Hello,

I am sending this message after several months of absence.

I could no longer spend so much time on a program that brought me almost no recognition.

Today, I am aware that VWD must continue to bring something to the dynamic simulation of clothing and hair.

I have been working on the program again for several weeks and I am happy with the results obtained both in terms of its possibilities and the simulation results obtained.

There are wonderful artists who have made hyper-realistic clothes and hair that produce sublime static results.

I personally have no intention of trying to compete with them in this area.
I would like the elements created and animated by VWD to be only intended for dynamic simulation, i.e. animations.

The main problem with realistic clothing and hair is the quality of the meshes.
To obtain a realistic result in animation, the mesh must be as regular as possible and this is the goal of the work I am carrying out at the moment.

I'm starting to have clothes and hair that give realistic rendering results while also having very good behavior in simulation.

This message is intended to say what my intentions are. I will soon make a video showing several simulation results.

My question is therefore to know if people would be interested in the work that I want to undertake, that is to say trying to obtain the most realistic character animations possible.
If so, I am ready to intensively resume the development of VWD and share the methods of generating clothes and hair.
If not, I will keep my enjoyment of digital simulation to myself and will probably show videos showing results from time to time.

Thank you for reading me, I await your responses, good or bad.

Best regards.

      Gérald

I have missed you! Please share  I'd love to see what you will come up with next! 

Hello MikeO,

Thank you for your reply.

I think many people have missed me but it is my fault.

I didn't send any message from a long time.

I still want to create realistic animations and I want to work again on the program to reach this result.

I made many modifications on the program but my cloth generation is too complicated  for now. I have to simplify this process.

I will send some videos showing my first tests.

Thank you again.

Was this a python script, or at least use a python script as part of it? If so, keep in mind that python was updated in Poser 12 so you may need to update that

Hello Gérald!

Glad you are well and back, and energized to continue to improve VWD! Of course this is good news.

With many thoughts, for *me* it comes to this:

Do it and share it. Or call it quits and stop raising hopes with no delivery.

Everyone that has ever loved VWD would be *so* happy to see you work on VWD for your own love and enjoyment, and then to share your ideas and special talents as you go along.

And, we both now know there there is no real money in this small 3D niche. D-force, cloth-room, and Blender sims are free and good enough for most.

But I still think VWD is better.

VWD is still a *wonderful* tool, and of course we (all of us users) have many small wishes for little features that would make it even more wonderful (e.g. saving selected vertex-sets - hint hint), so *anything* you add would be welcomed with *great* appreciation.

To do this only for yourself would be fine, but perhaps sad, since it is all still so magical and amazing, and would be so appreciated by your users.

To my thinking, the Patreon model is the best for this product now, where you can share any fixes you *enjoy* adding, only when you feel like adding them, big or small, and anyone who enjoys these changes can support you and share in those changes as you go. This way VWD thrives in your mind, your own desktop 3D world, and with those of us who know and love your creation. It would be easy to post ongoing updates on Patreon, so the mechanics of doing this would be pretty easy  to do, especially if the updates were built like the version 1->2 update version. (we can discuss the practical logistics offline, but I put this out there for comments and other ideas)

You can share videos, but even better, you could also share your betas and experiments on Patreon (as updates to the paid-for base). They don't need to be perfect as long as we can revert to our earlier working versions (re-install, etc.) and I think many users would be very happy to *play* and try out your ideas and current experiments *along with you*, sharing feedback, ideas, and debugging! Maybe restructure the VWD base to use plugins for the features that lend themselves to that sort of functional isolation, like photoshop does, so people can buy the VWD base, and kind of build their own personal VWD versions for their workflow - swapping new beta plugins for the stable versions and back. And, that would probably work very well in the Patreon model.

You (and only you) have the ability to make this project a fascinating playground - and maybe, when *you* think the time is right, you can "smooth off" the rough edges of your ongoing beta features, and create stable/reliable 'point-releases' every year or so, as the features stablize.

My hopes are raised, but... to be honest, not too much yet. A popular English saying that comes to mind, is 'show me the money'  (you said we should be honest here...)

I too have been away from active 3D work for a long while, and understand that life pulls us in many ways, so it is great to see life calling you back here for a while.

