The dress has been an issue with me and I'm presuming the skirt too, but didn't try this with it. I know you addressed the exploding shoulders in the dress and catsuit with certain poses, but I haven't seen this brought up--altho' a number of people are having problems with the front of the skirt I know. I had corrected mine in earlier image posts by moving the thighs. However, by making the innerskirt quite obvious, you can see that a problem is occurring with the 'hip' area in the dress skirt. No amount of movement corrected this problem. Something strange is happening right in the lower hip region of the dress--in the standing the innerskirt shows through (since I know nada about modeling, I couldn't determine if the innerskirt was another layer perhaps, and it may be the conflict itself-if I made it transparent in the standing pic, the dress looked pretty normal). In the sitting pose, the lower hip area flies straight up. Hope this is helpful for corrections. Diane B

Diane, I'm having the exact same problems too. Sitting down looks especially strange. Glad to hear it isn't just me :-) Claire

I have the same problem Diane, but what I find interesting is Steve Shank's Vicky dress doesn't fly up when you seat her, EVEN after I made Steve's Vicky dress comforming it still works beautifully.. Vicky can sit down without flashing everyone.. hehe =).. I wish the Zygote dress worked as well.... = Oh well, I hope Zygote sees your thread and puts this problem on their trouble shooting list.... ~Cindy

In some other thread Chad asked for any other problems to be brought to their attention. I was going to send this as an attachment 'cause pics are easier to use to explain than just by description. However, I decided to just send him a 'heads up' note that I was posting the pics so I think he'll see it. Diane B

Thanks for your message on this, Diane. Sorry I didn't respond to it sooner. "The dress has been an issue with me and I'm presuming the skirt too, but didn't try this with it." We tried both, and this same thing does happen with Vicki's skirt. It also happens with all of the skirts and dresses that come standard in Poser4. I admit I was surprised to realize that this issue was unexpected for you, since it is basically due to the way Poser deals with joint parameters, and not to Vicki's clothing items in particular. In the way of background, Zygote experimented with skirts/dresses and discussed possible solutions to this problem with Larry Weinberg, while we were working on the P4 clothing. Eventually, we all came to the conclusion that dresses in Poser can either "walk" or "sit", but that no single .cr2/.obj combination will be able to work for both purposes effectively. Additionally, "sitting" skirts would not be able to conform (except to mermaids). "I know you addressed the exploding shoulders in the dress and catsuit with certain poses, but I haven't seen this brought up--altho' a number of people are having problems with the front of the skirt I know." The exploding shoulders is another issue (which neither Zygote nor Larry fully understands). We have discovered a work-around for this problem, however, and it will be fixed in the update. "I had corrected mine in earlier image posts by moving the thighs." I think that most users have come up with similar work-arounds or use post-render touch-up to correct this problem. Or, I'm sure some have simply picked poses that are less problematic because of this. (Because everyone using the standard Poser dresses/skirts has run into this obvious problem.) "...the innerskirt shows through (since I know nada about modeling, I couldn't determine if the innerskirt was another layer perhaps, and it may be the conflict itself-if I made it transparent in the standing pic, the dress looked pretty normal)." We applied a seperate material to the innerskirt to help with this problem. Unlike the standard Poser dresses, Vicki's can have the inner material transparency set at 100% which hopefully alleviate some of the more obvious problems inherent with all skirts in Poser. "In the sitting pose, the lower hip area flies straight up. Hope this is helpful for corrections." I feel bad that I'm not offering any good news on fixes for this problem. Zygote did know about this upon release of the product. Check out the standard Poser dresses; they act identically. "...but what I find interesting is Steve Shank's Vicky dress doesn't fly up when you seat her, EVEN after I made Steve's Vicky dress comforming it still works beautifully.. Vicky can sit down without flashing everyone.. hehe =).. I wish the Zygote dress worked as well.... =" After reading this comment of yours, Cindy, we immediately looked for and downloaded Steve's dress, and put it in the same seated Victoria pose as shown above. Having the utmost respect for Steve's work, I figured that if anyone had come up with a solution for this problem that perhaps he had. It does seem to me, though, that even with his dress there's still an issue of concessions. Although this dress doesn't "fly up" when seated, it does "fly down" (which I admit seems a little less obvious a problem than deforming upwards). However, in this pose I also noticed that the top of the dress was not without problems either (legs poking through, etc). In short, I didn't see anything that Zygote could use from this clothing item to improve Victoria's Clothing Pak from Zygote. Just to make sure that I'm looking at the same thing you are looking at, Cindy, I downloaded the "Millie/Victoria Dress" from http://www.poserworld.com/clothes19.htm and then put it in the pose shown above (that comes with the Victoria product). So, to sum up, I'm sorry not to have any encouraging news regarding this problem. Zygote definitely views it as a problem, but we're unaware of any way to "fix" these files so that the dresses can sit and walk. Perhaps someone out there who has been dealing with this since the release of Poser4 has some input/suggestions/work-arounds? -Chad Smith Zygote Media Group

Maybe this could be fixed with a morph target? You guys probably already thought of that one, though. Right? Kate

Yep. Since morph targets are a linear function, and the deformation caused by the joint parameters is eliptical, any one morph target won't solve the problem. The same is true of magnets, but I understand that many users have found them to be fairly quick and easy for solving things like this. (for still images, not animations.) -Chad

Well, I was thinking of still images primarily, since I don't do a lot of animation. But with the problem being eliptical rather than linear I can see the difficulty. Now y'all know why I don't want your jobs. grin Kate

Chad, you are right--guess I didn't try many seated poses with P4--I experimented with that and Steve's for the P4 (not his Vicky dress 'tho). However, what I REALLY dislike about this dress as opposed to the P4 dresses (like the halter dress for instance) is that even standing, the hip does strange things--I wanted to add a dress to my 'holiday wardrobe', but trying to add transmaps to it (I think because of the underskirt-even transparent) was a pain and when you shorten it, it often does 'wierd' things. What do you think is the difference in that area from P4-maybe the fact of the 'buttocks' instead of the way that area was set up before?? Can you explain if the underskirt follows the skirt as you move thighs, hip--sometimes it doesn't seem to do that--and if you use print textures, they don't always seem to be in the same place (and since its not part of the template I'm not sure how its being textured). I do understand that joint thing--Jim Burton has discussed it before for P4--guess I just hadn't dealt with sitting poses much--and won't again smiling. Thanks for your answer. Understanding the problems, maybe I'll try some magnets. Diane B