Modeling for Poser In Wings 3D: Basic Pants Cyberwoman 2010; illustrations by Cyberwoman with the cooperation of Sydney G2. Do not reproduce or redistribute without permission.
This tutorial will show how to make a pair of yoga pants for the Poser Sydney G2 figure, using the Wings 3D modeler. Wings 3D is a freeware modeler available from www.wings3d.com. I m going assume that you ve played around with Poser and Wings 3D and completed some basic tutorials, so I won t define common commands. (In other words, I m going to say extrude this face on its normal not click on this face, right click, pass your cursor over Extrude and click Normal.) If you can t figure out how to use a function, post a comment on the tutorial s Share CG page or the Cyberwoman s First Tutorial entry at www.buildingcyberworld.blogspot.com (March 2010) and I ll give a step-by-step explanation. The methods in this tutorial can be used to make different styles of clothes for any figure (it s how I make all my Poser clothes), and I would assume that the methods could be used with other modelers. However, I have no experience with anything other than Wings. If you are having trouble adapting this tutorial to another modeler, I am unable to help. With that said, let s get started! The first thing we need to do is export a copy of the figure we re going to be building the clothing for. Be sure your figure is in the zero pose! Conserve your computer memory don t export body parts you don t need, especially if you re building clothes for a highresolution figure. Since I m making pants, all I need is the waist down, not including toes. Save the body parts you want to use as an obj file, and then import them into Wings 3D. You will probably have to move the camera in before you can see them well; the Poser universe seems to be quite small compared with the Wings universe.
Now create a cube. You ll have to zoom the camera out before you can see it. (Like I said, the Poser universe is pretty small compared with the Wings universe.) In body mode, select the cube and scale it down until you can see both it and your clothing model. Scale the cube on the Y axis and move it on the Y axis so it makes a thin box at the figure s waist. Scale it on the X and Z axes, and move on the Z axis until the bottom face fits around your figure s waist and the bottom edges are as close to the figure as you want your pants to fit. Note that in this model the cube is rotated on the X axis so that it matches the tilt of Sydney s hips (visible in the next step s picture). In face mode, select the top face and scale on the X and Z axes (and move on the Z axis if you need to) so the top of the cube tapers inward, following the contour of your figure s body.
Select the bottom face. Extrude it on its normal and scale the face on its X and Z axes. Rotate it backward on the X axis so it follows the curve of your figure s rear end. The lowest face in the back should be longer than the corresponding face in the front. The two back faces should not be level with each other. Before you go any further, save your model before your computer crashes. And it will crash someday if you forget to save. Trust me. Repeat this step to build your clothing model over your figure s hips. Once you ve taken your model around most of your figure s rear, start rotating the face forward on the Z axis after each extrude command. The goal is to have the bottom face level with the ground plane when you reach the crotch level of your pants.
In edge mode, select one of your model s horizontal edges and then select an edge ring. Connect the edges so that you have a loop of new edges circling the middle of your model. We re going to make a virtual mirror before we make the legs. With the mirror, you only have to model one leg of the pants; Wings will fill in the other leg! This will save you lots of time and it will also make modeling the legs a lot easier, since to move them closer together or farther apart you can simply move one on the X axis and the other will move in the opposite direction.
Start by selecting the figure legs (body mode) then switch to face mode and hide all the faces you ve selected. Now only your model will be visible. Looking at your model from the front, click and drag a selection box to select exactly half of your model. Spin the camera around a bit to make sure you have the entire half selected, and only that half. This model is pretty easy to select, but some projects won t be so forgiving. Hit the backspace key. The faces you ve selected will disappear don t freak out! We ll bring them back. Create a virtual mirror (the command is in the Tools menu, under Virtual Mirror ). Before we continue, show all the faces in the scene to bring your figure s legs back. Select either the left or right bottom face on your model notice that the corresponding face on the opposite side is automatically selected.