So, I am very glad you are safe and healthy! And I'm happy that you are back and saying that you wish to shine up VWD and make more magic.

Maybe it's a new beginning for this brilliant gem of a tool called VWD.

What do you think, Gérald?

best to you all,

VWD3D/Dan

Hello RedPhantom,

VWD is not only a script for Poser and a script for Daz Studio, it is a compiled program which makes the computation using Multithreading in CPU or GPU.

Script functions are a very small part of the program.

I agree with you about scripting, I will probably have to update the code to be adapted to the current version of the 2 hosts.

Hello Dan,

I want to send you a  message to discuss with you about the program.

I will explain soon what are my ideas about the future of VWD.

Thank you for reading this thread!

Thanks again , Gerard!  As a user who learns as I go, my mastery progresses accordingly. I mostly create my own clothing for my own characters and am at that point of realization, as you noted, that design, and/or strategic thinking, of clothing makes all the difference for results.

Since this forum seems to be the place to go for discussions of VWD, i hope we can regenerate participation from the old gang!

Hello MikeO,

I restart the VWD development for a very short time but I think I am able to create the best simulations I never made.

As I said, my cloth generation is a bit too complex for now. I have to simplify the process but I am sure to be on the good way.

Now I am sure the best way to create clothes is to create geometries. It is easy to create very complex geometries and it is easy to convert to perfect meshes. VWD executes other functions to generate the UVMapping and the welding of the final mesh.

I am not quite ready to show a lot of videos showing the results but I want to show these videos as soon as possible.

I am sure it will be easy to create again a discussion group around VWD.

I know I didn't make videos explaining the use of the program, I think it will be the first action to do.

Hello Dan,

Excuse me for the delay, I want to explain you all my thoughts about the program and my English writing is not better then before.

I need time to write a long message.

Thanks for your patience.

Hi Gérald

It's great to see you back. As I think you know already, my priorities would be for VWD to be a bit more robust (and maybe more informative when it breaks), and just to continue being available!

I've used Blender for cloth, and mostly I find VWD much better.

Best Regards

Hi fuqol217,

Thank you for your comment, I agree with you on the VWD breaks. I know I have a lot of work.

I want to restart slowly even if I want to improve the program in the coming months. Sorry, I won't be able to go any faster.

Best regards.

Hi All,

In first, i wanted to know if VWD was compatible with the latest version of Daz Studio and Poser.

For Daz Studio 4.22 the program works perfectly. For Poser, I don't have the latest version and I can't reply.

I just bought a new computer with a RTX 4070 Ti super. This graphic card allows to make very fast renders but I don't manage to install a correct OpenCL.

Some of you have a solution to this problem?

Thank you for any help.

       Gérald

Hello Gérard

long time no see and hope you are doing well !

also a long time I didn't went to the forum but that didn't mean I stopped doing images and using VWD (much less than I would like :-) ).

In one word : VWD is my ESSENTIAL tool for simulation : efficient , quick  and the famous "drag of vertice" so please:  SHAAAARE !

Tried to remake a De La Tour painting and used VWD for the clothes.

Have a good day !

PS: may be I have the same trouble with my RTX3060 and GPU simulation

.

Hello Smaker1,
as always, your images are beautiful.
For me, it is a pleasure to know that VWD is still used effectively.
About GPU computing, do you know what version of OpenCL is used by your graphics card?
Mine is version 3.0.
I need to decompose the OpenCL initialization to find where the problem is.
Thanks for your message.

rest assured that it's still used and I would like to have more time to use it more :-)  !

As I'm not a tech guy so not sure if I'm correct : the version of "opencl.dll" file in the detail list of the driver of my graphic card is : 3.0.3.0

Hi Gerald, I'm extremely happy to see you back here ! And I hope as fit as is possible.

I'm ready to take absolutely any boat to help VWD to be alive.

I'm using DazStudio almost exclusively, and I had a major computer failure. It took me quite a few months to recover and reinstall my assets.

Hello Smaker1

thank you for your message and your trust. My priority will be to resolve this OpenCL issue.

Hello yvesab,

Thank you for your support. I try to keep some neurons active.

I also use Daz Sudio exclusively. However I would like to know if the Renderosity version of VWD still works with the latest versions of Poser.

I suppose G9 support is out of range. Anyway, that should be great !