[TUTORIAL] How to make clothes animate along with character

Hello!
Many want to have different clothes for their game that you can swap with the character. There are a few approchaes to this. One is to have different body parts with different clothes attached to it and swap the whole parts. This is kindoff a dirt method in my oppinion but works quite well.

The other way to do it is to rig the clothing in question and make it's bones follow the bones of the character. That's the method I will show how to do.
Firstly, let me show you some results from my own game.
Here is my temporary customization window.
https://i.gyazo.com/81c191197374c0667f93bbc65dd31bd5.mp4
And here is the ingame result:
https://i.gyazo.com/13b391865b3b658658b3dacaac690875.mp4


Alright, so now for how to do it. Firstly what we have done is to use the same rig for the player and for all the clothing that needs rigging. Thing's like glasses can just be a child of the head. Then I use a script that sync the bones up. I am not the creator of the script, and I sadly can't remember where I found it. I think it was somehwere on the Unity Answers. If anyone know where. Please let me know. But all you have to do is replace the clothing's animator component (Which get's added automatically) with the following script.

Edit: Credits to Pixels for originally posting the script:
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/44355/shared-skeleton-and-animation-state.html

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Collections.Generic;
2. using UnityEngine;
3.  
4. public class Equipmentizer : MonoBehaviour
5. {
6.     public SkinnedMeshRenderer TargetMeshRenderer;
7.  
8.     void Start()
9.     {
10.         Dictionary<string, Transform> boneMap = new Dictionary<string, Transform>();
11.         foreach (Transform bone in TargetMeshRenderer.bones)
12.             boneMap[bone.gameObject.name] = bone;
13.  
14.  
15.         SkinnedMeshRenderer myRenderer = gameObject.GetComponent<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
16.  
17.         Transform[] newBones = new Transform[myRenderer.bones.Length];
18.         for (int i = 0; i < myRenderer.bones.Length; ++i)
19.         {
20.             GameObject bone = myRenderer.bones[i].gameObject;
21.             if (!boneMap.TryGetValue(bone.name, out newBones[i]))
22.             {
23.                 Debug.Log("Unable to map bone \"" + bone.name + "\" to target skeleton.");
24.                 break;
25.             }
26.         }
27.         myRenderer.bones = newBones;
28.  
29.     }
30. }

Then you drag the characters skinned mesh renderer into the "TargetMeshRenderer" field. And it should all be working. Hope this helped

 

Thanks for sharing!

Do you get much poke-through of the original model through the clothing mesh? Do you ever turn off any of the base model's mesh to prevent poke-through, such as turning off the bare leg mesh when the character is wearing pants that completely cover the legs?

 

No, the character is one big mesh. And the poking is not noticable at all from my experiance.

 

Thanks!

 

How to do that step with "same rigging with character and clothes?

 

Just use the exact same skeleton when you rig. If you notice clipping you need to weight paint to fix it.

 

Okay.. but when I made my character in character creator v2 (iclone) .. the rigging was like automatic.. didnt even notice it... but then I have one more character with exact same rig but with different shoes, can I use them? I dont really understand this...

 

That is really for your software you create the rigs in. I can't help you with that. All I am showing in this article is how to exchange bones. Basically make your clothes bones use the character bones so they match up.

 

Thank you. Just how to disable it when we need to take cloth off? It works good but I need to revert cloth back to its position again.

 

Remap the bones back to the original gameobjects?

 

Do you know what's the difference between the script on first post and below script?

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Collections;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3. using UnityEngine;
4.  
5. public class ClothEquipmentizer : MonoBehaviour { public GameObject target;
6.  
7.     // Use this for initialization
8.     void Start () {
9.         SkinnedMeshRenderer targetRenderer = target.GetComponent<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
10.         Dictionary<string, Transform> boneMap = new Dictionary<string, Transform>();
11.         foreach( Transform bone in targetRenderer.bones )
12.         {
13.             boneMap[bone.name] = bone;
14.         }
15.  
16.         SkinnedMeshRenderer thisRenderer = GetComponent<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
17.         Transform[] boneArray = thisRenderer.bones;
18.         for(int idx = 0; idx < boneArray.Length; ++idx )
19.         {
20.             string boneName = boneArray[idx].name;
21.             if( false == boneMap.TryGetValue(boneName, out boneArray[idx]) )
22.             {
23.                 Debug.LogError("failed to get bone: " + boneName);
24.                 Debug.Break();
25.             }
26.         }
27.         thisRenderer.bones = boneArray; //take effect
28.      
29.     }
30.  
31.     // Update is called once per frame
32.     void Update () {
33.      
34.     }
35. }
36.  

Which is better to use?

