the admins for important information that everyone needs to see. Posting ‘bump’ messages to get your post back to the top is considered rude.
THANKS!!!
Would you have any idea on how to use softbodies as clothing OR would you know how to have it set up as a separate object where it is deformed by the same bones as the character?
THANKS AGAIN!!!
I haven’t used either method myself, so I can’t help much. This thread shows some incredible clothes. Although the author didn’t post settings, maybe they can give you ideas.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=96625&highlight=cloth
Also useful to look at:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=89972
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=88874
Um, I did read the question but you’re right, I don’t know much about what’s in the book even though I own it. You obviously didn’t do a search either because this site is ate up with the kind of info that you’re looking for. For instance, did you know that you can render your character’s walk cycle, then bring that render back in, change the look of his clothes by re texturing them, flip the whole deal horizontally, composite into another scene (while maintaining depth of course) and have the little sucker look like it’s a completely different sequence all without ever having to do a full re-render? All this in a matter of seconds cuz the character isn’t re-rendered, just re-textured.
You didn’t seem to want to do just a little bit of leg work so I gave you the short answer.
OK, but I would like to have the project set up to where I can go to different scenes and see exactly how they are set up, and all the clothing won’t be the same so the texture thing wouldn’t always work… Example, I could change the texture on a simple T-Shirt, but if I needed him to where something fancier in each scene I need a method of modeling the clothes to be animated… And I am sorry if you thought I was trying to be rude in previous post, but I have been looking for other post on the subject, but they don’t all fit the description of what I wanted to do…
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Your best bet is going to be softbodies as previously mentioned. Blender cloth is on tthe To-Do list for version 2.5 but there is no word as of yet whether this will actually be realized. It’s a very tall order. You’ll just have to play with the softbodies to see what they’re all about. They don’t behave exactly like cloth (they’re more like rubber) but they’re a lot of fun to play with. I can’t say much about character animation cuz I’m not really into it. I have animated exactly 1 character and that wasn’t Blender, it was Anim8or.
To see what’s in another scene residing in another .blend file press Shift+F1, browse to where the file you want to look at is located, click the file to browse it’s libraries, go to the “Scenes” folder and append or link (these options are located on the window’s header) the desired scene to your current project. You’ll have to go to the new scene after it’s appended by selecting it from the top window header or click it in the outliner if you have this window open (this is definitely the fastest way to jaunt in Blender).
I’m going to un-necro this post because it’s a question I struggled with at first too and maybe this will help someone else who’s starting out.
You can transfer weight paints from the body to clothing using weights->transfer weights in weight paint mode. However, if the clothing isn’t skin tight, this will not give you good deformations. So, if you’re doing anything complicated, you’ll have to fix it using a variety of techniques, depending on how exactly the clothing is formed and how realistic you want it to be. You can use fix weight painting manually, apply cloth physics, and/or add bones specifically to deform the clothing the way you want it to move. I’m no expert, but I’ve read elsewhere that for game models, frequently all three methods are used at once for different parts of the outfit.
As far as clipping issues, the only fix I’ve found so far are to create masks to hide whatever parts of the mesh are causing you problems. I found tutorials on YouTube for how to do this. If you want to “switch” clothing, it matters what your intended use case is. For example, if you want to do this in a game, you’d probably be better off handling part of this process in your game engine, not in blender.