Hi all I had a question. I was wondering if anyone could help me out with it. Im making a dress a long dress to go with a figure. I was wondering what needed to be added to a cr2 file such as vicky3's cr2 file (As an example) to make a dress bend properly at the knees? Obviously with the current method you cannot make it bend at the knees because there needs to be some kind of connection at the shins such as a hip or something. Unfortunatly if you leave it as hip it will not bend. Anyone know how to make a dress work properly. If so please give me steps or examples. Any help is appreciated!

Do, you have Pwizard, if so cut the dress without buttocks and shins..make the thighs right to the floor and start about half way up the buttocks....use Pwizard to create the cr2 then edit the cr2..near the bottom before materials you'll see the weld commands and in them you'll see this weld lButtock:1 hip:1 the dress has no buttocks so change it to lThigh this will weld the left thigh to the hip..do the same for the right and then weld the thighs together by changing this weld lToe:1 lFoot:1 to this weld lThigh:1 lThigh:1 i just edit these coz dresses have no feet so there not needed in there original context...now heres the good bit ;o)...even though the dress has no shins Pwizard has put the joints in so when you pose vicky the dress will bend at the shin area, you need to make them visible in the drop down area though so either edit the cr2 by finding the shin and the hidden 1 call and change it to hidden 0 ...i think thats right i actually use morph manager or Pboost to do it....anyway once all thats done you just need to tweak your joints and your good to go.....ohhh make sure when you cut the dress you have only one point at the point the thighs and hip touch....Steve

will this cause funny looking bends in the dress if the character stands with thier legs apart?

no but it will cause stretching of the texture between the legs (more than normal) and a sharper bend at the hip-thigh area than would be desired, this way has its benefits and its downfalls but until everyone uses P5 or hopefully DAZ reinvents the cr2 its 50 50 on whats best...Steve

You mentioned something about P5 Does poser 5 also have a fix for this?

Sort of......if i was making a dress in P5 i would either make it all dynamic, or if it needed complex modeling i would make the top half conforming and the bottom dynamic, including a "belt like part" to the top to hide any small discrepancy after the simulation, constraining the top of the skirt helps that bit.....course that goes out the window if the dress needs a lot of modeling like multi peticoats.....Steve

Here's a couple of samples of what i mean..first P5 http://www.poserworld.com/steve/sstudiorender.jpg next a comparison, on the left done as i described on the right the old way http://www.poserworld.com/StevePublicPrvws/sitdress1.jpg another sample http://www.poserworld.com/StevePublicPrvws/sitdress2.jpg....Steve

Another option would be to make the dress posable. I made a long dress (Silver Skin), and rather than just leave the bottom part as hip, I gave them their own definition and bones, so that it could be bent at the knees.