Creating a path with a edge loop?

I am doing a tutorial on, how to make dynamic clothing. The modeler used in the tutorial, is Silo.
So far I have been able to follow right along, until this point. What he is doing, copying and pasting a selected edge loop.
What he says this does, is create a path. Then he opens a circle, scales it, and extrudes the circle to the path.

I went to the edit menu to copy and paste, but there is no copy and paste under the edit menu.
Can this be done in VW? If it can, how?

This may be the one you are after, edge mode > Create Closed/Opened Spline.

Hi 3dwizzard,

Select the edge_loop-> Geometry-> Create closed spline. (or "Create Opened Spline" if edge loop open)
Select the newly created spline-> [change to] sub-object_vertex (vertex_select mode)-> "Slide"
In the slide options, enable "Tube" and change the radius to size required and set segments as needed.

IStonia beat me to it.
Hello IStonia, hope you are well.

Regards,

-Steve







 

Maybe I should've specified the object of this was to add thickness to the skirt. Like a top and bottom hem. 

That worked really good:

It's starting to look like a skirt now.

Steve, that opened up a whole lot of possibilities, with everything we went over. Now I'm thinking, shoulder straps, and a belt.

Hi 3dwizzard,

Looking good.

Now I'm thinking, shoulder straps, and a belt.

There are various ways to create those, as the tools are there.

Post back and keep us updated with your progress, or if you need help/suggestions on how to create those.

Thanks Steve,
                       I was thinking the shoulders straps, I could use Spline with Slide.
That's pretty much what we've been working on. So, I don't think it should be too hard to do that.
But the belt, I was thinking of something that will highlight the skirt. A braided, or chain mesh type belt.

Any ideas?

Hi 3dwizzard,

I was thinking the shoulders straps, I could use Spline with Slide.

That would not be my first choice. Creating the spline could be a bit of a pain due to the underlying mesh. You would probably need to manually place the [spline]points and adjust tangency.
I think I would go with retopo/alignment. I will put together a simple example of that later tonight.

But the belt, I was thinking of something that will highlight the skirt. A braided, or chain mesh type belt.

Will the belt be a separate object? If yes, then the base mesh of the belt can be made from a polygon loop (duplicate-> new object) from around the waist area.

Great, it is proving to be a little more tedious than I thought. I've been starting a spline, putting it into place.
Then switching to edge mode, then in the submenu. I add to the spline.
You're right about the underlying mesh. That was really throwing me off.
I found though, if I work in a viewport that pertains to that axis. It don't get buried in the underlying mesh.
Still though, very tedious.



I'm not sure about the belt. It might be better as its own object. That way I can use it for different clothing articles.
I'd probably have to make some kind of morph, to scale on the radius Y. axis.

Hi 3dwizzard,

I was going to show you a quick way of adding a strap, however, that could cause issues, let me quickly explain that. With character meshes from places like DAZ3d, the meshes are copyright and do not allow for shrink wrapping to mesh. The process I was going to show you would of been "Align-> vertex normal" which would be classed as shrink-wrapping.
So I will show you how to do it manually by retopo which is allowed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is just a very quick example (with simple meshes), but should show you the process.


First select the underlying [character]mesh (in my example, that is the blue mesh). Open the "Scene explorer"(the tab for that is on the top right, next to the visual tools).
In the "Scene explorer" select the "Retopo Reference list" tab, click "Add from scene selection"(that will add the character mesh to the list) and select "Retopo mode enabled"



In the main viewport, select the skirt mesh(white mesh in my example). Go into "sub-object edge"(select edge mode) and enable "Retopo"
Press (hold down) the shift key, then left click/drag on one of the edges of the skirt where you want to strap to start. That will in effect extrude that edge, but the vertex of that new edge will stay on the underlying mesh.



Repeat by "shift+left click drag" on the strap edge and create the strap running over the shoulder of the character. Once you get to the other side, leave a gap between the strap and the top of the skirt, as you can use "Bridge" to connect the end of the strap to the skirt.

Once the strap is done, go into "sub-object polygon"(polygon selection), open the "scene explorer" and uncheck(disable) the "retopo mode". Then if needed you can select the polygons on the strap and use "Local move polygon" by pressing(hold down) the "H" key, left click and drag which will move the selected polygons in their normal direction, so you can move them slightly away from the character mesh, to stop any co-incidental(over-lapping) faces



Probably not a very good example, but should help to get you in the right direction for creating the strap by retopo.
If anything is unclear, then just ask.

This is what I have so far.



For a few reasons I have a feeling something isn't right.
In the scene explorer, when I put a check in the box for retopo. The character disappears.



Is it supposed to disappear like that? 
At first I thought, it was so you could mirror everything. But I can't seem to select anything.
I even tried the select submenu, along symmetry center. Which I thought was a neat option.

Also, the splines are missing as well.

When the 'Retopo Mode' is turned on, selected objects will be rendered by a z offset value so they can appear in front of reference objects. If the z offset value is too much, the selected objects may be out of view.

Retopo z offset value can be adjusted in 'Scene Explorer'. It is scene scale related. One thing I've noticed from other images you posted is that your objects are very small compare to the floor grid. I would suggest you to adjust you scene scale. View > Floor Settings(Scene Scale).

Edit: Another way is to adjust your import/export scale if you want to keep the current scene scale setting. In this case, you need to scale the skirt and the splines manually to suit to new character size.

I set the z offset to 0. That took care of it. Thanks IStonia.

Posers scale seem to be a bit of a mystery. This is the only reference that I found to Poser Scale:

http://www.drgeep.com/p4/morwings/morwings.htm

I started off with this modeler. Page 3 and 7, talk about Posers scale.

Scale is something I wish I was more knowledgeable about. It confuses me.
But from what I figure, I believe I'm at the best possible setting.
maybe not.

Hi 3dwizzard,

For the scaling, just change the import/export scale in VoidWorld options.

Edit-> Options-> File Format Options.
In the popup, select the obj format (or .dae if using that). Change "Import Scale" to 500 and change "Export Scale" to 0.002

Thanks again Steve,
Wow, she's huge.



The export scale, is that the import scale for Poser?

Do you know what the default scale for the cylinder is?



I changed it for modeling clothing, for Poser figures.
Which brings me to another thought. When I modeling an article,
and I export it. Will it be at the right scale?
I'm thinking it will, but I just want to clarify it. 

Hi 3dwizzard,

Wow, she's huge.

If it is too big, then just change the scaling. All you need is to have the import/export scaling set so that what "scale up" you make on import, is then "scaled back down"(by the same amount) on export. So in the scaling I put forward, you would scale the obj up by 500, then on export you would scale it back down by 500 (1 divided by 500 = 0.002). So if needed/preferred, you could set the scale to (for example) "import 100"(imports at 100 times its unit size), then "export 0.01"(exports at 100 times smaller)

What causes this issue is due to there not being any actual reference to what a unit actually is within the .obj format (in the .obj file, it only has units, not what the unit measurement is), and also that programs like "Daz studio" and "poser" use their own unit size. For example, Daz studio, if you import a character mesh(at default scale) and check its hight, it is approx 0.75 units high, now that is for a character approx 5 foot 10 inches. So it can make things confusing.

I do not currently have poser installed, but will see if I can find the programme later and install it to check what unit size it is using. I will then be able to better tell you what scaling factor to use for the characters, and to what scaling you should make to export objects so they are to scale when you import them into Poser.