Cutting Clothes in UV Mapper for Poser, pt I
There's a lot of good tutorials out there on how to model clothes, but a lot of them skimp on detail when it comes to cutting the pieces of the clothing so they fit Poser figures. Here's my attempt to fill in that gap and show some tricks I found to make things easier.
Tip: Get a nice cup of tea and put on some soothing music. You'll need it. ;-)
You'll need UV Mapper for this. You can get the free version at UVMapper.com. There's a free and a commercial version. I have the commercial version, but everything in this tutorial is possible with the free version.
This tutorial uses DAZ 3D's Victoria model. I figured that this would be the easiest for compatibility. If you own P5, you can use Judy as she is cut the same way, so you can use her for the top. If you have P4, Victoria 1 is about $13, so it's not too expense, and the model is seriously worth it. If you have V3, then you'll be fine. V3 has only 1 neck part, while V1 and V2 have 2 necks, but I'll point out where you need to be careful to get this to work. If you're really determined, you can use Posette (the default P4 female), but you'll have to look at how Posette is cut and go from there. (Here's a list of body part names for the most commonly used meshes, including Posette.)
Download the tutorial files here. (360KB.)
Yep, Vicki really needed a new, skin-tight top with no sleeves. (Hey, the tutorial is for grouping, not designing clothes.) ;-)
It's important to understand the difference between groups and materials. Groups are the body parts of the item: chest, abdomen, etc. The groups have to correspond to where the groups are located on the model you are trying to clothe. The tighter the outfit, the more careful you must be. (It doesn't have to be pixel perfect, thankfully!) Materials are the different color areas, such as trim, buttons, etc. If you create a jersey with vertical strips running down the sides of the body, then the material will span several groups. Conversely, if you create several horizontal stripes on the arms, then you might have several materials within one group.
When I create my clothing, I split the clothing by material. This way, I can have things like cuffs, neck trim, shirt material, bottom trim, etc with clean lines. Although this can also be done in UVMapper, I prefer to do this in the modeling program as UVMapper's selection tools are still a bit primitive and it has to select an entire polygon, even if it means a jagged line. If I do the materials in Rhino (my current choice for modeling clothes) I can cut off the material exactly where I want it, and it will have smooth lines. (Assuming I didn't fubar it in Rhino.) I create the groups in UVMapper because I don't need quite as much precision, and I can't imagine trying to do splits for groups as well as materials in Rhino! (If I were going to model a creature, I'd create the groups in Rhino as that requires more precision and the coloration tends to be associated with body parts.)
Tip: When I save my clothing from Rhino, I save it in :Runtime:Geometries:Crescent (Obviously substitute your name for mine.) This puts it in the correct Poser folder so you'll be ready later to play with your clothing character file. I save the file as clothing-unmapped.obj. This let's me know later which version is safe to delete when I'm finished with this painful torture.
When you open up your clothing in UVMapper, it's going to look goobered. (That's a technical term.) ;-)
Go to Map: Planar and use the settings below:
This gives you a nice template with the front and back sides together. It probably won't be used for the final texture map, but it's great for cutting.
Using the selection tool, grab a section at the bottom where the hip is on Vicki. (Again, Judy cut the same, the proportions are a bit different.) At the moment, you don't need to be exact - just take a guess. If you're wrong, you'll be able to fix it later. If you're right, you'll feel doubly smart.
Go to Tools: Assign to: Group. You'll see some options in the drop down box. Don't accept them. Be a rebel! Blaze your own path! Type in the box: hip then hit OK. (You'll be told that the group doesn't exist and it will ask you if you want to create the figure. Hit "Yes.")
As soon as you assign the group, hit the [ key on the keyboard. This will hide the hip group. (This makes life much easier.)
Select what you think the abdomen would be and assign it to group ... abdomen. Hide it as well.
Note: spelling does count, and you must get the capitalization just right. Hip is not the same as hip in Poserland. That's why I put up the file for the body part names.
After the abdomen, I usually do the neck next. It's difficult to select the chest area, so I cheat and assign everything around it, then do the chest last. I created this top specifically to have a neck area just to give you practice. (Ain't I nice?)
In this case, we lucked out. Victoria 1/2, Victoria 3, and Judy all have a neck. The difference is, V 1/2 and Judy also have upNeck. I made sure the top didn't go up far enough to worry about the extra neck part.
Next, select and assign the rCollar and lCollar areas. Important, the rCollar will be on the left side of the screen, and lCollar is on the right side. Remember, you're looking at the front of the clothing, so left and right are opposite yours. Although you don't need to get your selections perfect, I'd suggest trying to get your rCollar and lCollar as close to the same as possible.
Tip: If you select more than you meant to, you can hold down the Alt key and that anything that you select will be subtracted from your current selection. Shift will add more.
Now that you've selected, assigned and hidden the hip, abdomen, neck, rCollar and lCollar, everything left over is the chest. Select it and assign it as chest.
Tip: I usually go and hide the chest as well to see if there's any polygons that I missed.
Whew! Time to be paranoid and save. Go to File: Save Model and save your file under a new name. Accept the default settings.
Tip: Since I call my original object clothing-unmapped.obj, I just named my newly mapped mesh clothing.obj.
Here's my shirt by group (Map: Color: by Group):
While we're here, let's fix the material names.
Go to Select by: Group and select abdomen. You'll see a boundary box with nothing inside. Hit the ] key and that will unhide it. Unhide the other body parts you created. Ignore the weird names. Those are from the modeling program I created this in. By the time we're done, they'll go away.
Go to Select by: Material and select the first one. This looks like bottom trim to me, so I'll go to Tools: Assign to: Material. Just like the Groups area, you can type a new name into the box. I'm calling mine Trim-Bottom. (Tres clever, eh?)
Be careful that you assign each one to a new Material, and not to a new Group. You'll hate yourself if you mess it up.
Select the next material and assign it a new name. Here's what I ended up with:
- Shirt
- Trim-Bottom
- Trim-Left
- Trim-Neck
- Trim-Right
I could have assigned Trim-Left and Trim-Right to the same material- Trim-Arms, perhaps, but this way I can have a shirt with different colored sides.
Save again.
Get some more tea and then brave page 2.