Need a new way of meshing

Hi. Please link us to a specific garment’s package and blend file, preferably the one that distorts

I'll go through problems found on each item, then walk you through the adaptation process on one. Before i'll do the later, would you want to move to the new blender? or would you rather stay in 2.7x?

XXXTIGGER_CHARLIE BROWN DRESS
The cause of the main problem:
Unlike a dress you transferred weights from, the lingerie set you started the package from was not affected by skirt bones. They are the ones that distort in ts4.
Starting a package from a garment of similar shape, transferring all data from it, adapting it the same way prevents 99% of issues. But to solve this one, you need to start a package from a different item ( paste "DressPanels" in the search bar in the catalog )
Other issues, unrelated to this one:
- maxis's most complex items almost never go past 10k tris. The polycount of your item is 3 times higher and half of it comes from the bow. There is a point in making wireframe denser when there is something worth preserving ( wrinkles, folds, smoothness of hems, etc ). The bow does not have that, you wont even be looking at it up close, so theres no point in it being this high poly. You can just export it as thin from MD and add the other side in blender;
- the garment is vertex painted with a random color, so it morphs in a random way. Dresses are painted with two: 3FFF00 for the skirt area, 00FF00 for the rest. You must have sampled the color in-between these two. Anyway, it is always easier to just transfer vertex paint;
- when closing holes, extrude and collapse them, it will reduce the polycount of created geometry in half;
- One pixel can display only one color. The more pixels the image contains, the better the texture quality. So, bigger uvs = more pixels = better quality. After deleting all areas of the body covered by clothing, you should put the garment's uvs in the freed space.

XXXTIGGER_BLACK DRESS
The cause of the main problem:
If you were to open uv_1 and zoom out in the uv editor, you'd see that some uvs are in random places
Other issues, unrelated to this one ( same as in the previous example ):
- dress imported into a lingerie package;
- uvs in uv_0 are too small;
- best to remove more body covered by clothing to have more space to put uvs in;
- vertex painted with the wrong color.

DRAPPED DRESS
The cause of the main problem:
The choice of the reference. You need to transfer weights, uv_1 and vertex paint from a floor length dress that has no shoes.
Once you open a reference, you will see at least 4 meshgroups. The bottom ones will be affected by foot and toe bones. This is one of those situation where you have to split your dress in multiple meshgroups the same way in the end, otherwise the bone limit will be exceeded and the mesh will distort on the highest settings in cas or in live mode when you zoom out
Other issues:
- polycount is high enough to crash the game for many people;
- long dress imported in a lingerie package;
- bad uv_1 because of unsuitable reference;
- not vertex painted with right colors

one last thing, you said to start with dresspanels, i see that dress in the S4S, but wont that have pieces of the body missing? especially on shorter dresses? how do I add a new body mesh without faces missing of the body where there is no body underneath the dress, because EA has deleted the faces. I hope that makes sense...

Hi. I wanted to wait until I make a video, but you misunderstood something crucial about that lingerie set comment and it’s getting you in more troubles.
By « reference » we mean an item that behaves (moves, morphs) in a way your item should be, meaning we can transfer all data responsible for this behavior from it to your garment. « Reference » is not a nude body underneath your garment. It can serve as such (if the shape allows), but it does not have to.
There is no difference between a nude body and a lingerie set, they are shaped the same exact way and behave the same. There is, hovever, a dramatic difference in how nude legs and a skirt move and morph.
When a skirt receives data from legs, it behaves like legs, not a skirt. Like, there is a sharp difference in movement between the right and the left side of the skirt, and it is affected by calf and thigh morphs.

the latest stable supported version is 3.6.
you do not need and never needed to use 2.7 for weight transfer, people simply do not bother googling how to use tools before teaching other how to do that


I’ll get back to you in a few hours

Maybe I can clear up a couple of things.

