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Adventures in Cloth Body Enhancement
With the new clothing update in FVNE, three specific features interested me.
I'm sure some of you remember Ms Oppai, wyvern of width, maiden of mammaries, draconic dumptruck etc etc
Well soon after completing the character I liked the design so much that I modeled my own version of her in Zbrush.
Because you can do pretty much whatever you want in Zbrush, I was able to make something more along the lines of my artistic style. But now with the new clothing update, I asked myself...could I make something like this in FVNE?
It turns out, yes. Sort of.
The idea here was to use cloth models as a way to enhance the main body of the character, give her a more stylized look. For me these were the most important things I wanted to do but couldn't with the base editor.
Just an FYI, pretty much all the additions I made were taken straight from the Zbrush version of the character (I was smart enough to keep a version with all the body parts separated)
The PAP Belly
The big girthy gut. I didn't want that balloon belly. I wanted that layered tum tum that screams "I am fat but also toned somehow" I think this was hands down the most important thing I wanted to nail. The extra shading on the belly button was an unintended bonus, it might be from the pixel offset being affected by the real belly mesh underneath.
Although at first I was having problems as the gut mesh was collapsing due to the sheer weight of Oppai's massive oppais.
Thankfully the problem was fixed after some mucking about with the Exclusion Mask. It still doesn't bend around perfectly (One can spot some occasional jagged edges along the belly in certain poses) But I'm sure it can be fixed with some refinement of the mask and maybe increasing the poly count on the belly mesh (for good measure)
Hips and Booty
All I can say is dayum. That's a butt. 100% improvement 10/10 would bind again.
Something I've noticed is that when you use pixel offsets, you can just barely see the outline of the mesh. It could just be the settings I'm using.I think the only problem is that the cheeks are so large that the kooch is kinda buried in there, might cause problems once interactions become a thing.
Another thing I want to point out is this weird way butts tend to bend with this body type. And I know it's not because of the cloth mesh because this happens with stock derrieres as well.
The Custom Head
It's possible to slap your own head on a character. Would I recommend it? No.
The simple reason is this: It's more trouble than it's worth, and what you end up with is not that great. This easily took the most time out of any of the other parts in this post. Just trying to align the eye cavities with the eyeballs was a nightmare. I ended up using double alpha fills to mask the original mesh around the eyeball onto the custom head. Blinking worked, and I even added the jaw as well which could move up and down (barely) but the tongue kept clipping through. I also had trouble trying to add mirrored decals to the head (the pivot point was on a diagonal for some reason? Perhaps it had to do with the mesh)
In some future update maybe custom head models will be viable, but until then I'm not going to bother.
Mommy Milkers
I once saw a kemono piece where the teats were absolutely bonkers. I wanted that for Oppai. Devs put in their hard limit on areola thickness, that's their choice. This is mine
This was very easy to do, the areolas are pretty simple meshes and when the boobers droop due to gravity they really help sell how heavy they are. It also has the bonus of properly scaling with the breast inflation slider! If you aren't worried about them scaling properly, you could probably make the areolas parts instead of garments to save you a clothing render slot.
Adding Some Mussel
An important part of Oppai's design is her bracers are so tight that it bulges up her limbs. How I originally pulled it off in the FVNE model was simply adding the ring parts onto the body and coloring the "covered" parts of her limbs brown to give the illusion that they were thick bracers. But now with the extra bulk it really sells the effect.
My one regret here is the shoulder blades. I didn't position them properly so they look weird and they tend to glitch out if you rotate the shoulders any particular way than the default position. If I had to do it again, I would make the shoulder blades separate meshes, or just not have them at all. Otherwise I think the rest looks great. Obviously they need some refinement but for a first try they worked out pretty well.
ouchie
Something I also found out during this part is that it is possible to blend two separate cloth objects. Apparently this is an unintended feature...still it might come in handy one day.
Big ol Lizard Feet
Let me just say it right now, I am not into feet. But nonetheless, creatures got feet, so I gotta give em feet.
Now, I'm sure the devs worked very hard on their foot models and they are perfectly fine for any character...but they don't appeal to me. I wanted something with a lot more length and a lot more..."personality"? The stock feet are uhh...kinda dainty...I think a dragon is more deserving of some larger stompers with which to make footprints that scare the bejeezus out of would-be adventurers.
