How do I pose my garment in Marvelous Designer?

Jason replies I am fairly new to Marvelous Designer and often find myself discovering new things. Whenever I find a new trick or technique that speeds up my workflow, I try to share it with others. I was recently browsing www.artstation.com and came across a few screenshots posted by Verica Alzheimer, which illustrated a “quick and dirty” method for moving between Daz Studio and Marvelous Designer. It’s not very often that I have one of those moments when I realise I have been doing something the hard way for far too long, but this was one of them. I refined Verica’s concept into this short step-by-step method and used it to create and pose the trousers in my image titled Letting Go.

I create the basic layout for the trousers using one of the default avatars in Marvelous Designer. I always find it helpful to first create and lay out my garment on the default avatar before trying to import my own character and apply the clothing. I save the trousers as a garment file for later use.

Although I primarily work in Cinema 4D, I often move my characters in and out of Daz Studio to take advantage of the many clothing options and features, especially the vast posing options. In the case of this image, I already have my character loaded in Daz Studio, where I am adding the sleeves and trying to get just the right pose. The poor girl just doesn’t have any trousers yet.

I export my character from Daz Studio in zero-pose (or T-pose) as an .obj file. It is not necessary to export the texture maps or materials since we are only temporarily using this file as an avatar in Marvelous Designer. Then, I import the zero-pose .obj file into Marvelous Designer as an avatar and load the garment file for the trousers. A few quick adjustments to the trousers, and my model is finally covered up and decent.

The next step is where all the magic happens. I import the .obj file for the fully posed character into Marvelous Designer, being careful to select the Load as Morph Target option this time. Once I click OK, the avatar changes into the posed position with the garment following and staying perfectly fitted. Magic!

With the garment now perfectly fitted to my posed character, I am now able to export the garment as an .obj file and load it (along with the full character) into Daz Studio, Cinema 4D, or any other 3D software.