[Character Creator 4] How to import Daz Studio clothing and apply physics!

Hello, me, and welcome to another exciting video! In this one, we’re going to look at how to import clothing. As you can see, my character currently has clothing – the skirt was actually imported from Daz Studio, so I’m going to show you how to do that.

So, let’s jump right into this, then. I’m going to quickly hit the play button, and you can see that not only have I imported the skirt, but I’ve also applied physics to it. So, when I eventually animate her, you will see that the skirt will be fully physics-enabled – fully like dForce, but only better because it’s in animation.
What we’re going to do is remove that skirt from the scene. We’ll go here, and as you can see, I’ve named it “Leather Skirt,” but I’m going to delete that from the scene. There you go, so we’re back to bottomless.
I’m going to quickly jump back into Daz Studio, and what I’m going to do is just load this character’s outfit onto her, and then we will export the skirt and stick it on our character in Character Creator 4.

As you can see, I loaded the character up and stuck some clothes on her. So, what I’m going to do first is remove the items of clothing that I don’t need. So, we get rid of basically all of that stuff and that stuff, so that we’re just down to the skirt on its own. And then, just like when I exported the hair, I’m going to hide all of the character and then bring the skirt back. Now, the reason I’m doing this is so that the skirt is the right shape for the character. In another video, I’m going to show you how to just export the character with the items on them already and then turn those into items of clothing, but for now, let’s focus on doing these things individually because the same steps, once we’ve exported this as an FBX, can be applied to importing an object from somewhere like TurboSquid or anywhere else that you might download 3D objects from.

So, anyway, we’ve got our leather skirt selected. We’re going to go to File, and we’re going to go to Export. Then, once you’ve chosen what the file name is going to be, you get the same export options that we had when we exported the hair. Now, we are not going to be exporting morphs or limits or locks or animations or cameras, lights, or props. All we’re going to be doing is exporting the item that we have selected. We want our textures embedded, we’re going to convert clothing to static geometry, allow degraded skinning, allow degraded scaling, and then we’re just going to hit Accept. Then, that is going to save our file, and because we haven’t got any animations or anything on, it’s not going to take very long at all. And then, we’ll be in the position that we need to be in to import our mesh into Character Creator 4.

So, now we jump back into Character Creator 4, and what we need to do is go to Create Accessory. And when we click on Accessory, it will ask us to choose our file, so that’s what we will do. And then, once we have our mesh loaded into the scene, because I’ve got my character already in more or less the A-pose, you can see that the skirt is already pretty damn close to being fit on the character. However, there are a couple of problems: it is pinching in the back a little bit and out here to the side, so we are going to have to do some minor adjustments. And if I look really close, you can see that actually, the mesh is not quite where it needs to be – it’s a little too far forward. So, what I want to do is I’m going to press the W key, I’m going to select the Modify tab option, I’m going to come right here down to the bottom, and I’m going to move the widget to the center of the object by clicking on this here, and then I’m going to use my move tool to actually move the mesh so that it’s in the right place.

Now, there is going to be a bit of a size issue because the pose that we’ve got the character in now, which is the Character Creator 4 default A-pose, is not identical to the default A-pose from Daz Studio. So, there is going to be a little bit of an issue there, but what we want to do is get this as close as we possibly can to being bang on. I’m using the waistband as my guide here, and as you can see, in the back, it now fits spot on, but there is a little bit of an issue here at the front. So, I’m going to jump over to my scale tool, and I’m going to widen it ever so slowly – we’re talking a fraction of an amount. We want to get it so that it’s fairly tight-fitting, and then I’m going to use the scale tool to just bring it away from the character’s thigh and pubic bone. It doesn’t have to be absolutely spot-on perfect the first time; this is something that you can spend a little bit of time finessing. And as you can see, if we didn’t move it, it’s never going to be an absolutely perfect fit, but as long as there’s no clipping going on, we’re fine.