This was actually much easier than I thought it would be. Since each toe only has one bone, they bind in there quite nicely. All I had to do was hide the base toes with an alpha fill. In the future I may even create a character with completely customized feet.
Big ol Lizard Grabbers
Like I said, I'm not too fond of feet. Hands tho? Hell yeah. I really like those blocky Milt Kahl-style cartoon hands. And hands are important for expression and making strong poses.
These were also much easier than I thought they'd be to set up, much like the toes. And the way they easily blend with the base mesh it's almost like they came stock. On top of that, they make for some really nice poses.
Conclusion
In the end this dragon has become what can only be described as a beefy poundcake of a woman that is more accurate to her original intended design.
The biggest advantage of cloth body enhancement is that you can go beyond what you can do with bone offsets alone. There is a lot of potential to be had and I am going to take full advantage of it with my characters. Ultimately I think this is a really great way to add variety to your characters. The possibilities are endless (Or at least, until your graphics card explodes)
Now...the drawbacks.
The biggest drawback is that if you want to share your character on the cloud, there's only so much you'll be able to do before you hit either a wall of too many triangles or too many clothing renders. And if you want to give your character actual clothes on top of that, well good luck bud.
While I do like how the fingers and toes ended up, another drawback is that you can't really place appendages on them because technically they aren't part of the base mesh (Or at least, it would be very time consuming to do so). The nails here are all separate parts in order to bind them to each digit (And as you can guess, that really ate up my draw calls)
For the reasons stated above, (Also because she's kind of a mess) I won't be sharing this version of Oppai in the cloud. Maybe in the future I'll make a "director's cut" version of her with some refined techniques. But you can download the .yl2c file here if you're interested in messing about yourself.
I hope you learned a few things and use these findings to help add some spice to your own characters!
- The ability to smooth seams between the cloth/part mesh and the main mesh
- The ability to hide parts of the main mesh via alpha fills
- The ability to easily bind cloth objects to bones
I'm sure some of you remember Ms Oppai, wyvern of width, maiden of mammaries, draconic dumptruck etc etc
Well soon after completing the character I liked the design so much that I modeled my own version of her in Zbrush.
Because you can do pretty much whatever you want in Zbrush, I was able to make something more along the lines of my artistic style. But now with the new clothing update, I asked myself...could I make something like this in FVNE?
It turns out, yes. Sort of.
The idea here was to use cloth models as a way to enhance the main body of the character, give her a more stylized look. For me these were the most important things I wanted to do but couldn't with the base editor.
- Hefty gut that doesn't look like an inflation-style belly
- Rounder butt and thicker hips
- An angular, slender head
- Absolutely ridiculous swolen mommy milkers-lookin aereolas
- Soft musculature along the arms and calves
- Toes with some length on em
- Real thick square-lookin fingers (Though the vanilla hybrid hands are a fine substitute)
Just an FYI, pretty much all the additions I made were taken straight from the Zbrush version of the character (I was smart enough to keep a version with all the body parts separated)
The PAP Belly
The big girthy gut. I didn't want that balloon belly. I wanted that layered tum tum that screams "I am fat but also toned somehow" I think this was hands down the most important thing I wanted to nail. The extra shading on the belly button was an unintended bonus, it might be from the pixel offset being affected by the real belly mesh underneath.
Although at first I was having problems as the gut mesh was collapsing due to the sheer weight of Oppai's massive oppais.
Thankfully the problem was fixed after some mucking about with the Exclusion Mask. It still doesn't bend around perfectly (One can spot some occasional jagged edges along the belly in certain poses) But I'm sure it can be fixed with some refinement of the mask and maybe increasing the poly count on the belly mesh (for good measure)
Hips and Booty
All I can say is dayum. That's a butt. 100% improvement 10/10 would bind again.
Something I've noticed is that when you use pixel offsets, you can just barely see the outline of the mesh. It could just be the settings I'm using.I think the only problem is that the cheeks are so large that the kooch is kinda buried in there, might cause problems once interactions become a thing.
