Amis

Hello,
For some time I observe a practice in rigged clothing creation that I find very bad and unprofessional - garment topology.
For those that have no idea what I'm talking about:
Garment topology is a result of simulation made by professional clothing design software. The result looks like this for example:


Those evenly scattered triangles are called: Garment (topology).

The problems with this method are the following:
- evenly distributed triangles ( resolution ) on places that are not needed. -> too big and unnecessary resolution of the clothing in order to "protect" the wrinkles.
- basic practice is to copy the skin weights from the avatar and than tweak them -> the avatar weighting is horrific, copying it on a topology that is NOT designed to be rigged is very bad idea.
- the triangles don't follow the flow of the clothing which results in rendering artifacts (bad shading from WindLight ) and edgy deformation on avatar movement
- garment topology is NOT designed to be used in any gaming environment. It's made for real time clothing simulation in animations/movies etc.

All that said, I want to ask customers:
Do you care about those things?
I see many designers to follow this workflow ( even some that i thought are pro). Using garment topology will save days from my workflow, and if nobody cares about those things I mentioned above .. well I will stop trying to make it correct and save time too.
Am I the only one who sees a problem or it's something that even an untrained eye can notice, but ignores, because they don't know that it can be done better?

Thank you for spending time reading this.
Best regards

Adeon Writer

I can't say overall one topology is better than the other, but as a content consumer, I have noticed that clothing that does not use this 'garment' wireframe topology (I've been calling it star) and goes for a more split-quad layout, tends to also have much finer detail and texturing quality. Why? Probably unrelated. But garment-like meshes tend to not work with my avie well, and makes me think their creators rushed it or didn't know their audience.

Amis

It's related to the rendering artifacts that are caused by the Windlight shading. Randomly rotated ( not following any flow ) triangles don't play well with any shader ( unless the garment is very very hi-resolution ).
For example with garment you have the same resolution on a sharp wrinkle and on a part that can be covered with 10 times less resolution.

Aribeth Zelin

Too many polys and you end up with serious issues in a gaming type environment - whether its clothing, hair or anything else. Not to mention increases lag for others.

My first suspicion tends to be someone is getting meshes from other sources, but I know that's not always the case any more, with software being available to make these sorts of things.

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Adeon Writer

I actually don't use vertex shaders (windlight).

I've got per-pixel shaders running pretty much all the time. My issues are usually unrelated, like physically not fitting.

I guess when I don't see that topology, it's more likely to be hand-modeled and fit better.

Aki Shichiroji

It's worth it to take the extra steps and design properly from the start. It will save you rigging and texturing headaches later on. If you design with a proper edge flow in mind, it'll be a lot easier to fix problems such as spaghetti arm while maintaining detail in the areas that really need it.

Amis

I completely agree with that, and yet where I see a horror movie, average customer sees well made dress. Dresses/clothing with garment topology and very bad rigging receive 5 star ratings and comments. That's why I decided to ask in public if people actually notice/care about this or it's just me

Aribeth Zelin

I care - and I noticed a long time ago that success and 5 stars != good quality. There are plenty of popular shops that still have outdated and ill-fitting, no-mod prim clothing - and yet they sell well. And I've been to smaller shops that about knock my socks off with quality and low prices, but most folks don't know them from Adam's housecat.

Samantha Poindexter

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Marika

Are you sure that you know what this word means in the first place?

Charlotte Bartlett

I have just started on clothing for SL so this was useful to see above as have never done fashion it's always been architecture. I have found all is well with the making of clothing from scratch - but rigging with the SL avatar OH MY WORD. I feel like I have had to learn things backwards to reverse engineer things to where I can produce products. I do love learning it though.

What I would say is I have noticed the same with things generally. From Prim built items through to sculpts through to now mesh. I think many customers have different drivers so if you are versed in something you may be more critical and able to see issues with a product.

I see architecture sometimes that I personally think they could have sliced 20 prims from that, the textures are not aligned or it has glitches for sale but they have many good reviews which shows they are appreciated by those who brought them.

I think that's the good part about SL it has room for hobbyists to the more pro creators and everybody can be appreciated from different customer bases. If somebody pays for it and likes and enjoys it - and it doesn't harm anybody/blow up the server/infringe etc etc - I say all power to them regardless of how "good" the construction of it is.

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Amis

For me the problem is the time spend on the project. If i need to create better topology (yea yea Samantha I still use the term ) I will probably spent twice the time vs. garment/simulated. From practical point of view, if majority of my customers can't make a difference == time waste. This is the decision I'm struggling with - make more or make less but better quality ( noticeable to only few )

Ayesha Lytton

I'm a Jane average consumer when it comes to these things. I have no understanding of what the first post in this thread means at all.

When I see a mesh I like, I try the demo. If it fits and moves well, I buy it. If not, I don't. I don't expect perfection in the fit of a mesh - I'm not standard size and refuse to change my shape, which I love, for others' ideas of "standard." I have no idea how the mesh items I own are constructed. I just know they fit me when many others don't, and that's what matters to me.

