Guides A guide for Sim textures

[atani]

atani submitted a new resource:

A guide to Sim textures - The clothes must flow

View attachment 199547

@Case asked if I knew something about sim textures in clothing and if I could make a guide to go together with my guide for Alpha textures.
Well, I don't know much, but something is more than nothing, and maybe it could be useful to others, so I'm having a go at it.

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[Case]

So someone thought it immensely important that this good thread here be amply supplied with stupids question - not sure I quite see why, but as a man of my word, I shall sink to the occasion!

Here we go:
1) One thing that surprised me a bit was your explanation of the effect controlled by the redchannel. It isn't hard to guess that the simtexture represents a mapping of something, but of what? I hadn'T suspected the degree of "stretchiness" of the cloth.

I had been conviced that the intensitiy in the red-channel corresponded to the local "skin-joint strength" (can also be controlled via the slider on the very bottom of the left side of the GUI), ie, that the clothing clings to the skin more strongly in those places that have a higher "red-value" - and that furthermore, it takes more force to break the local skinjoints in those places?

 

[atani]

So someone thought it immensely important that this good thread here be amply supplied with stupids question - not sure I quite see why, but as a man of my word, I shall sink to the occasion!

Here we go:
1) One thing that surprised me a bit was your explanation of the effect controlled by the redchannel. It isn't hard to guess that the simtexture represents a mapping of something, but of what? I hadn'T suspected the degree of "stretchiness" of the cloth.

I had been conviced that the intensitiy in the red-channel corresponded to the local "skin-joint strength" (can also be controlled via the slider on the very bottom of the left side of the GUI), ie, that the clothing clings to the skin more strongly in those places that have a higher "red-value" - and that furthermore, it takes more force to break the local skinjoints in those places?

See, you know a ton more than I do.
All my "definitions" are purely my point of view from a super limited knowledge of how 3D models work. I don't even know what "skin-joint strenght" is to answer your question. Possibly that's the "undress" part I don't understand at all.

 

[RandomVAMUser]

My knowledge behind sim maps is also somewhat limited, but I wanna share my understanding about 255 red.

When "full red"(255) is applied, it makes that spot sticky/glued to a person (basically impossible to undress).
Say for example you have tank top with 255 red on top, no amount of force (gravity or physical pull) can take it off (shoulders).
Even worse if you use uniform 1.000 (basically entire mesh).
At this point you are better of disabling sim all together (if it's not per material sim).

It sucks when you see nice clothes on hub just to find out it uses 255 red.
I could be wrong... but Imo using full red renders clothing item kinda limited useless outside MMDs and stills...and fixing "bad" sim maps is no fun.

EDIT: also "create nearby joint" is mostly for when you have multiple materials (not combined), it keeps shit together.
Say you have shirt split into 3 parts (sleeves, trim, main part), it prevents sleeves from falling off (when you toggle sim).

 

[atani]

That's pretty much the motivation I had to see how Sim worked, getting a nice clothing item and bam! no Sim
Another is crappy Sim texture that when you enable everything comes apart immediately

BTW, at the bottom on "Tips" there's a bullet point to never use red 255 :+1

 

[Case]

See, you know a ton more than I do.
All my "definitions" are purely my point of view from a super limited knowledge of how 3D models work. I don't even know what "skin-joint strenght" is to answer your question. Possibly that's the "undress" part I don't understand at all.

I don't know what "skin joint strength" is either. I only assumed it refered to smth to do with both the skin and the cloth, rather than the cloth alone?

And I've never been able to make a sim-cloth work the way I wanted it to, so I wouldn't call that "knowledge", but rather "semi-informed pedantry".

P.S.: My apologies - I swear I didn't ask you to make this guide for the sole purpose of then asking you pedantic questions once you'd done me the favor.

 

[atani]

I was thinking about doing one to go together with the Alphas guide, and your message of interest pushed me from my natural laziness to actually do it. It was a fun mini project to do, so thank you for the push
I believe in you that soon you'll make a sim texture work the way you want it to.

 

[Singaia]

Hey there!

Did it happen to you that some clothes seem to not work at all with sim textures? For example, for the shorts of this clothing set here, I tried to create a pitch black jpg, just for the sake of testing, and put it not only on the "main" sim slot (within the clothing creator), but also on both materials. After enabling sim, nothing happened . It also happened to some other clothes, for some reason. Pretty weird...

 

[atani]

I don't know much on the mechanics behind sim clothing, but from what I reckon you can only use a Sim texture on a clothing that went through "generate sim data" (#8 in the picture of Clothing Creator). Clothes that already had Sim textures you can just replace with your new texture, but those that don't have Sim data you need to put them into Clothing Creator and generate that data.
Keep in mind that those shorts are made to be skin tight, to use Sim you'll need to play a bit with Collision radius and others to make it look decent with Sim on.

Good luck.

 

[Singaia]

I don't know much on the mechanics behind sim clothing, but from what I reckon you can only use a Sim texture on a clothing that went through "generate sim data" (#8 in the picture of Clothing Creator). Clothes that already had Sim textures you can just replace with your new texture, but those that don't have Sim data you need to put them into Clothing Creator and generate that data.
Keep in mind that those shorts are made to be skin tight, to use Sim you'll need to play a bit with Collision radius and others to make it look decent with Sim on.

Good luck.

Got it. Thanks!

 

[VamTastic]

A very interesting subject Atani and a great guide , just wondered how you did the gradient Red to black .

 

[atani]

A very interesting subject Atani and a great guide , just wondered how you did the gradient Red to black .

I think I used Paint.net and the gradient tool in it. Any decent image editor beyond the basics will have a gradient tool of some sort, and regular painting in different red values also works well.

 

[VamTastic]

I think I used Paint.net and the gradient tool in it. Any decent image editor beyond the basics will have a gradient tool of some sort, and regular painting in different red values also works well.

Thanks mate, i will try the paint.net had issues trying to get it to work in Gimp.

 

[atani]

I have GIMP but use it for heavier work. I like paint.net as it's a nice inbetween basic editors and GIMP, sometimes you just want some power without a million options to go through.