Another thing I want to point out is this weird way butts tend to bend with this body type. And I know it's not because of the cloth mesh because this happens with stock derrieres as well.
The Custom Head
It's possible to slap your own head on a character. Would I recommend it? No.
The simple reason is this: It's more trouble than it's worth, and what you end up with is not that great. This easily took the most time out of any of the other parts in this post. Just trying to align the eye cavities with the eyeballs was a nightmare. I ended up using double alpha fills to mask the original mesh around the eyeball onto the custom head. Blinking worked, and I even added the jaw as well which could move up and down (barely) but the tongue kept clipping through. I also had trouble trying to add mirrored decals to the head (the pivot point was on a diagonal for some reason? Perhaps it had to do with the mesh)
In some future update maybe custom head models will be viable, but until then I'm not going to bother.
Mommy Milkers
I once saw a kemono piece where the teats were absolutely bonkers. I wanted that for Oppai. Devs put in their hard limit on areola thickness, that's their choice. This is mine
This was very easy to do, the areolas are pretty simple meshes and when the boobers droop due to gravity they really help sell how heavy they are. It also has the bonus of properly scaling with the breast inflation slider! If you aren't worried about them scaling properly, you could probably make the areolas parts instead of garments to save you a clothing render slot.
Adding Some Mussel
An important part of Oppai's design is her bracers are so tight that it bulges up her limbs. How I originally pulled it off in the FVNE model was simply adding the ring parts onto the body and coloring the "covered" parts of her limbs brown to give the illusion that they were thick bracers. But now with the extra bulk it really sells the effect.
My one regret here is the shoulder blades. I didn't position them properly so they look weird and they tend to glitch out if you rotate the shoulders any particular way than the default position. If I had to do it again, I would make the shoulder blades separate meshes, or just not have them at all. Otherwise I think the rest looks great. Obviously they need some refinement but for a first try they worked out pretty well.
ouchie
Something I also found out during this part is that it is possible to blend two separate cloth objects. Apparently this is an unintended feature...still it might come in handy one day.
Big ol Lizard Feet
Let me just say it right now, I am not into feet. But nonetheless, creatures got feet, so I gotta give em feet.
Now, I'm sure the devs worked very hard on their foot models and they are perfectly fine for any character...but they don't appeal to me. I wanted something with a lot more length and a lot more..."personality"? The stock feet are uhh...kinda dainty...I think a dragon is more deserving of some larger stompers with which to make footprints that scare the bejeezus out of would-be adventurers.
This was actually much easier than I thought it would be. Since each toe only has one bone, they bind in there quite nicely. All I had to do was hide the base toes with an alpha fill. In the future I may even create a character with completely customized feet.
Big ol Lizard Grabbers
Like I said, I'm not too fond of feet. Hands tho? Hell yeah. I really like those blocky Milt Kahl-style cartoon hands. And hands are important for expression and making strong poses.
These were also much easier than I thought they'd be to set up, much like the toes. And the way they easily blend with the base mesh it's almost like they came stock. On top of that, they make for some really nice poses.
Conclusion
In the end this dragon has become what can only be described as a beefy poundcake of a woman that is more accurate to her original intended design.
The biggest advantage of cloth body enhancement is that you can go beyond what you can do with bone offsets alone. There is a lot of potential to be had and I am going to take full advantage of it with my characters. Ultimately I think this is a really great way to add variety to your characters. The possibilities are endless (Or at least, until your graphics card explodes)
Now...the drawbacks.
The biggest drawback is that if you want to share your character on the cloud, there's only so much you'll be able to do before you hit either a wall of too many triangles or too many clothing renders. And if you want to give your character actual clothes on top of that, well good luck bud.
While I do like how the fingers and toes ended up, another drawback is that you can't really place appendages on them because technically they aren't part of the base mesh (Or at least, it would be very time consuming to do so). The nails here are all separate parts in order to bind them to each digit (And as you can guess, that really ate up my draw calls)
For the reasons stated above, (Also because she's kind of a mess) I won't be sharing this version of Oppai in the cloud. Maybe in the future I'll make a "director's cut" version of her with some refined techniques. But you can download the .yl2c file here if you're interested in messing about yourself.
I hope you learned a few things and use these findings to help add some spice to your own characters!
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