Okay, so now I’ve got the situation where there is no clipping, and it’s reasonably well-fit around the character, so I’m ready to move on to the next bit. Now, you can apply the textures to the object if you want to, so you can go into the checkerboard settings here, and that allows you to modify the material of the object. And as you can see, this clothing has two particular texture files, and what I’m going to do is I’m actually going to switch that to – I’m going to go with PBR. It’ll take a minute, and then it’ll give me some more options for maps to apply to my shape. So, I’m going to apply the simple textures just to make it look a little bit better.

I’ll come back to you in a moment when I’ve sorted that out. So now, you can see that I’ve applied the basic textures to the material. It’s not perfect because of the way that the texture has been put together, so personally, I would probably go back in afterwards and adjust the texture just by editing this so that we have matching colors around it. I’m not going to bother adjusting the textures of the waistband. You can see how it’s done: you just choose the kind of shader that you’re going to create and then apply the relevant materials to it.

The next thing that we need to do to this object is actually come back into the first options menu, and we need to transfer our skin weights. So, that’s what I’m going to do – going to go transfer skin weights, and then after a few seconds, it’s going to offer me some options. Now, I’m just going to click on the default. Depending on the kind of material or the kind of clothing item that you’re creating, you might want to adjust it, but I’m just going to stick with default for the purpose of this exercise. I’m going to hit Apply, and then it won’t take very long – it’ll run up to 100%, won’t quite finish, and it’ll have another bit of a think. Let’s give it the opportunity to do that.

And now that it’s done, we can close this menu like so, and now you can see that we’ve actually converted this into a clothing item. So, now what we want to do is we want to conform it to our character and then apply some physics to it. I’m going to rename it so that it actually makes sense. I’m going to go “Leather Skirt” like so – that’s just renamed the object. And then, I’m going to go to Conform, and then you can see that some options have appeared here like this. So, I’m going to not have it loose-fitting, I am going to apply a little bit of smoothing – like three layers of smoothing. I’m going to not adjust the increased size because we don’t need to because it’s already the right size for our character. So, all I’m going to do now is going to say Calculate Collision, and then it will conform to our character’s body.

And if I scan around, you can see that it is pretty well conformed – no problems so far. So, now we want to apply some physics to this object, and as you can see, now that it has been turned into a clothing item, we actually now have the ability to apply some physics. So, I’m going to turn that on, and I’m going to go Activate Physics. Now, it’s going to ask me to select a material, and what we need to do is create a weight map for our object.

So, now we need to jump into some image editing software. I’m going to use Photoshop; you use whatever it is that you choose to use, but we’re going to actually create a weight map in our image editor.
Awesome! So The first thing we need to do is actually load in one of our texture files. I’ve just gone with this one – it’s nice and simple, as you can see. The UVs are nicely laid out, so it’s going to be easy to edit. Now, if you’re importing a Daz Studio object and it’s made by a less reputable vendor, then you might end up having trouble with this, so you need to make sure that the UVs are nice and easy to edit.
What I’m going to do is use my magic wand tool – selected here – and I’m actually just going to select this part of the skirt, and then I’m going to create a new layer. Now what I want to do is use my gradient tool, and I’m going to choose a black and white gradient.

So yep, gradient tool there, I’ve got a black and white gradient selected there. If you haven’t got one, it’s quite simple to do – you just make sure you’ve got a slider at each end, choose one end like this and choose black, and then choose this one, and I’ve chosen not completely white, I’ve chosen kind of mid-gray. And then you’ve got your gradient.

Now, you need to do is choose where you want the gradient to go. So because this UV is straight, I’m in a fairly fortunate position where I can just hold down the Shift key like so.

Now what I need to do is repeat the process for the bottom of the skirt. So I’m just going to use my magic wand tool there, I’m going to unselect this bit, and come into another new layer. And then if I use my gradient tool again, I should be able to get this reasonably close to the front. I don’t want it to be too different because we need it to be reasonably similar.

There we go, so now I’ve got this. I could mess around and fill in the bottom, the waste line as well. However, because I’m not applying physics to that object, all I’m going to do instead is I’m just going to deselect that bit and I’m actually going to hide or fill in black over the top of this bit just so that it doesn’t mess up my…there we go, like so. So there we go, that’s my nice, sexy weight map. I’m going to save that, and then I’m going to choose that in the dialog that’s about to appear in Character Creator.