 

If I understand correctly, this leads to several skinned meshes per character. This of course slows the game down. I know there are ways to merge them, however I have yet to succeed. Have you tried this, and if so, any success?

 

Not too informed on meshes. But I think a skinned mesh just contains a mesh, you should be able to simply generate the mesh. Not too sure.

 

Can you give me an example on how to implement this? Where do I attach it? Do I need exactly every bone or just the bones near the mesh and stuff? Can you give me a picture of the hiearchy?

 

You could probably get away with skipping bones. If you manually map x bones to y bones. But that might cause issues with weighting and might not map very well. All we are doing is to replace the clothing bones with the bones of the rig. As you can see in the example, very simple to do.

As for example how to implement? I gave one in the original post that is written by Pixels

 

maybe can you give me a screenshot in the inspector and in the hiearchy?

I haven't tried it yet, Not even copy pasted the code.
Before I do, Do you put the script on each bone you want to emulate? or Just put it somewhere and assign the bones to emulate.

 

I can't give you a hierarchy screenshot right now. It's just the bones anyways. No biggie.

And check line 15

 

Not working for me. Do you apply the script to the parent or the Mesh?

 

the one with the renderer

 

idk what happened, ive had this working before but now whenever i set this up it seems to warp my mesh inside the character model and take position where the bones are

https://imgur.com/a/AZ2Kz6h

heres image

the highlighted part is what is supposed to be the players pants, but ye it goes inside the body and then turns into the bones

 

after several hours (more like all day) of figuring things out,
the problem was that the mesh scale wasnt set properly and after turning off the import scale i adjusted it and now it works great

 

@TwoTen
I like the idea. I was struggling to figure it out how i would do it. however i'll try to know other methods too. May have another way of doing it automatically.

 

@TwoTen

I could need some help aswell... are you online right now ?

 

Huh?

 

1. Thanks @TwoTen.
2. I am offering a slightly modified script of yours below, addressing one issue I have in my own workflow.

Scenario: I import several items from the same rig in bulk, each having the necessary bone structure with them. Unity will automatically rename these duplicate bones as part of the bulk import (hip, hip 1, hip 2, etc). Initially I had problems with the script working, but quickly realized it was because the name of the bones weren't matching the original bones of the character's skinned mesh renderer. I manually renamed the bones to change them back to base names (hip instead of hip 1, hip 2, etc). The script worked like magic.

So I modified the script so that in the for loop which does the bone mapping, if there is a failure to map, I drop the last 2 digits from the bone name and reattempt the bone map. Below is the code, with comments where I modified (it was rather simple).

Code (CSharp):

1. u
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3. using UnityEngine;
4. public class ClothingBoneMapper : MonoBehaviour
5. {
6.     public SkinnedMeshRenderer TargetMeshRenderer;
7.     void Start()
8.     {
9.         Dictionary<string, Transform> boneMap = new Dictionary<string, Transform>();
10.         foreach (Transform bone in TargetMeshRenderer.bones)
11.             boneMap[bone.gameObject.name] = bone;
12.         SkinnedMeshRenderer myRenderer = gameObject.GetComponent<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
13.         int bonenamelength;         //Added in case bonename needs to be modified in forloop below
14.         string bonename;            //Added in case bonename needs to be modified in forloop below
15.         string newname;             //Added in case bonename needs to be modified in forloop below
16.         Transform[] newBones = new Transform[myRenderer.bones.Length];
17.         for (int i = 0; i < myRenderer.bones.Length; ++i)
18.         {
19.             GameObject bone = myRenderer.bones[i].gameObject;
20.             bonename = bone.name;                   //Added in case bonename needs to be modified in forloop below
21.             bonenamelength = bonename.Length;       //Added in case bonename needs to be modified in forloop below
22.             Debug.Log(bone.name);      
23.             if (!boneMap.TryGetValue(bone.name, out newBones[i]))
24.             {
25.                 newname = bonename.Substring(0, bonenamelength - 2);        //Added to modify the name of the bone to drop the last 2 digits.
26.                 Debug.Log("Unable to map bone \"" + bone.name + "\" to target skeleton. Checking for name " + newname );    //Modified message to indicate bonename was modified
27.                 if (!boneMap.TryGetValue(newname, out newBones[i]))                                                         //Added in case bonename needs to be modified in forloop below.  Repeats the mapping with last 2 characters removed from name
28.                 {
29.                     Debug.Log("Unable to map bone \"" + bone.name + "\" or \"" + newname + "\" to target skeleton.");       //Added to repeat the bonemap with newname.  Will provide new debug and break if this also fails.
30.                     break;
31.                 }
32.             }
33.         }
34.         myRenderer.bones = newBones;
35.     }
36. }

 

Here's a skinned mesh combiner that combines multiple skinned meshes. However, it requires the clothes and other meshes to have bones that are already mapped. Also instead of combining skinned mesh renderers, it simply combines meshes, alongside a single hierarchy. This makes this faster, but as I mentioned it also needs the exact same bone array initially, so it's not for everyone.

https://github.com/joshcamas/skinned-mesh-combiner

 

@joshcamas - Thanks for this.

