Topic: Need Blender 2.8 IMVU Clothing Tutorial

[Guyon]

I found the blender 2.8  Female04 (clothing).blend file and made a skirt.  But the skeleton is a little confusing.
Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to bind my skirt object to the skeleton? And what number do I use to import to IMVU  just 2 for female?

A tutorial would be even better, but  I will take anything to get started getting my skirt bound to the IMVU skeleton.

Thanks.

[kat]

There's a tutorial on the way but for now... All products use the same principles of construction in that a Mesh is linked (Parented) to an Armature which it controls using vertex groups. If you've already made an accessory you can make clothing (in principle) as all you need to do is weight paint the appropriate bone to corresponding sections of the mesh, the thigh bones for example might only influence the lower left/right of a short skirt, the hip bones the upper sections and so on. The trick is getting the influence balance correct so the mesh deforms as would be expected... this can take a bit of time, effect and export/import testing in IMVU.

These are tutorials I wrote up for IMVU's Educational Center, have a read in the meantime in lieu of the video.
- Weight Painting - https://create.imvu.com/knowledge-base/weight-painting-blender/
- Avatar Files Explained - https://create.imvu.com/knowledge-base/blender-avatar-files-explained/
- Avatar Skeleton - https://create.imvu.com/knowledge-base/skeletons-blender/#avatar-skeleton
- Skeletons & Bone Relationships - https://create.imvu.com/knowledge-base/skeletons-bone-relationships/

[Guyon]

I understand how your Accessory bones worked but when I loaded the Female04 (clothing).blend it was very different from the bones in the Female04 (accessories).blend.
Am I supposed to use the Female04 (accessories).blend file to add my skirt?

I can't wait to see your cloth tutorial. Will it be with the others?
I am currently working with Rich Colburn in getting his Modeling Cloth into IMVU. His hope is to make an affordable Marvelous Designer-like product and I want him to succeed.
https://blendermarket.com/products/modeling-cloth

Thank you for your fast replay kat, your contribution to the Blender community is invaluable

[kat]

For clothing in Blender 2.8+ use Female04 (clothing).blend

Yes, each Starter File is set up for specific product types based on the information IMVU actually needs or uses so for example, bone orientation differs but not their relative influence between the clothing and accessory files - the way each deforms and articulates the mesh. This difference is largely because an accessory item generally must be exported with mesh and skeleton (even though the latter may not actually be used), whereas clothing only needs the mesh.

As a result the clothing rig can be more representative and match the visual structure and articulation of the avatar, whereas the accessory skeleton cannot, it needs to match the bones actual orientation in IMVU (they're not the same as Blender) - for clothing we're just interested in vertex group influence for the mesh(es) with accessories both are needed.

So... for clothing you use the same vertex groups principle but instead of a single group being named "AttachmentRoot" (or "AttachmentNode") as needed for accessories, a given clothing item might have several groups, a short skirt for example might have "rtThigh"/"lfThigh", "rtHip"/"lfHip" and "Spin01" influencing different parts of the mesh appropriately, when the armature is articulated only bone-relative sections of the mesh move - what you're doing is assigning particular bones articulation influence over individual vertices based on their respective positions and deformation expectations.

All KatsBits authored Blender 2.8 tutorials are being published in the Blender 2.8+ Knowledgebase - https://www.katsbits.com/codex, the IMVU specific ones are here - https://www.katsbits.com/codex/blenderimvu/ (the ones linked above were requested by IMVU for their Creator Center).

A Blender'd version of MD would be pretty interesting.

[Guyon]

I have to say KatsBits, you are a master of what you do using Blender and IMVU.  And I thank you for your dedication to this topic.  Your answer went a little over my head but I tried it and got an inviable skirt and legs.  LOL  I am just going to wait for your tutorial and I am sure it will be amaming like your other ones.
Many thanks