- Create Mask Modifiers. For the active mesh, create a mask
modifier for each mesh child of its parent rig, except for the active
mesh itself. Typically the active mesh is a character and mask modifier
is created for each piece of clothing.
- Create Masks And Modifiers. As above, but also create empty vertex groups for each masking mesh.
- Add Visibility Drivers. For the active rig, create drivers
for viewport and render visibility of each mesh child. Also create
drivers for mask modifiers.
- Remove Visibility Drivers. Remove drivers and properties.
Parts of the skin is covered by clothes, but the character mesh is still
there right below. This may be a problem because the skin may poke
through the clothes in some places. The simplest solution is simply to
delete the hidden vertices. This is also the best option if you know that the
character will always be dressed in the same way, because removing vertices will increase performance. However, if Ana will
take off some of her clothes at some stage, it will look strange if there is no
body beneath.
Another
solution is to use mask modifiers, and the DAZ importer provides some
support to facilitate this. Select the mesh that will be covered by
clothes, normally the character itself, and press Create Masks And
Modifiers.
A
mask modifier is created for each piece of clothing (for each child of
the character's parent rig). The modifier uses a vertex group called
"Mask_" + clothing name, and the corresponding empty vertex groups is
also created.
A few DAZ assets are able to create the
vertex groups automatically; this is the case if the corresponding .dsf
file contains a "graft" structure. In particular, separate anatomy often
has this property. If the vertex groups are already created during
import, we could have pressed Create Mask Modifiers to create modifiers
using the existing vertex groups.
So
far the mask modifiers don't hide anything because the mask vertex
groups are empty. In edit mode, select the vertices that should be
hidden by the boots, and assign these vertices to the Mask_Boots vertex
groups. When we toggle back into object mode, the skin under the boots
is now invisible.
Repeat
the procedure for the clothes that cover a significant part of the
body, in this case the corset and the pants. Delete the superfluous mask
modifiers and vertex groups. If we hide the clothes in object mode, we
see the holes in Ana's body.
Select
the armature and press Add Visibility Drivers. Before doing this step,
all low-poly meshes were deleted except for Ana_Lod2.
The
Visibility panel appears at the bottom of the DAZ Runtime tab when the
rig is selected. There is an entry for each mesh where its visibility
can be toggled on and off. In the outliner you can see that the meshes'
visibility in the viewport and in render are now driven, and the
corresponding controls are purple. The mask modifiers are also
controlled by these rig properties, so hiding a piece of clothing turns
off the corresponding mask modifier.
Turn
off the visibility of all meshes except for Ana_Lod2. We can now pose
the character with moderate overhead. When it is time to render, the
low-poly mesh can be switched off and all the high-poly meshes switched
on. This procedure on works with file linking, because visibility is
controlled by rig properties.