I plan to grab this and see if I can make it work when there are only partial bone structure matches on the various meshes. That will be the case in my workflow.

 

Hopefully it works out! If it does, I could add it to the repo as an alternative path, if you'd like

 

Was hopeful this would work but it doesn't seem to. The mask just float in front of my character's face, not really moving with him.

 

Is your bone structure the same?

 

Yea.

 

Well, then start debugging whats wrong. The code is very simple.

Just start printing out the bone positions in both meshes and start your debug procedure from there.

 

Don't forget to remap the skinnedMeshRenderer's rootBone, or animating will fail:

Code (CSharp):

1.    
2. public static int ReplaceBones(this SkinnedMeshRenderer smr, Dictionary<string, Transform> boneMap)
3.     {
4.         int nrUnmappedBones = 0;
5.         int nrBonesToReplace = smr.bones.Length;
6.  
7.         string rootBoneName = smr.rootBone.transform.name;
8.         Transform rootBoneRef = null;
9.  
10.         Transform[] newBones = new Transform[smr.bones.Length];
11.         for (int i = 0; i < nrBonesToReplace; ++i )
12.         {
13.             GameObject bone = smr.bones[i].gameObject;
14.             if (!boneMap.TryGetValue(bone.name, out newBones[i]))
15.             {
16.                 nrUnmappedBones++;
17.                 Debug.Log("Unable to map bone \"" + bone.name + "\" to target armature.");
18.    //             break;
19.             }
20.  
21.             if (bone.name == rootBoneName) rootBoneRef = newBones[i];
22.         }
23.  
24.         smr.bones = newBones;
25.         smr.rootBone = rootBoneRef;
26.  
27.         return nrUnmappedBones;
28.     }
29.  

 

Could you please share the package

 

All the code for doing bone replacement is in that snippet. Do you need anything additional?

 

Hello. Some Daz clothing models have fewer bones than the characters. For example, some dresses only have knee-length bones. All bones have the same names as the character's bones, but a few are missing. Does anyone know how I can modify the script to work with those clothing models? Thanks a lot.

 

Thanks @TwoTen!
This code is working great. I've managed to attach several clothing pieces. But, when I tried the technique on some shoes, it works partially except it creates a strange distortion which seem to originate from the toes (even though my bones match exactly). Do you know what may be causing this? Any advice in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Here's a screenshot:

 

how to get LODs to share the same skeleton as the base model?

working with the people over at realalusion , I was given your script that allowed me to replace the skeleton of clothing items with the skeleton of my base charterer on run time.
this allows me to add on nothing as (costume changes ) and that works.
how ever I thought I could set LODS for the base model with this as well but the lod mesh dose not render now (with the script on ) any one know why it works for clothing but not LOD bodies ?

the all had the same bone structure when exported to unity

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Collections;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3. using UnityEngine;
4. // cridit https://forum.unity.com/threads/tutorial-how-to-make-clothes-animate-along-with-character.475253/
5. public class Equipmentizer : MonoBehaviour
6. {
7.     public SkinnedMeshRenderer TargetMeshRenderer;
8.  
9.     void Awake()
10.     {
11.         Dictionary<string, Transform> boneMap = new Dictionary<string, Transform>();
12.         foreach (Transform bone in TargetMeshRenderer.bones)
13.             boneMap[bone.gameObject.name] = bone;
14.  
15.  
16.         SkinnedMeshRenderer myRenderer = gameObject.GetComponent<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
17.  
18.         Transform[] newBones = new Transform[myRenderer.bones.Length];
19.         for (int i = 0; i < myRenderer.bones.Length; ++i)
20.         {
21.             GameObject bone = myRenderer.bones[i].gameObject;
22.             if (!boneMap.TryGetValue(bone.name, out newBones[i]))
23.             {
24.                 Debug.Log("Unable to map bone \"" + bone.name + "\" to target skeleton.");
25.                 break;
26.             }
27.         }
28.         myRenderer.bones = newBones;
29.  
30.     }
31. }
32.  

 

here is a screen shot of the attempt

note , Lod is not set that is just the lod not rendering with the script on

 

does the shoes have heals ? if the bones in the feet are different it can mess you up