My guess is that a lot of people don't know or care about these things, but do what makes you happy - if it's important to you to do it "right", then do that.

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Aki Shichiroji

Well... let's put it this way - it's a bit of an immersion breaker for me. I've had to cloth a few boy alts for work projects and while I realize there are relatively few designers out there, it is very distracting when a nice plaid shirt that outwardly has no other issues has some very obvious spaghetti arms going on. It makes me want to find something similar that isn't as broken. If there were alternative products to this, i would throw this one item out and replace it immediately.

On top of that, it's generally good practice to design things more efficiently rather than rely upon customer ignorance as a crutch. The same is true for prim use, texture size, etc.

NeoBokrug Elytis

Clothing should be designed, like avatar meshes should be designed -- with extra polys in the joints to avoid stretching

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eku Zhong

i see too much noodling at joints on a lot of mesh items.. especially those made from full perm packs..

it has nothing to do with using quads or tris but just plain sloppy weighting .. either by ppl who dont care much.. or dont know much.. or a combination of the two.

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Seven Paragorn

I care, I would not buy a piece of clothing made that way. In fact I would get a negative impression of that merchant. I would think that they either don't know what they are doing, or that they are cutting corners.

I think you should to do it properly. The customers that can't tell the difference will still buy your products. The customers that can will appreciate that your products are done well.

Tya

those triangles are called "tris". anytime you need to model clothing, you need to convert to triangle because triangles allow for clothing to fold correctly. now after that is done, your work isnt finished. its barely begun, the quality of a mesh item is not just the geometry its also the rigging. without proper even quads your rigs will never be correct.

is it lazy on the creators part? no. its what works for you. a well made clothing piece that is properly rigged, you don't notice the difference. in all reality clothing should be tris. your geometry and uvmapping are also separate...

there is a lot of steps involved in a single clothing piece that most people, would be shocked to find out...once piece can take up to 100 hours in total.

Tya

that is the correct geometry for poly clothing ....

that shirt pictured above, is modeled correctly for clothing. its not sloppy work or wrong. from a modeling perspective, its correct.

Ann Otoole

oh come on. don't you guise want LL's defunct modelers that gave us the shitty sl avatars to keep a job? after all taking polys out of the under arms and crotch were so valuable.

/sarcasm

Tya

i think what you are looking for is an easy solution.

using a clothing simulation software is not the answer. sure it can be fast and easy but what are you left with? a tone of triangles and unsure what to do after. you will have a mass amount of clean up to do. start from scratch and understanding modeling to begin with saves you time instead of trying to cut corners. people notice when you cut corners.

i recommend that you learn how to use a modeling program, (blender, 3ds max, silo, zbrush, maya etc )the same results can be achieved in a program. you don't need use a clothing simulator.

most modeling programs have clothing simulation built it, its just named differently, that's what those clothing simulation programs do. its a taken from the modeling programs.

your main concern should be clean geometry/uvmapping/rigging. if you are selling your clothing, then you should care about quality. quality goes along way before quantity.

Drongle

I am intrigued and puzzled. Can someone please post a picture of "spaghetti arms".

eku Zhong

good example of noodling (spaghetti syndrome) without insulting anyone..

Adeon Writer

Rigging to A-pose instead of T-pose helps eliminate noodlearm and candywrapper deformations, as A-pose is a much more natural "Average" pose to base all the deformations on.

The final result of shoulders when arms rest at the side is night and day.

Amis

Oh .. my attempt to get average's customer feedback was a complete epic FAIL )) Probably my English is bad or I failed explaining my point in layman's terms.
Let me clear few things.

I started doing that 4 years ago with 3ds max. Now it's my RL job

I code plugins/scripts for max, so I kinda have intimate knowledge how triangulation actually work under the hood

This topology is called Garment. Garment was designed to generate surfaces that are used in cloth simulation engines. I stated in my first post what are the most common problems with garment, but let me explain a bit more.
Garment triangles ( tris ) don't have distinct topology flow. They are distributed evenly on the surface and they have pretty much identical sizes. Because of that the normals are not creating a flow that can be rendered correctly by the rendering engine.
This type of topology can be used in production ONLY if it's very dense. Low resolution garment is pretty much useless. Garments are designed to be used in real time clothing simulations for animations and movies. Projects that need real clothing movement that is affected by external forces like gravity or wind ( for example ). Garment is NOT and should NOT be used in any gaming engine. This is one of the reasons why quad modeling was invented. As you already know quad is composed with two triangles. But when you model with quads you can create a nice topology flow and your triangles will have correct normals orientation and edge flow. This will result in correct triangulation in the engine, correct rendering, correct usage of normal maps, correct deformation during the animation etc.


The sad thing is, that all I wanted to ask was the average users opinion

Thank you all for your input, I think this thread partially answered my initial question

Best regards