Hello to all users of Maya! I'm a newbie here and want to ask a rather strange question about character setup.
There is a program called Marvelous Designer or CLO3D (virtual clothes creation software), which has rigged avatar for clothes. This character is transformable (it can change size via scaling of bones according to the avatar size file). It was made in Maya 2011 and exported from there in Open Collada. Theoretically, such transformable avatar can be created in Maya from any rigged and properly skinned figure, exported as Open Collada, especially if this figure has the transferred rig of any native Clo3D avatar. I decided to test this posssibility, did this transfer and got a rigged character with custom geometry, fully compatible with CLO and MD animations. The second step on this way is to get the very transformer, which may be done quite easy, but for only hitch. When they made native avatars, they used some additional Open Collada file to load something called Body Segment Data into Clo3D. Without this DAE file, the full transformable avatar cannot be created. I searched for any info what may be these body segments in Maya but cannot find any hint in available web tutorials.
Here are some screenshots, illustrating the properties of the native Clo3D rigged avatar -
The first picture shows the avatar and its length measurements, each of them includes several bones for scaling and easily editable by picking appropritiate joints from the Avatar Joint List. It requires nothing more than the base DAE file of the avatar. Into the Body Space window one should load four morphed DAE versions of the same character, it is no problem too.
The second shot shows the very mysterious Body Segments List, which may be loaded from another Open Collada DAE file. Every Body Segment has its own vertices count, starting point (Joint Name 0) and final point (Joint Name 1) and must be connected to width (circumference) body measurement of that software. All Joints and widths may be selected from the dropdown list but without the appropriate DAE file the application just gives a crash.
So I wonder - what may be these body segments in Maya? Skin Clusters? Polygonal groups? Obviously they are mesh-related (vertex count) but connected with rigging at the same time. How can I designate these groups in Maya for my own custom mesh and record them within Open Collada format? As far as I know, OpenCollada can record skinning info, meshes, bones and joints - what else do I miss in its settings? I have a strong feeling that these body segments are skin clusters, but I don't know how to remake skinning according to this list. I attempted to load the base DAE file of the figure into the Body Segments window - it was accepted well but the list of Body Segments was replaced by the list of the avatar's bones. For some of them the vertex counts were the same as for some body segments - it seems some body segments must be merged skin clusters for several bones (as for forearm region).
There are so many scripts for rigging on this site. Is there any script or default Maya command to display the list of all skin clusters of the figure and any tools to re-write that list within Maya - to join several skin clusters into one, rename skin clusters, and keep that altered skinning within the new Open Collada file?
To make it clear, I post the original file of the native avatar of Clo3D. Because I know Maya very poor, I couldn't find within that file any links to these Body Segments. But I hope the profi users can guess what they look like and I would be grateful for any info how to make this file by myself. I feel it must be spawned from the original DAE file.
The original rigged Clo3D figure
And this is the comparison table of these Body segments with all appropiate connected joints.
Body Segment Full List
It can make clearer what they can be, I hope. Thank you in advance for help! Would be cool to have any custom figure within that great software with an ability to change its sizes. The more it is rather easy to get. All what I need is solving this little puzzle.
