Anyone else have speed issues with these exports? Draping issues? How're your sims running? Fast or slow? Am I going to be looking at 24+ Hour simulations here with the high poly counts on these threads?

Hey Mizrael, you're doing nicely with the new virtual sewing machine !
: )

I haven't bought VF yet. 
Still waiting for others like you to tell all. 
I do know now that my Sony VAIO notebook pc's Intel intergrated video hardware cannot use VF's demo version.

Hehe... Well the second pair I made is on frame 2 of it's simulation after about 15 minutes. Much further than the first pair ever got! This is a pair with Blue Jean material and still has a nifty Vcut to the front and back but this time there's a waist band still. I'll post the first image if the sim ever completes. I'm guessing tomorrow at this point! LOL!

Can you adjust the mesh density in VF? I know PhilC's program Clothing Creator let's you do that. Speaking of, you may be able to edit the mesh to reduce the polycount outside a 3D app with Poser Tool Box. I'll have to run a test on some high density clothing prop objs I have to see if it works if you are curious. bB

My Desktop with nVidia GeForce5500 with latest driver updates:

I tried to see both product video and install the Demo version first, before committing to a purchase.

Guess what ? Both installations keeps asking me to go update my driver for my nVidia card, and guess what some more ? I have the latest updates.

So, I guess this means I cannot use this software unless I buy a new graphics card. No sense in doing that.
Unless the Demo has different hardware needs from the Poser-specific version.

I'll have to go back to my old-time modelling software and do it the old-fashion way vertex by vertex, spline by spine, part by part....

Afterthought:  Well, I could also try going the down and dirty route and just have all my poser people doing stuff  stark naked.  That should overcome the problem.

JC, what's your maximum Screen resolution with your setup? I think 1024x768 is the lowest resolution this program will go to. Just a guess because on my machine where 1024x768 is the max resolution it takes up the whole screen but on my 2gig memory PC that can go up to 1280x1024 it opens up windowed at 1024x768.

I don't have the Poser Toolbox from PhilC but if there's a way to lower the Poly count I'd love to hear it. My second sim caused the window to disappear at or around frame 4 of the simulation. TaskManager for windows says it's still busy so I'm gonna let it run til tomorrow and see if it finishes and I can get my window back. Til then, I'm wondering if Pants are too much to ask for! LOL!

Can you tell me what your polycount is to start with? Thanks. bB

Mizrael - yup, my screen does those sizes as well, but even before I can install the video or demo version, the installer rejects my hardware.  Oh well...

I have no idea how to figure out the poly count from inside Poser BB. I think I'll have to export the mesh as an OBJ and get a report from UVMapper.

Ok this is getting really frustrating, VF is really simple to get the hang of, if you can't get to grips with modelling like me then this gives you a whole new approach. You really can make a simple little black dress in about ten minutes. THEN you try and run your sim in Poser and everything gets weird. Either the sim hangs or takes so long thet I cancel. Then you finally hit one that takes about fifteen to twenty minutes so you stick with it and at the end you find these long poly threads like Mizrael's pic of the pants. So is this a bug? Or does someone know something that I might be doing wrong. So for I guess it's more failures than success and that's a shame because I'm loving having a way to make the clothing that I want. I would also like to hear from other users.

I bought VF-basic and at a first glance I liked the program, easy to use, intuïtive, and with more possibilities than I expected. The lack of support for models like vicky, stephanie and the other Daz-characters was a downer, but what would expect from E-frontier? They will only support their own models. I did manage to make some cloths in a very short time. but the problems started when I tried so export them to poser 6.2
 I followed the manual, and made a second runtime for the VF-folders, but at that moment Poser crashed, and everytime I started it again, it would crash after a minute or two. So I dumped the VF-runtime and Poser ran normal as always. That's the first issue!
With some workarounds I managed to get a VF-cloth in the clothroom. But when I tried to set-up a simulation, it took minutes to start, and in my experience, when a simulation doesn't start after 2 or 3 minutes, there's some serious wrong: There are too many facets or the cloth is somewhere colliding with the model or with itself.
I opened the obj-file of the cloth in UV-mapper but the number of facets wasn't that high, so there has to be something else wrong. What I also noticed in UV-mapper(pro), the model wasn't one object, but there several loose facets, which didn't belong to a group, Perhaps this is a result of the cutting-proces in VF, anyway it doesn't look rigth to me. That's the other issue.
I hope that E-frontier or VF-works will come with a solution to these problems or otherwise I have to use their 30 days refund policy.

