I have a couple of questions about this dress making method

Hi. New thread is ok, but it should probably go to Discussion since this is more about modeling in md than adapting for s4s 🤔

1). The reason you want to use an ea dress is because it is already of the shape you need. For example, the op’s problem was in the shape of the patterns. Because of this the skirt was so tight, the cut in the front would stretch too much. In real world, this type of bottom would be made of more patterns to make sure they hug the body properly instead of stretching. And that it where the ea dress comes in. It is already of the shape you need, so the patterns will also be of the perfect shape, without you having to learn sewing and all of that.
2). Not sure what you mean by flattening. You just import the mesh and click on it with that tool
3). There’s actually an even easier way of doing it:
- find the dress of a similar shape, export the blend, open it;
- delete one half of it, delete legs and arms, delete all the remaining body parts just so that the dress remains;
- add 1 seam at the front and one seam at the back by selecting them and marking as seams (you can turn the mesh from tris to quads first to have an easier way of selecting these edge loops, but it does not always quadrangulates right);
- important: md will use uvs to create the patterns, so you need to make sure that the uvs correspond to their 3d representation as close as possible (as in no stretching occurs ). So you just need to unwrap the dress so that you’ll get 4 uv islands. Then you might need to rotate them a bit so that they are straight.
- optional: remove doubles for the whole mesh after you unwrap it. MD may preserve this as stitches but it does not always work;
- once done, export the mesh as obj with the new uv map selected;
- open the scene with an avatar, choose Import, choose Load as Garment, then Trace 2D Patterns from UV Map;
- you may get a few unnecessary vertices along edges, just convert them to curve points (deleting them will ruin the curvature and sewing, you can delete curve points though), mirror the patterns with linked editing, sew them.
4). You can do this for anything, we just already have ea meshes at our disposition, so why not

Ooh, sorry, I forgot what that tool was called.
Also, sorry for the late reply, thought I posted it, but it was lost in the tabs.

It’s not really blender’s fault, people tend to not unwrap things the right way, not just in blender but in general.
You cannot expect a software with no intellect to give you a perfect uv map without marking seams in strategical places, the same ones where real tailors cut fabric.
If you were to cut a (real) ball in half and try to flatten one half in the flat circle, it would be smashed in the middle of it, right?but if you were to cut that ball in 8 or more parts, you’d have an easier time flattening it.
The tight-fitting dress is a complex shape with protruding areas. You need to cut it in several places for it to unwrap correctly, as in for its uvs to not be stretched or shrank, which will lead to patterns that do not fit the body right.
My point is, if you mark seams in the same places tailors sew real dresses, blender will give you perfect uvs which will convert to perfectly fit patterns. Unlike tailors, though, you do not need to make darts, just splitting uvs into multiple uv islands is fine.

As for the uvs MD gives us, they are not exactly good, at least not always. For example, you can make two square patterns and sew them on the sides. Put them in the pelvic area, simulate, you’ve gotten yourself a tight-fitting skirt! Now, normally, are skirts made of two square patterns? Do people have the same measurements all over their pelvic area? No, so those patterns are stretched in one place and loose in another. This may not be noticeable until you’ll try to project a texture or make a cut somewhere like the op of the linked thread did.
So again, my point is, it is a better idea to create fitted patterns like real tailors. We do not need to know how they do it, though, we can simply “convert” an existing mesh into patterns. We do not need to make an identical copy of the maxis item, we will just use its shape as a base and adjust it to our liking in MD.

I feel like I already filmed this one time but am not sure how to find it, so I’ll make another quick video (it is very fast) in about 3 days (am not home right now)