Hey folks, can anyone help me figure this out... I'm trying to create a pic of a king wearing chainmail armor, sitting on his throne. So I combined a bunch of tiles of chainmail to make a single large "sheet" of it, then I superimposed that over a body texture for Apollo Max. Now when I apply that body texture to him, it looks like he's wearing chainmail. Great! That's exactly what I was looking for , except...
It looks great when he's standing, but when I make him sit, the texture stretches (just like a person's skin) across areas such as his knees.... Sorry, but I don't have a picture handy that I can attach. So the end result is that the "links" of the chainmail are normal looking across his torso and his thighs, but horribly stretched and deformed looking across his knees. It really ruins the look. And here I was so proud of myself for having made a texture that looks so good when he's standing!
Does anyone have any ideas how I can take care of this problem?

There ain't a simple solution to this, unfortunately.  One possible solution is to create an alternate texture for sitting, scaling down the stretched areas to compensate for the distortion. 

A bit of faffing around in Photoshop should put you right.

I was thinking something along the same lines, but hoping there was some other way. Just to be sure I understand what you're talking about, are you saying for me to take a look at the areas where the texture will stretch, and then make an alternate texture, where the links of the chainmail are smaller in those areas. That way when I apply the texture, it will (if I did it right) stretch in those areas, and the size will at least come close to the "unstretched" areas. If that's right, it might take an awful lot of experimentation to get it right. Ugh... looks like it's gonna be a long night.

IIRC there's a thread here about chainmail using baggin's matmatic as a procedural. a simple image will always distort.

Yep, that's what I mean.  I used a similar technique on a face texture which has a repeating pattern across it.  The pattern gets progressively more distorted across the nose, so I used the Spherise and Pinch filters in Photoshop to counteract it somewhat.  And yes, it did take a bit of experimenting to get it right.  Still, the results were worth it.

See, this is why we need a proper rigid dynamics system in Poser... I mean, how much simpler it would be to model your chainmail, every single link, and then run a rigid dynamics simulation on it as it draped over Apollo's body, so that it worked perfectly each time?

(Incidentally, this is a joke - modeling a full chainmail set and calculating a full RDS would NOT be a simple thing to do!!)

JonTheCelt

Quote - See, this is why we need a proper rigid dynamics system in Poser... I mean, how much simpler it would be to model your chainmail, every single link, and then run a rigid dynamics simulation on it as it draped over Apollo's body, so that it worked perfectly each time?

(Incidentally, this is a joke - modeling a full chainmail set and calculating a full RDS would NOT be a simple thing to do!!)

JonTheCelt

Hehe.  Or, you could always make a chainmail suit for Poser, out of individual rigid links.  In fact, you could use the Poser Torus as a starting point.  :lol:

Don't use an UV-map and you're able to make a texture that wouldn't be stretched.

Or one can use bagginsbills matmatic chainmail ;)
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2694524&page=1

No my chainmail is procedural but still driven by the UV coordinates. If you stretch those coordinates, anything based on them, like where I should generate each ring and how thick it is, will be altered.

Try this experiment. Put on some pants. Bend your leg at the knee as far as it will go so the material is tightly wrapped around your knee. Use a couple fingertips from one hand to push the material against your leg at the top of your kneecap. Do the same with your other hand for the bottom of your knee/top of shin. Now, holding the material so it can't slide over your skin, completely straighten your leg. Look at all the wrinkles! The reverse of this phenomenon would require that you stretch the cloth if it starts tight against a straight knee.

There is KNOW WAY to get a dynamic mapping onto the skin that does the right thing for simulated apparel using this technique. The correct behavior is that the material that WAS over the shin actually slides up onto the knee when you bend it, and slides back down when you straighten is. Using UV coordinates (essentially numbered spots on your knee) alone will not help - even if you are using a procedural shader like mine.

If I had information about bend parameters in the shader (which I don't) then I could slide the shader coordinates around and get the rings to move across the shin. But the material room has nothing in it to give such information to the nodes. Its really a shame. There are so many good effects I could do if I had some more geometry and pose information available in the shader.

To me the logical way to create chainmail would be as a cloth object with a chainmail texture applied. Then you could control the paramaters of stretch through the cloth room.

well, I thought about that, but then realized that that would end up looking like a sheet of chainmail draped across someone. I need an actual "suit" of chainmail, that will wrap around his arms (sleeves) and legs (pant legs). I don't think I could duplicate that in the cloth room because I would have to add his entire body as a constrained group, to get the chainmail cloth to "stick" to him. If there's an easier way of doing that, I might be willing to try it out

You could do it as sa hybrid piece of clothing - the main torso and non-steching areas as conforming clothing, and simply run dynamics on the areas which might stretch, such as the knees and arms. In fairness, chainmail trousers weren't often worn - it tended to be a chainmail skirt instead - so you could make that skirt area a dynamic section. Simlarly, if your arms are bending into extreme positions, you could clothify both sleeves in separate simulations as well. It would mean running three simulations (one for each sleeve, and one for the skirt), but I think that would be the easiest way to do it.

Just off the top of my head.

JonTheCelt

Yeah, you're right about the chainmail trousers. I'd already known that, but if you go into Renderosity's marketplace and search for "Crusades II" you'll see some outfits that have the look I was trying to achieve. I really like that look. However, just because of all the headache that's going into this, I may just abandon the chainmail trousers and go with a chainmail skirt. Even though the piece I'm doing it for is pure fantasy, it would probably look better to have the clothing be historically accurate.

As I was writing my last message, I realise I'd never really thought about the whole concept of chainmail trousers before. I mean, once I wrote about it being a skirt, it was obvious, but as yuo say, you often see fantasy figures in this kind of one-piece chainmail bodysuit. Can you imagine trying to wear something like that, though? Ooh, the chafing!

JonTheCelt

Not to mention getting leg-hair caught in the links... OUCH!!

Quote - You could do it as sa hybrid piece of clothing - the main torso and non-steching areas as conforming clothing, and simply run dynamics on the areas which might stretch, such as the knees and arms. In fairness, chainmail trousers weren't often worn - it tended to be a chainmail skirt instead - so you could make that skirt area a dynamic section. Simlarly, if your arms are bending into extreme positions, you could clothify both sleeves in separate simulations as well. It would mean running three simulations (one for each sleeve, and one for the skirt), but I think that would be the easiest way to do it.

Just off the top of my head.

JonTheCelt

This is true, but it's a huge undertaking and it is why clothes often look so terrible in CG they need to be fully designed, just as they would in the real world. Unfortuantely, its a lot of work because you essentually need to be a virtual tailor.

Quote - Not to mention getting leg-hair caught in the links... OUCH!!

Actually, LEG hair would have been the least of my concerns... ;)

JonTheCelt