Quote - I bought VF-basic and at a first glance I liked the program, easy to use, intuïtive, and with more possibilities than I expected. The lack of support for models like vicky, stephanie and the other Daz-characters was a downer, but what would expect from E-frontier? They will only support their own models.

No offense here, but I'm tired of hearing this complaint being laid at EF's doors when it's DAZ who doesn't support Poser or EF! Look at DAZ's website? See any  "Poser" Forums there? Hell no! It's all about DAZ, their content and their Studio. If it weren't for Poser, DAZ wouldn't even have gotten their start in this business. Don't see them giving Poser much support these days though do you?  

EF didn't write this package in the first place! They licenced it from Infografica and had them add their figures into the program! If DAZ wants to do the same they're welcome to do so, but for Pete's sake, can we stop comlaining about DAZ figures not being included when EF doesn't own them or the license to have them added to someone else's program!!

No offense here, but I'm tired of hearing this complaint being laid at EF's doors when it's DAZ who doesn't support Poser or EF! Look at DAZ's website? See any  "Poser" Forums there? Hell no! It's all about DAZ, their content and their Studio. If it weren't for Poser, DAZ wouldn't even have gotten their start in this business. Don't see them giving Poser much support these days though do you?

I wasn't complaining, I was just noticing a fact. I agree with you that DAZ isn't giving much support to Poser nowadays, and I'm only consider them as a spin-off of Poser, but I'm afraid there will come a day that the next update of Vicky will only support DAZ-studio, and it will be another loss for the poser-community.
What worries me is the growing lack of coöperation between softwarecompanies, and in my case the ones that produce CAD-software. In the perception of the endusers, the winning product won't be the one that has the fanciest interface or most possibilities, but the one that can read and handle all the  files of his competitors.
...But I think that's a little OT.

Thank you for your reply,

No problems setting it up or simulating in the cloth room, took a couple of minutes.

I've also very quickly had a go at resizing the prop before running another cloth simulation to get this to fit V3, the results were a bit 'loose' but encouraging enough that the lack of character support isn't going to be too much of a problem - looks like some fun could be had :-)

FWIW, DAZ would be cutting their own throats and customer base if they ever made V4 DAZ Studio Only! Do you think they're really going to cut out such a large market share? If it happens, and this is a BIG assed IF, it won't be until DAZStudio does as much as if not more than Poser so that Poser people will be willing to jump ship. That is of course, just my opinion not based on facts just my feelings on the subject. I won't leave Poser til DS offer's Animation capabiilities equalling that of Poser or better.

Back on topic now, VF is teaching me loads of stuff about Dynamic cloth through trial and error! Constrain and Soft Decorated are my friends now! Hehehe....

Mizrael.. I just noticed.. on your pic only the pants themselves are casting shadow, not James...

Do you know why? It looks odd O_o

(and I'm not complaining over a test render, I just want to know what causes it)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2653462&page=3

Quote - Mizrael.. I just noticed.. on your pic only the pants themselves are casting shadow, not James...

Do you know why? It looks odd O_o

(and I'm not complaining over a test render, I just want to know what causes it)

Um, he casts a shadow where the ground plane is present. I originally had the file set up so his shadow cut off at the edge of the ground before it drops off to the water below. That last image the ground plane extended a bit to far out past the backgrounds image of the ground and not far enough to catch all of his shadow. Simple enough to fix but as you said, these are just test renders to show the clothing progress, not my artistic skills or lack there of. LOL! Good catch though and good question, but it's just misplacement of the shadow catching ground plane dear.

just a bit of history here ... recent history.  I believe the conflict between Daz and EF came when the faceroom didn't support DAZ figures and EF told them that it would cost DAZ something like $30,000 to have EF do that.  I think that created a riff as it were.  DAZ started pushing DAZ/Studio full force after that.  Just an observation.  I support both companies. 

Boni

Show us your Virtual Fashion works in progress and tell us how you did it., or how it failed so we can work out the problems. I've made two pairs of working pants, one shirt and one cape now. Anyone want a gay superhero that's Fashion Challenged?

