Hi everyone - this evening I decided to see how MD2 would handle making a pair of gloves. Tough to make in real life, and tough to simulate. I thought I might share my findings with the group:

First off, since hands don´t come with arrangement points (and I was using a non-default avatar anyway), proper positioning of the individual pieces is crucial. I also had to break apart the pattern quite a bit more for maneuvering in MD2 than usually done in real life. In order to position the finger gussets between each finger, each gusset has a seam line down the fold formed at the web of each finger, and the main body of the glove has been broken into the dorsal (top) and palmar (bottom) of the glove in order to correctly wrap around the hand.

I found that pins helped a lot with this process. Even after all that pattern arranging and turning the particle distance to 5.0 , the physics simulator still had some trouble solving for the fingers. The method I found that worked best was to place pins around the wrist of the glove, and then pull down each fingertip of the glove so that it cleared the avatars finger tips, then i used pins and gentle tugging to coax each gloved finger up and into place. Just like in real life, I wasn´t able to get rid of those little nubbins of fabric at the tips of the fingers. I could´ve gotten rid of the extra fabric in the pattern, but by this point I was just thankful they weren´t passing through the finger tips and I didn´t want to press my luck.  :)

I was a little bummed to see that MD2 didn´t create any nice tiny wrinkles around the palm or interior of the fingers, but then again that´s not really what this software was created for.  ;)  It was still a fun exercise, but for my workflow gloves and tiny detail work may need to stay relegated to z-brush for the time being.

Anyway, on with the pictures!

And for those really curious, this is the glove pattern I was using:

Hope this helps add to the knowledge pool.  :)

- Melinda Rose 

www.melinda3d.com

Wow - very "handy". Pun intended.

I really admire the hard work you´ve put into this.  As a 3D app MD has it´s own unique way of building these non-standard clothing items.

Gloves are probably the hardest item of clothing there is to make with MD. Well done you!

I´ve just posted how I spent best part of 2 days making a simple neck tie!  I wouldn´t dare tackle gloves!

They look great too. Wrinkles may appear with some hand animation?  I do wish we could have a lower PD than 3 at times.

It´s just learning the best working method.  Pins are great, as is the freeze and disable pattern.  I´ve also found it "handy" (LOL) to export part of my garment and re-import it as an avatar to make it properly frozen.  It also speeds things up a lot.

Making things over size and using shrink or just scaling with the sim running also helps.

To others out there with a tricky arrangement,  CTRL & S ALL the time and never, never, never press rearrange pattern by mistake!

Custom shaped avatars are good too. You could perhaps have made an animated hand that grows - bit like inflating a balloon inside the patterns.

The ends are tricky, my socks have always looked a bit funny around the toes.  Again a custom smooth avatar helps.

Not sure what else you could tackle after this?  MD hair has often been discussed...

Thanks for sharing the patterns and details.

Hi Melinda :-)

Very nice work with those gloves and  interesting explanations about their virtual fabrication with M.D.

Your patterns are beautiful and surely useful for the MD´s community.

I visited your beautiful 3D artist´s website. Congratulations for your wonderful creations with "My Little Pony", it is lovely.

:-)

Thanks for sharing. After seeing this, I thought "Wouldn´t it be easier to make the gloves away from the avatar, inflated them using the pressure parameter, and then pulled them up the avatar´s hand?" ...Kind of like in the real world. So I tried it, and it did not work at all :/

www.melinda3d.com

Great work and resume.

 I do wish we could have a lower PD than 3 at times.

You can.

Just scale up the avatar.  If you make the avatar 3 times the size, then you would basically have a PD of one.

The only limit would be how many polygons can your computer handle?

That would work well in this case, since the simulated item is small anyway. You could make the effective PD very small, and the total polygon count won´t be too crazy.

Tom

voodoofuzz Wrote:

They look great too. Wrinkles may appear with some hand animation?  I do wish we could have a lower PD than 3 at times.

It´s just learning the best working method.  Pins are great, as is the freeze and disable pattern.  I´ve also found it "handy" (LOL) to export part of my garment and re-import it as an avatar to make it properly frozen.  It also speeds things up a lot.

Making things over size and using shrink or just scaling with the sim running also helps.

voodoofuzz Wrote:

Custom shaped avatars are good too. You could perhaps have made an animated hand that grows - bit like inflating a balloon inside the patterns.

thkaufm Wrote:

 I do wish we could have a lower PD than 3 at times.