Extrude the face a little bit on the normal, scale it on the X axis, and move it on the X axis to shape the crotch of the pants. (See how the other face does a mirror image of what you re doing?) The leg of our pants is created exactly the way the hips were created, just now we re shaping it around the figure s leg. Extrude normal, scale on the X and Z axes, move on the Z axis (maybe X axis) you know the drill. So we ve got some polygons in place. Now we need to round them out, so that our pants look like pants, not renderings for an abstract-art style videogame marketed to owners of incredibly outdated computers. (Of course, if you are making an abstract-art style videogame for owners of incredibly outdated computers, you may stop working now.)
Select the front edges and connect them. Do the same for the side and back edges. When selecting the inside edges, be sure to select the edge at the center of the crotch (the edge you make in this step should start at the inside of one hem, move up the inside of the leg and across the crotch, and down the inside of the other leg to the hem. Select the back top corner edges (in the picture, one is hidden behind the figure s waist) and move them in on their normals. Don t move them so far that the figure pokes through! Do the same for the corresponding front edges. Select the edges two levels lower than the ones we just moved (NOT the next lower edges, but the ones below those; the correct edges are selected in the image below)
and move them in on their normals as we did in the last step first either both front or both back edges, then the two on the other side. Continue down the outer edges of the pants, moving every other edge inward on its normal. Move in every other edge on the inside of the pants, starting not with the two edges at the very top of the crotch (the edges shaped like an inverted V), but with the edges below them. In other words, the vertexes at the center of the crotch in front and back should never move. Sometimes moving in the edges like we did in the last step creates strange steps along the model s edges (look at the hip area on the right side of the picture above). In vertex mode, select the vertexes in a stepped area one by one and move them in and
out on their normals to smooth the area out. This is tedious, but it s going to be a lot harder to fix later on. We re almost to the end of this stage of our model. Look for any faces that have a little of the base figure poking through, and move them out on their normals. Select the edges at the top of the pants and the bottom of each leg, and make them hard (hard edges are shown as green in the photo below). At this point, you might want to save a copy of this project as pantsbase or something like that. That way, if you ever feel like making different pants for Sydney in the future, you can simply start with this primitive model rather than make a new one from scratch.
Now we re going to get Wings to do our dirty work. Select the entire pants model, switch to face mode, and smooth it. Why didn t we do this earlier? If we had tried to use the smooth tool on our boxy pants, the tool would have given us boxy pants with slightly rounded edges not what we need. Go over the model and check for areas where the base figure pokes through; if you find any, move nearby faces and/or edges and vertices out on their normals until the figure is no longer poking through. At this point, I recommend exporting an obj of your model and loading it into Poser with the figure in his/her zero pose, to double-check for poke-through. If you find any, fix it and test the model in Poser again. No poke-through? You re good to go! We re almost ready to add the finishing touches to our model. But first, we have a little geometry issue to fix. Take a look at the hips of our pants. See how flat they are in the front and back? That just doesn t look quite right.
First we need to adjust the crotch geometry a little. (For some reason, Wings likes to create strange geometry when the smooth function is used in places like the crotches of pants. The armpits of shirts often end up with strange polygons from the smooth function, too.) Select the vertexes highlighted in the picture below and move them in on their normals a tiny bit. Deselect the topmost vertex and move the other vertexes back on the Z axis. Repeat until there is a smooth contour above the crotch. You may have to move some of the nearby vertexes (circled in red in the image above) in on their normals to smooth things out. Remember, you re looking for as smooth a contour as possible. You also may have to repeat this same procedure in the back.
However, you will want this area in the back to be flatter. Notice the difference in shape between this picture (back after vertex moving) and the picture above. The center curve in the front starts higher. Now we need to adjust the hips of our pants out towards the sides. Look at the pants from the top notice how much further away some areas of the hips are from the figure (circled in red below). Real pants don t fit like that. If you re planning to use these pants for background figures of low-resolution, high-motion animations, or you re planning to pair them with a tunic that covers the hips, you can probably get away with ignoring this styling flaw. But I m going to fix it, since I like to render dancers who wear leotards under their yoga pants.
Select the vertical edges in the areas you want to move closer to your figure. Move them in on their normals a bit try not to make a drastic change in the contour of the pants. You want them to have a smooth curve from thigh to waistband. Deselect the lowest edges and move the remaining edges in on their normals again. At this point, I m going to deselect the columns of edges closest to the center as well as the lowest edges. Continue to move the edges in on their normals, deselecting when they get as close to your figure as you want. Because this pair of pants is supposed to be close-fitting, in the hips at least, I m going to move the lines pretty close to my figure. Watch the polygons and make sure that your base figure doesn t poke through! If it does, cancel the move and deselect a line or two.