I finally after much re-editing and fighting with having both soft rigid as well as constrained got that very first pair of pants to work in the cloth room. It seems Poser doesn't mind Soft rigid and Contrained sharing points in some articles but refuses to run if they share the same points in others.

Good luck figuring out which clothes fall in which catagory! Hehehe...These pants fall in the later so they're only constrained at the hips to keep them from falling off.

Quote - See my post here, I finally got rid of the long sim times

Not sure how you got rid of long sim times from the tutorial link you supplied.  There is really nothing there useful in optimizing the sim time.  I've gone through all those steps and the recommended steps in the pdf for setting up the cloth room sim, and I'm still getting sim times between 212 to 580 seconds per frame.

I do note that one should use the lower res versions of the Poser figures when doing the simulation as that does definitely have an impact on sim times.  But it doesn't eliminate the problem.

That said, the cloth items are already properly draped for the figure when you export from VF and import to Poser, so if one wanted to take a shot at converting to a conforming figure rather than doing a cloth sim, that would work fairly well.

Hi Mizrael,
   The texture is from the RDNA freebie section Poser 6 sequins.

http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/filelib/index.php?Start=11&section_id=70

Lol, yea I know her pose looks awkward, that is around frame 20. At frame 30 the dress was down around her sides. I still need to figure out the cloth room and how to keep the dress from falling off the shoulders.

If I get brave I may check some conforming clothing tuts and attempt to make the obj file conforming.

Hi Toolstech,

 My Sim times were about 90 seconds following the steps that I metioned i found. Initially before that they were around 40 minutes. I think the important part may have been dragging and deleteing selecions before you go into the cutting room. But I may be wrong.

You are right.  I did a bit of playing around with loosening the fit inside VF so the clothing was slightly further away from the body, and the simulation time went way down.

So for those who are having simulation time problems, it appears to be a result of the default fit being a bit too close to the body.  Loosen the fit and the improvement can be dramatic.

I think that loose fit with wrinkles looks quite nice actually! Love the material used as well as the hair too! I'm going off to a Blues festival and Black Raspberry picking for he day tomorrow and Sunday we're gonig to go see Phatom of the Opera at the local theatre  so I'm gonna be scarce for a short bit but when I get back I want to see how well some of the stuff I've made fit's other figures. Starting with Koji and going to Apollo, Clark and the DAZ guys, oh and the Poser kids too!

Quote - just a bit of history here ... recent history.  I believe the conflict between Daz and EF came when the faceroom didn't support DAZ figures and EF told them that it would cost DAZ something like $30,000 to have EF do that.  I think that created a riff as it were.  DAZ started pushing DAZ/Studio full force after that.  Just an observation.  I support both companies. 

Boni

The problem was between DAZ and Curious Labs over Poser 5. This was long before EF entered the picture.

BM

I just wanted to share this test animation.

http://brian.e-frontier.com/Miki_moves.mov

The dress was created in Virtual Fashion Basic PE. I used the Poser cloth settings to create a light fabric.  

A few suggestions:

Laslo's Read Me that installs with VF Basic PE has a concise explanation (with screenshots) on how to setup Constrained Groups for specific areas of garments to help speed up simulation times.

I have a tip I could share: When you create cuts on garments in VF Basic PE and export to Poser (as an obj), the vertex Group Editor will recognize most of those cuts as a separate group mesh. So, for example, if you wanted to Constrain (or, reinforce) a specific cut or specific areas of garments to help speed up simulation times:

1. Click on Edit Constrained Group button

2. In the vertex Group Editor if you want to select a cut you made in VF you can click on the Add Group button

3. From the list select a Mesh*[P] and hit OK.

This is a good starting point to add vertices on the garment. If you want to remove vertices from being constrained, click on the "-" button and delete them.

If you made several cuts in VF, there will be more groups to add, ie.Mesh1[P], Mesh2[P], Mesh3[P],...Mesh10[P]. If you need to add these additionally, go back to the Add Group button and select from the pulldown list.

In my test case, I added the group in the Mesh1[P] then removed the lower part of the dress (from being constrained) to flow freely. The areas that contain the small polygons like the V-cut and the tight, or reinforced areas that don't need to be simulated, I kept included in the Constrained Groups (areas that don't flow or drape like belts, straps or reinforced cuts or holes should be included in constrained groups). By doing this really speed up my simulation time for this animation

 Hopes this helps,

-Brian

Hi all,

I just wanted to share this test animation.

http://brian.e-frontier.com/Miki_moves.mov

The dress was created in Virtual Fashion Basic PE. I used the Poser cloth settings to create a light fabric.  

