- Add Shrinkwrap: Add a shrinkwrap modifier to specified meshes to keep them above the active mesh. This is an alternative or complement to creating masks.
- Create Masks: Create mask modifiers and vertex groups for the active mesh.
- Add Visibility Drivers: Create visibility drivers for all mesh children of the active armature.
- Remove Visibility Drivers: Remove all visibility drivers from the active armature.
- Create Collections: Create separate collections for eash selected empty in the scene.
Here is a new version of Aiko with two separate outfits: the Bardot dress and the Basic wear shorts and tank top. With the tools in this section we can create drivers that switch between the outfits, or hides both of them, even if Aiko is linked into another blend file.
Add Collections Manually
The tools in this section were originally designed for Blender 2.7x. From Blender 2.80 onwards, there is another, simpler way to hide clothes. Assign clothes to separate collections, which can be excluded from the scene in the outliner.
Add Shrinkwrap
As an alternative to hiding faces with masks, we can add shrinkwrap modifiers to the clothes to keep them outside the body. This is not difficult to do manually, but for convenience a button that adds shrinkwrap modifiers to several meshes is available. The same button is also part of the Morphs section and is described in more detail there.
Create Masks
A common problem, especially with tight-fitting clothes, is that the skin may poke through in some poses. If we know that the character will always wear the same clothes, we can solve this problem by simply deleting the body vertices which should be hidden by the clothes. However, if the character will wear different outfits, or maybe undress completely, this is not an option.
With the mesh that will have the mask modifiers active, normally the body, press Create Masks. A pop-up dialog appears.
- Single Group: Control the visibility of all selected meshes with the same property.
- Group Name: The name of the single group, if enabled.
- All: Select all meshes in the list below
- None: Unselect all meshes in the list below.
- List of other meshes that are also children of the active mesh's armature.
We want to create separate masks for the three pieces of the Bardot outfit.
Three mask modifiers are created for the Aiko mesh.
Three new vertex groups are also created. They control which vertices are hidden when the corresponding piece of clothing is visibible. Adding the vertices beneath the clothes to the vertex group is the responsibility of the user.
We also create masks for the basic wear shorts and tank top. These clothes will always be visibible or not at the same time, so we only create a single mask for both of them, and call the group Basic Wear.
A single additional mask modifier is created.
A single new vertex group is also created. In edit mode, we add the vertices that will be hidden by the basic wear outfit.
Add Visibility Drivers
Now select the armature and press Add Visibility Drivers. A dialog appears where we can choose which meshes to add visibility drivers for.
- Single Group: Control the visibility of all selected meshes with the same property.
- Group Name: The name of the single group, if enabled.
- Add Collections: Move each selected mesh to a new collection
- All: Select all meshes in the list below
- None: Unselect all meshes in the list below.
- List of meshes that are children of the active armature.
Unable Single Group and add visibility drivers for the three meshes in the Bardot outfit.
We see in the outliner that the viewport and render visibility have turned purple, indicating that these properties are driven. The meshes have also been moved to new collections.
A new panel appears in the DAZ Importer tab. We can hide the Bardot skirt and top by disabling the corresponding checkboxes. It is also a good idea to disable the corresponding collections. This will completely exclude the hidden meshes from the scene, which speeds up performance. If we just disable the visibility, the meshes are invisible but still included in the scene, and Blender still take them into account.
When the Aiko mesh is selected, we see that the vertices hidden by the basic wear outfit are masked out.
With the armature selected, we again press Make Visibility Drivers. This time we use a Single Group with the Group Name Basic Wear, and add the shorts and tank top to it.
Visibility drivers have been added to the two meshes. They have also both been move to a new collection.
We can now toggle the visibility of the basic wear outfit on and off. The underlying skin is hidden when Aiko wears the clothes, so it can not poke through, but it is visible when she has undressed.
Remove Visibility Drivers
If we made some mistake we can use this button to remove the visibility drivers. The viewport and render visibility turn white in the outliner, indicating that they are no longer driven. The new collections remain, however. The meshes have to be moved back to the right collection manually.
Create Collections
The last tool in the Visibility section is intended for use with file linking. Save the file and open a new blend file.
Link the various collections into the new scene and create a proxy for the Aiko armature.
In order to exclude unused meshes from the scene, we need to move each linked mesh to a separate collection. Since this is somewhat tedious, the Create Collections button does it automatically. Select the proxy armature and all empties in the scene and press the button.
In the popup dialog, choose the name of the new collection.
A hierarchy of collections is created as shown. We can now easily exclude the entire character, all meshes, or individual meshes from the scene.
Here the Bardot outfit is hidden, and Aiko is using the basic wear.
And here basic wear is hidden, and she wears the Bardot dress.
This shows why it is not enough to simply exclude the collections from the scene. The mask modifers are driven by the properties in the Visibility panel, so they must be unchecked too.