--Regarding the need to split the dress into multiple mesh groups because of the number of bones what Mauvemorn means is that no mesh group can have more than 60 bones assigned to it. If a mesh group has more than 60 bones then that mesh group will need to be split. Use a similar EA item as your reference and split your mesh in the same places as the reference mesh.  
--Your mesh stretching in CAS and in the thumbnail is 100% a problem with weights. Anytime you see part of your mesh shooting into space like that it's weights. It's always weights.
--Regarding closing holes, select the edge of the hole, E to extrude into the center then merge the vertices into one vertex in the middle. If you're using a version of Blender above 2.80 the keyboard shortcut would be either Alt + M or just M and then "at center."
--Vertex paint and the uv_1 are needed so that your mesh will respond to the sliders in CAS.
--You should ABSOLUTELY delete body parts that are hidden under your mesh. If you don't do this the body may clip into your mesh during animation. And body parts hidden by your mesh increases the polycount and serves no purpose whatsoever. 
--Deleting the body parts frees up space on the CAS map which lets you create larger UV islands. 
--If you want/need square UV islands you can select edges of your UV islands, right click and choose Straighten X, or Straighten Y, or Align X, or Align Y. 
--After straightening edges select the edges and press P to pin those vertices. Then U to unwrap. It will sort of rearrange all of the inside vertices so that your texture won't look weird or stretched. Alt + P to unpin. 
--I'm currently using Blender 3.3 and it works well for me. You can transfer weights, uv_1, and vertex paint in newer versions of Blender. 
--Regarding "dots" not showing up. I'm assuming it's the rig you want? Make sure the rig isn't hidden. There's a little eye next to "rig" that needs to be checked. 
--Not sure what you mean by your meshes looking bumpy. I can tell you that the topology isn't good and will need to be retopologized. You can do this easily in Marvelous Designer.
--Here's what I do to retopologize in MD: After retopologizing I subdivide the retopologized pattern pieces in MD. The reason I do this is that you will lose all your sew lines after retopologizing and will need to resew the pattern pieces. Then you'll need to simulate again. The problem is that once you retopologize the pattern pieces the mesh will be very low poly and won't simulate well. But, if you subdivide your retopologized pattern pieces before simulating you get a better result. 
--Export your retopologized mesh and take it into blender. Then select any unnecessary edge loops and press X > dissolve edges. 
--At the very least model in quads in Marvelous Designer. The seams will be messy but it's better then modeling in tris. 
--Not sure what you mean by shading and shadow problems but it is important to split edges in certain places. Here's an example of what you see when you don't split edges (using the edge split modifier). 

This is for Blender 2.78 but the concept is the same.




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HELLO, Mauvemorn,
I have read your message, and downloaded the tutorial, files, and links, I started this project with the new Blender 3.6.7, "Learning a new way to mesh" It was very hard with no sound and took me all day to go through the first 5 mins of the tutorial but I muddled my way through with a few hick-ups.
first, I was not able to import your dress, because it is some kind of file I do not recognize, so I imported my dress, I made from MD as a OBJ, using the same reference dress you have in the video, it is a little shorter but I think it still works,
2nd, my dress has bows on it, and since you have not covered weights or vertex paint up to the point of testing your mesh in the video at 5:37 my bows are all wonky, am i missing something? can you look at this and tell me, if I am missing something?
I deleted the bows, and tried to test again, without them this time, but there are still holes, it does seem to morph with the body better, so I think I understand that part now.
I have to say I love using the new blender! Thank you so much for all your help, Closing holes, and navigation is much easier for me.


If you can take a peek at both the 2nd try and the without bows folders, tell me if I am going in the right direction before I go any further? I just do not want to have to learn over or backtrack , and I am trying to teach my team at the same time.

here a=is a link to those folders, and some pics of my problems I now face

2nd tryhttps://1drv.ms/f/s!Ao4RzIAHKGpJrP5ScHOI0EdND4a5GQ?e=QzbwS2
without bowshttps://1drv.ms/f/s!Ao4RzIAHKGpJrP5RpeD2GdX3NI4puA?e=46KIte
IMAGES OF HOLES, WONKY BOWS, AND CLIPPING....https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ao4RzIAHKGpJrP5l5vX7ZHHuPRVtEw?e=0pTHY9

The dress comes in .obj and downloads in the same format for me, so its either your browser or google drive that are causing problems. Try this one

Well, I guess now you understand why i asked to follow on the same example and study Maxis catalog before making your own garments.
There are three reason for distortions:
1. You missed the Mapping. It should always be set to Nearest face interpolated. Steps 7 and 11

2. The more vertices the mesh has, the more it distorts, which is why i told you to watch the polycount. Yours is high enough to crash the game for most people, with the bow alone accounting for most of it;
3. To not clip into the dress, the bow must behave exactly like the area of the dress it covers, which is accomplished with data transfer. If you were to try to adjust rigging/uv_1/vertex paint manually on it, it would most likely lead to clipping because of differences. This is why no maxis dress has any sculpted detail like this in the breast area. If you cannot find anything like what you have in mind among maxis items, take it as a divine sign to not do this