A few suggestions:

Laslo's Read Me that installs with VF Basic PE has a concise explanation (with screenshots) on how to setup Constrained Groups for specific areas of garments to help speed up simulation times.

I have a tip I could share: When you create cuts on garments in VF Basic PE and export to Poser (as an obj), the vertex Group Editor will recognize most of those cuts as a separate group mesh. So, for example, if you wanted to Constrain (or, reinforce) a specific cut or specific areas of garments to help speed up simulation times:

1. Click on Edit Constrained Group button

2. In the vertex Group Editor if you want to select a cut you made in VF you can click on the Add Group button

3. From the list select a Mesh*[P] and hit OK.

This is a good starting point to add vertices on the garment. If you want to remove vertices from being constrained, click on the "-" button and delete them.

If you made several cuts in VF, there will be more groups to add, ie.Mesh1[P], Mesh2[P], Mesh3[P],...Mesh10[P]. If you need to add these additionally, go back to the Add Group button and select from the pulldown list.

In my test case, I added the group in the Mesh1[P] then removed the lower part of the dress (from being constrained) to flow freely. The areas that contain the small polygons like the V-cut and the tight, or reinforced areas that don't need to be simulated, I kept included in the Constrained Groups (areas that don't flow or drape like belts, straps or reinforced cuts or holes should be included in constrained groups). By doing this really speed up my simulation time for this animation

 Hopes this helps,

-Brian

Cheers,
-Brian

Hey Brian, where can I find that readme in VF's folder structure. I went looking for it and, probably wasn't looking close enough, but all I saw was the PDF file. Where's the readme? Oh, and thanks for that info about the cut's being those groups I was seeing I had no idea what they were! LOL! That'll make constraining them a heck of a lot easier now that I know!

Sorry ... ment no harm or bashing, I assure you.  This program is really quite nice and could benefit all the models if tweeked just a little I'm sure.  :)

Attached Link: http://brian.e-frontier.com/FalconSoldier_0001.mov

Actually, you are right, more in-depth Poser cloth simulation information (including screenshots) is located in the VF Basic PE User Reference.pdf starting on page 54,  "Design Issues Affecting VF Garment Simulations in Poser"

Cheers,
-Brian

ps. Here's another good example (.mov) of using constrained vertices to keep a cape from falling off the figure. I created the cuts of the gold bars of the cape in VF and in Poser selected them using Edit Constrained Groups > Add Groups and selected the Mesh*[P] to constrain the gold bars from draping.

Brian (Default Guy),

You are an absolute genius, I've just been going through all my garments that wouldn't work ie: the sim would fail. Following your guide about adding the mesh*(P) groups to the constrained group they now work like a charm. WOW, if only this info had been available from an official source from the beginning (it's not in the PDF) it could have saved a lot of complaining especially from me. I guess this is why we have the forums. EF or Infografica please add this gem of information to the PDF for future buyers. I now officially withdraw all my complaints about VF/Poser and heartily reccomend the program to all Poser users interested in creating dynamic clothing. I had tried something like this earlier but had selected 'Edit Dynamic Group' which caused Poser to shut down. Are you going to post this info at the CP VF forum. Thank you so much, now I can spend some time creating clothing instead of complaing about VF/Poser.

Trevor Black.

No worries Boni, I'm just tryin' to keep the thread about people's learning experiences with the program at hand and not have it get side tracked into ancient history.

Here's my first use of a pair of pants for james used on Ben. Needs some work!

One of the main drawbacks of most dynamic clothes are the razor sharp edges. The fabric has no "thickness."

That doesn't have to be. My latest dynamic clothing has its edges "folded over" and assigned to the soft decorated group.

Can this be done in VF? Or should I export from Poser as .OBJ and import in a modeling program? I'm holding off purchase until I have a better idea of what it can and can't do. I haven't been convinced yet that VF is worth purchasing.

With your modeling skills, you'd only need it as a time saving short cut to what you're already quite capable of in my opinion. It doesn't make "Thick" cloth except via material displacement. You'd still need to do as you've surmised and save out an OBJ and edit it from there. Do you really need that short cut? That's something only you can decide. For the non-modelor in myself, I love it for what it can do not what it can't.

