Bodysuit simulation:
Took some time to get body suit not intersecting with itself and the model, but by adjusting both the fabric thickness and the skin offset of the model I was able to get stable simulations every time. However when I went to start simulating over the animation cache, something happened just between switching tabs that brought back some of the intersecting issues. I have a feeling its something to do with the tack on avatar tool, as that was the last thing I did before moving onto the next part that might have needed more testing. Removing all of the tacks seemed to fix the issues again, but I couldn’t figure out why the tacks caused these issues in the first place.
While trying different recording settings for the simulation helped improve the output a lot, I could still see a lot of issues that would have been fixed with the tack on avatar tool. I decided to just try and put the tacks back in place for the simulation to see if it still caused issues.
There were some of the same issues as before with the tool, but not as bad once the simulation settled a little. A lot of improvements could be made overall, but I think for future FMP work any tight fitting clothes might be better to model and skin/wrap deform to the rig or add in texture, rather than simulate. While I have seen some amazing examples of tight fitting clothing in Marvelous Designer, I don’t want to spend too long learning how to properly do what I’m realising is a tricky task when I could save time by using other techniques.
Once the simulation was complete and I was satisfied, I exported the garment to Maya so I could match up the clothes with the rig and set up the materials for streamlined UE5 import. This also gave me chance to fix the UVs (which didn’t export out of Marvelous Designer as I expected) and take a closer look at the pros and cons of simulating a tight garment.
Importing to UE5:
When importing to UE5, I realised I had forgotten to make the changes needed to the rig for smooth/streamlined import to UE5. I initially thought to use the editing rig scene I used in Term 1 with these changes already in place, but the rig I used for this project was an updated version and when I tried to reference in my old rig scene edits the animation messed up a little. The changes took a while to figure out but in themselves were minor, so I decided to just redo these with the current rig scene. Since I already knew what changes needed to be done, the process didn’t take as long as it did for my Term 1 project, but was still a lot more time consuming than I would have liked.
I did save a little time by reusing the materials from my Term 1 UE5 project, but I still had to repath and tweak them a fair bit (plus make new ones as the clothing/shoes are different for this project).
I also at this point set up a sequencer track with cameras, shots, and the alembic caches. During import I separated out the garment from the model so that I could have better control over the two components.
Making trousers and dress
While I originally wanted to make trousers based on the concepts I drew up, I ran out of time and decided instead to create simple baggy trousers that would work with the bodysuit. I plan to go back later and create trousers based on one of my concepts when I have the time to do so.
I had a little time towards the end that I debated spending on working on the set design of the window scene. However because the focus of this project for me was experimenting with and learning Marvelous Designer, I decided instead to make another simple garment to further improve my skills with the software. I decided to make a dress, and tried to incorporate some elements from my clothing concepts so I could also test these without needing to make the full detailed garment.
I didn’t notice until I brought the first dress cache into Maya, but the finger clips through the fabric early on and causes the fabric to bug out a fair bit. I went back and forth with the simulation settings trying to fix this, but the best I was able to do was to double the simulation quality (from what I used for the other clothing) and the issue is still present unfortunately. I tried caching out the walk animation from Maya at 48FPS, and I tried adjusting the fabric settings for the skirt, but neither of those (or both combined) seemed to make a difference. Overall I am still happy with the result as I learnt a lot from just this one garment, but it is disappointing that I couldn’t get it to simulate correctly.
Putting everything together
From there, it was the same process of setting up the Marvelous Designer exports in Maya, then exporting them out of Maya to UE5, putting basic materials on the asset and adding it to the sequencer along with the alembic cache.