Tailoring to the T-pose and Refitting

Before I get into the main topics, a little sneak peek at an in-progress project.

It's hard to see the style lines because I don't have a "real" texture on it yet, just a tile flood-filled, but it's a cheongsam-inspired evening gown with mandarin collar, cap sleeves, and flared skirt.

Right now, I'm thinking the cap sleeves are a little too cappy, and I'll probably make them longer. Which gets into my first topic. Most Poser figures are modeled in a T-pose, which is just like it sounds like: they stand straight with their arms straight out, like a T.

(Same dress, in the modeling program.)

Now, conforming clothing has to be modeled to the base shape, period. (Well, ellipses. Rumor has it that there are a few masters out there who can rig clothes modeled in a pose so they conform to the T-shaped original, but I am most assuredly not one of them.) And it has to look good in that shape. This is important to note, because I don't use a traditional modeling program. I use Marvelous Designer, which is a clothing simulator. I draft out pattern pieces in virtual "cloth", stitch them together, and correct the fit.

Right now where you're sitting at your computer, if you're wearing something with sleeves, they problem fit pretty smoothly over your shoulder with your arms down at your side, since that's where your arms spend most of their time. Now, if you stretch your arm straight out to the side, what happens? A bunch of wrinkles appear on top of your shoulder, and the armhole probably lifts up a bit. That all disappears when you drop it again.

With conforming clothing, those wrinkles wouldn't disappear. They're modeled in; they're stuck there. So, the model has to be made smooth in that area. Imagine trying to fit a closely tailored dress to someone whose arms are permanently sticking straight out from their sides. It gets a bit tricky, and I've found usually involves reducing the shoulder slope to almost nothing, and shortening both shoulder seam and sleeve cap. Then, later when the figure is use and Poser distorts the joint during movement, it all looks OK.

OK, that's conforming clothes; what about dynamic? Well, strictly speaking, dynamic clothes don't have to be modeled to the T-pose. Poser doesn't care what position the figure starts a cloth sim in, as long as it doesn't intersect the clothing model. But users care. Enough people are scared to try dynamic clothing as it is, and I can't say I fancy the idea of having to track down the "starting" pose for every figure for every outfit I want to use. So, unless there's some reason a non-zero pose is really needed (like putting Pranx's tail underneath the skirt of the Waloli dress), generally it's still good form to model to the T-pose. Most of the time, because of the way Poser figures the simulation, this doesn't hurt anything. The arm still looks fine on the computer when lowered, even though in real life that outfit tailored to the outstretched arm would strain over the shoulder and bag in the armpit. The cap sleeves here, though, are one exception. They don't have enough cloth or virtual weight to fall over the arm, so they just sort of jut out. That's not necessarily a bad look -- sometimes sleeves are intentionally made that way -- but it's not what I was going for. So I'll probably extend them longer.

I also promise babbling about refits. One of the nice things about Marvelous Designer is that it is very forgiving of fit. Often (but not always) an outfit made for one figure can be re-draped onto another figure without changes -- if you're willing to accept some concessions. Here's this same dress, re-draped on Antonia, who is available for free from her own website :

Ih. Not bad. It doesn't fit her bust quite as nicely and there's a little bagginess through the waist as she moves. But not too bad, considering that there were absolutely no changes to the pattern; it's just re-draped. The biggest issue is that there's some significant pattern stretching right across the abdomen. That's not surprising given how much larger her waist is relative to hip and bust when compared to Aiko's stylized hourglass figure. Imagine taking a piece of spandex with a design on it and stretching the heck out of it; the design distorts, right? That's exactly what's happening here.

I could change the dress pattern so it's tailored to Antonia's figure. But as soon as I change the pattern, I also change the UV map. It would no longer be able to share textures with the A3 versions. Both of these figures are relatively niche to start with. With such a small audience, it is a very good thing if they're able to share resources. So, if I do put out Antonia's version of this dress, I will probably accept the texture distortion as an acceptable trade-off for the commonality.

Now, this next pic doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but I rendered it so I might as well show it: same dress, draped on V4:

Better. It clings to the figure much more nicely, and although there is some texture distortion through the abdomen, it's not as much. The neckline looks really good. Probably better than it does on Aiko.

I'm not normally gun-ho about making stuff for V4. She has so much support that it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. The weight-mapped Victora 4 that Phantom3D's working on, though, that I am interested in supporting. And in the modeling stage, it's all the same.