Can you offer any advice on draping so as to achieve the same effect as in Poser that you get in VF. As in the supplied screenshot. I thought I may have been able to export the item pre-draped but that doesn't work.

 VF cloth simulations are independent of Poser simulations. In fact, the VF Reinforce feature is basically what Constrain Groups allow in Poser 6. "Reinforce" the parts of the garment you don't want to drape or simulate.

Therefore, if you want to work only in VF, use the Reinforce feature in VF Fitting Room.

If you are going to export to Poser 6, then using the Reinforce feature isn't necessary. You'll need to export to Poser then run the garment in the Poser Cloth room simulator, keeping in mind the areas you want to Constrain (or Soft Decorate). Playing with the Cloth Dynamics settings before running the Poser Cloth simulation will help achieve a heavy or thin weight to your fabric. I usually change my Fold Resistance, Stretch and Cloth Density to achieve the fabric weight.

One more thing to help you achieve better draping results is in the Simulation Settings - Cloth Self-Collision. This helps prevent the cloth to fold on itself like a cape might intersect itself. The drawback is that it requires more computations, therefore longer sim times and more of your system resources (but hey, I like to use it :)

Hopes this helps,
-Brian

Trevor Black : Enthusiastic VF supporter. 

Attached Link: http://brian.e-frontier.com/Miki_Dance_0010.mov

Yes, your obsevation is correct concerning the cloth settings values exported from VF. The material's dynamic cloth settings from the materials you chose in VF will load in as well when you Clothify the garment. Draping with the cloth settings imported from VF is a good start and actually is a big plus :)

When I use the Cloth room in general, I usually tweak the Fold Resistance, Stretch and Cloth Density and the Simulation Settings subsets like self cloth detection, especially if I'm going to run an animation.

I worked with Joe Grover and Jeff Flower on their 3-Axis Poser 5 Demystified video tutorial some years ago when the Cloth Room was first introduced. That instructional tape contained several invaluable video tutorials on dynamic cloth room settings and how they actually applied in animations. Last I heard, they sold through inventory and it's no longer available.

Anyway, I'm glad to have helped out this weekend. Now, it's time for me to get back to dressing my kids in their  Sunday best :) Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Best,
-Brian

p.s. I'll leave you with another quick Miki cloth animation. Just think of the tune "You spin me right round baby, right round, like a record, baby, right round, right round" when you watch it...

Hello to everybody,

When, one year now that I havn't played with poser nore produced anything and this new tool gave me some desire to come back.

You can see my first test.

For me, really a nice thing. Very easy to learn and use.  I hope that we will have some updates and  my wishes are :

• to better the boolean operations. Yes, as said in the manual, there are real problems with cutting (straps). I had to rework the bolero a lot before it accepts the poser simulation.

• the internal engine is very fast and produce results differents from poser. It would be nice to export to poser the VF simulation and not only the basic mesh

• new garments molds (gloves ?)

Have good time,

Serge

Hi all :)

New to this program too, had some niggles like everyone else but think i am getting there :)  one question tho, does anyone know how to import new poses for the fitting room?  I cant find out how and it is bugging me, if anyone knows i would be very gratefull :)

Ryan

Very cool. I picked it up on a whim as I, like Serge, haven't really done anything with Poser in quite a while and this looked promising. Glad to see a veteran likes it. I am pulling together a few sims now and am taking notes on all the lessons learned here. thanks, guys!

serge, looks like great work, as usual!

I have to come back to my first comments on Virtual Fashion. I'm afraid I moaned a litle too soon, which I regretfully often do.
In first place I did had to read the F manual better, There are some drawbacks when importing to poser  and the manual does explains that. But in my enthousiasm to try out something new I overread that.
Next thing:one has to use a decent graphic board ( or card, whatever). I started with VF on my laptop which has an Intel graphic processor (which isn't supported, neither by poser or VF), when I installed VF on my desktop (which has a brandnew NVIDIA graphic card ), it ran much better.
I think I don't have to comment on a program after one night! ( yes it did really grabbed me  )
In my opinion this a great program and a great companion to poser. I still think that the export to poser has to be better, but what the heck!: this is the first release! I am sure they are working on it, I got a very quick reply of the support of VF after I E-mailed some questions, so that gives a lot of trust.