Doesn t that look more realistic? Repeat this same procedure for the back corners. It should look something like this when you re done: At this point, you ll probably want to make sure you ve saved your model recently. There are few things more frustrating than an untimely computer crash erasing a few hours of hard work. Save yourself the frustration of having a complicated model vanish get in the habit of saving your models frequently! We re going to smooth the model one more time. Before we can do that, we need to take a few steps in preparation. First, select the entire base figure in body mode. Switch
to face mode and hide all selected polygons. (You should now see only your clothing model.) Select all the faces on the top of your pants. Hit the delete key, so that the multiple selected faces merge into two (one on either side of the virtual mirror, in case you were wondering). Flatten the faces on their normal, then switch to line mode and deselect the line down the middle. Set all the remaining selected lines to hard. You ll also need to set the lines at the bottom of the ankles to hard, just like we did the last time we smoothed the model. When you ve got all three loops set to hard, show all faces and select the entire pants model. Run the smooth command.
The base figure will probably end up poking through somewhere. We fix this just like we fixed poke-through the last time we smoothed the model; select the affected faces of the clothing model and move them out on their normals. Export an obj into Poser and check for poke-through. None? Awesome! Now it s time for the finishing details. This is where you get to have fun, adding things like pockets and trim. For these pants, I m just going to give them a waistband. Before you do anything, freeze the virtual mirror (in the same menu as the create virtual mirror command, click on freeze ). Check again for poke-through. For a simple waistband, select an edge loop around the hips. Extrude it on its normal, but don t move your mouse at all. Instead, hit the minus key until the two new edges formed are close to the original edge, and then click to finish the extrude.
Select the original edge (it will be between the two new edges) and scale it uniformly a bit. Just a tiny bit you don t want it to intersect the base figure. Move it on the Y axis, so it looks like a seam. Now we need to hollow our pants model out and export it. This can be a little tricky: Wings doesn t like of two-dimensional planes polygons; it prefers to deal in solid shapes. Which is all good and fine, but it doubles the amount of polygons we have to deal with. (Think of the difference between a tube made of typing paper [planar] and a thick tube made of clay [Wings]. Which uses more material in its construction?) Thankfully, there s a way you can trick Wings into making a planar shape. Select the entire base figure and hide it so all we see is the pants model. Select the faces across the waist and ankles, where we want openings in our pants.
Use the intrude command, and move the mouse until the pants are as thick as you want the hem at the waistband and ankles to be. Click to complete the command, but do not deselect anything. Hit the minus key once, and then select the inverse of your current selection. (Click Inverse, under the Select menu.) Export the selected area as an obj file. You ve just produced a perfect pair of Poser pants! (Try saying that ten times fast.) In Poser, you can add a material to them so they aren t glossy white. In fact, if you value your good working relationship with your Poser women, I strongly suggest that you do not make them wear glossy white pants. Glossy white is simply not flattering on anyone. (Well, maybe Victoria 4 with a supermodel morph, but that s an exception rather than the rule.) In the image on the first page, I
simply set the diffuse color to dark gray and the specular color to black. If I was going to use the pants in a detailed scene, I would probably take the time to make a more detailed material with a heather color variegation and maybe a bump map. So how do you actually use the pants? There are a couple of ways. You can make them into dynamic cloth in the Poser Cloth Room. I don t work with dynamic cloth much, so unfortunately I am unable to give any more instruction than the Poser manual does. The tutorials on the Smith Micro website (http://my.smithmicro.com/tutorials/index.html; Poser tutorials are about halfway down the page) seem to me to be pretty good. Or, you can make them into conforming clothing; this is what I do with all my Poser clothes. I use the OBJ2CR2 plugin from PhilC (www.philc.net). If you are making a lot of conforming clothing, I strongly recommend the plugin. It will make your life much easier! It is, however, possible to rig conforming clothing by yourself in Poser. Smith Micro has some good tutorials at the above link. Good luck and have fun!