You can.

Just scale up the avatar.  If you make the avatar 3 times the size, then you would basically have a PD of one.

The only limit would be how many polygons can your computer handle?

That would work well in this case, since the simulated item is small anyway. You could make the effective PD very small, and the total polygon count won´t be too crazy.

These are great ideas.  :)  (and thanks to everybody who checked out my portfolio, I´m flattered.) 

I have to admit I haven´t actually been using the freeze or disable pattern functions much - what´s the difference between them? I have been using Hide Pattern, but I see that those pieces still have the simulation applied (and sadly become unhidden while viewing the strain map.) What tips do you have for using freeze and disable, when do you usually find yourself using it?

I also have to admit I haven´t tried importing any morph targets or animations (I´m still only 3 or 4 days in to my 30 day trial) - any chance you could point me in the direction of some tutorials for how those features work?  I´ve mainly been sticking to the pattern drafting tutorials so far.  :)

That´s a clever trick to think about scaling up just the hand as an avatar - that may actually be worth trying if I decide I´d like to keep working in MD to make these gloves. I worry that it would affect the other simulation properties of the fabric, but I´m not convinced yet that the simulation properties are 100% real world accurate anyway so I guess I could just fuss with them until it looks about right.  :)

I love all these tips about how to work with tricky projects!  Anybody know how do go about creating your own fabric knots like the ones in the marketplace?  ;)

- Melinda Rose

www.melinda3d.com

 have to admit I haven´t actually been using the freeze or disable pattern functions much - what´s the difference between them? 

Freeze is very handy. It´s basically like if you exported the cloth and reloaded it as an avatar. It´s a solid object.

The advantage is that it can share seams with other unfrozen patterns, so that items can be sewn to it.

I also have to admit I haven´t tried importing any morph targets or animations - any chance you could point me in the direction of some tutorials for how those features work?

There is really not much to the morph target. Just load in the object as a morph target and the avatar will move to it´s new pose. Just be careful not to  get too extreme from one pose to the next. Since the morph movement is linear, the avatar can warp in strange ways if you move too much. Or, the arm might move through the body or something like that.

You can also move the avatar by using poses. Poses use the avatars rigging, so there aren´t the distortion issues you can get with morphs. To use poses, you need to have the avatar in collada format though.

http://www.marvelousdesigner.com/forum/show-off-and-learn/117/exporting-from-daz-amp-creating-poses-in-marvelous-designer 

Tom

thkaufm Wrote:

 I do wish we could have a lower PD than 3 at times.

You can.

Just scale up the avatar.  If you make the avatar 3 times the size, then you would basically have a PD of one.

The only limit would be how many polygons can your computer handle?

That would work well in this case, since the simulated item is small anyway. You could make the effective PD very small, and the total polygon count won´t be too crazy.

Tom

Great idea!

Wouldn´t want to do it for an animation though!  It´s hard enough already to calculate and guarantee sizes in my workflow without adding extra simulation dimensions to re-combine later!

It´s a development fault (Spinal Tap springs to mind) if they had just called the lowest level 1 rather than 3 I probably would have minded so much.  Seeing 3 makes me wish I could just alter it to lower.

A lower level I find is needed only as an interim setting during some complex folding - I´m happy animating at 5 pretty much always now.

EZ - your pattern looks pretty simple - kudos for making that so long ago!

voodoofuzz Wrote:

EZ - your pattern looks pretty simple - kudos for making that so long ago!

EZ - your pattern looks pretty simple -

Looking at that pattern, I think the fingers are spread too far apart in the pattern.

The way Melinda did it is much better for texturing. The fingers are parallel.

It wouldn´t have made any difference using a leather texture, or something non directional.

But with the spread fingers and directional texture, the texture is almost going sideways on the thumb and the pinky.

Here are some other nice MD gloves:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=194453747295822&set=a.194452997295897.48295.190383107702886&type=3&theater

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=194453763962487&set=a.194452997295897.48295.190383107702886&type=3&theater

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=194453777295819&set=a.194452997295897.48295.190383107702886&type=3&theater

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=194453783962485&set=a.194452997295897.48295.190383107702886&type=3&theater

Tom