Yesterday I bought an upgrade from Virtual Fashion Basic to Virtual Fashion Pro1.5. This upgrade was announced on the VF-website and the pro version now supports Koji G2, Vicky 3 and Michael 3 and with the promise that V4 and stephanie 3 will soon be available. They had a special upgrade price unitl december 31 of €99,- and because I had some money left after Poser 7 I bought it.
What amazed me, is that I didn't see this discount on the E-frontier site, and when I took a better look I noticed  that they don't sell Virtual Fashion anymore as an E-frontier product (It's still avaible on content paradise) I wonder if E-frontier has a confilct with virtual fashion about the support for V3 and M3, but I hope they will still support it because the product is  only getting better with  a better export-module, more kinds of fabrics, more models and the possibility to import your own textures.

I never could get my serial number to work with it when I bought it and I never got a response to my support question for it.  I'm really miffed.  I can only use it in demo version.  And I purchased it when it first came out on the EF site!

I bought it as well-and I think you can still get it at EF?
Anyway, got this from reyes today:

Hi Renee:

Next in the list will be JamesG2 and KelvinG2 but there is not a release
date yet. I am sorry but I can not tell you when SidneyG2 will be
available. New releases must be coordinated with Poser and I have not info
abut that.

Best regards,

Roberto.

I wrote EF right afterwords to ask them about it. No answer yet.....

Frankly this new figure support is just a tad bit of hype in my opinion as Virtual Fashion Basic already supported James. His body was the same as Koji and as far as the G2 figures go, the body is still the same as Jame's 1's only grouped differently. Any dynamic cloth you make with VF Basic for James already fits the G2 figures. The DAZ inclusion is new and a plus though.

I did notice that you can now have more control over the mesh that's exported and they did away with some poly's that were giving Poser 6 fits and crashes. Not Sure it's worth the upgrade price however considering how little use I got out of VFBasic for the $99 price I paid already. I'll wait and let you guys beta test this one.

When  I bought VF-basic, I had a lot of problems making it work in the clothroom so I didn't use it for a while, the last service-release for VF-basic solved a lot of problems and has an better export-module for poser now. Virtual Fashion pro has improved this even more and as I said has support for the DAZ-figures and the possibility to import new figures in the future. I've tried some dresses on V3 and it worked very well. If I have some spare time, I'll see if I can show examples.

Well i'd love to hear how this upgrade is much better than the original if you can share some screen shots with us and your experiences. I'm just leery of throwing more money down the Poser Pit hoping for better results.

Bopperthijs,

Were there any issues with installation/registration of your upgrade. I remember that whole thing when VFB first came out where there was confusion over the way VFPro required a subscription to their web service that was an annual thing and it freaked a lot of people out. I've been very unhappy with VFB even after the SR. The very first thing I created after installation caused a lockup. I'm still having issues getting dynamic clothing to work with BVH file-driven animations. Poke through and tearing and collapsing no matter what I constrain. I've pretty much given up on the program.
Have you tried VFPro on any animations?
Have you been able to overlay items?
Have you tried modeling anything more complicated than a dress?

I'd seriously love to have a program that really works, but I'm somewhat gunshy about buying another piece of hype. It's not the $$$ it's the frustration when it doesn't!!

all additional insights gratefully accepted...

 
<?))$$$><<  
 

Judging from the lack of interest in this thread. I'm guessing a lot of those who purchased VF Basic for Poser were too dissappointed with what we got the first time around to take the plunge this time. I'm certainly dissappointed that their upgrade price is more than I originally paid for the Basic version itself. 

Seeing as how most of the problems I encountered were involved with the export and import into poser itself, the free trial doesn't interest me since it's export disabled. Not being able to try it out with Poser is a HUGE drawback and a marketing mistake in my opinion.

Hope you don't mind if I jump in...
I noticed a pretty dramatic difference in Virtual Fashion basic after the service release- before that it was pretty much unusable without messing with the cloth room parameters and various control groups on the cloth. The service release helped a lot of those issues immensely. I was very tempted to get the upgrade, considering the character support- but I found that most of the clothing can be worked into fitting just about any character with a bit of tweaking (changing the sizing of figures in poser for the initial 'clothify' frames, etc... 
I would be very interested to know how well the upgraded version performs for those of you who purchased it- certainly would be nice to do away with workarounds for full character support.
Perhaps if you could post some tests?

-Jeff

Posted some thin strap pics done in vf pro over at cp virtual fashion forum if anyone wanted to see them

I agree with jdehaven, the SR made the problem with thin strips go away. Incidentally, e frontier will also release the VF 1.5 Pro version soon. It offers support for many EF and DAZ figures and also many improved a new features.
Laslo

@fuaho:
I admit I had some problems with the installationprocess of VF-pro but after I uninstalled VF-basic, it was no problem to install and register VF-pro. I don't believe Vf still uses the subscription politics, at least I didn't had to subscribe to mak VF-pro work.
I haven't done any animation with VF clothes but I think it will work, I've tried some overlays  items and it worked.
I'm working right now on a outfit with boots, a dress and a cape, If I'm ready I'll post the result.
Until now the results were promising but right now poser 6 is freezing after 5 simulations, the first didn't give any problems but I think asking to much of the memory.
I'm glad to hear that E-frontier is still supporting VF, It's a great tool for making dynamic clothes and the support of new figures is a strong point.

bopperthijs,

thanx for the reply. I'm totally frustrated with the (non) results I've achieved so far. the whole point of dynamic clothing for me is to use in animations, not just still images. hopefully the combo of P7 & VFPro will allow that, but I'm going to have to wait for more positive input before I lays me money down. especially if you're already having problems!

Regards,

 
<'))%%%><<  
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

I'm leaning more toward's PhilC's clothing creator for my next excusion into dynamic clothing. He already supports way more figures than VF does and at not nearly the cost. I also wasn't exactly pleased with the way Infographica tried to strong arm him out of the dynamic clothing business not so long ago.

I heard there was a promo code to enter to get the VF Pro 1.5 upgrade from VF Basic 1.0 for Poser for $89 in the States.  I deleted my email before reading the whole thing and don't see it mentioned on the VF site.  I think it was a special link for Poser users until January.  Anyone here use the promo code for buying?

I'm a US customer who got the email and it's €89 not $89.

OK.  Was there are promo code to use?  The VF site shows 99 instead of 89.

@fuaho: I learned that it makes a whole world  of differentce which cloth settings you use, the default settings are totally not suited for VF. In the RDNA -forum is a  thread which explains the settings for the cloth room, and give some examples for some cloth settings. I use the free PhilC utility for the clothroom settings, they are easy to use and give good results.

Quote - OK.  Was there are promo code to use?  The VF site shows 99 instead of 89.

 

Well as I said, the email said This:
Virtual Fashion Pro sells at retail €249 however for existing users of VF Basic and VF Basic for Poser we are offering a special introductory price to upgrade of only €8*9 through January 31st 2007. Enter “poserpromo” in the discount code box to get this special price. 

It linked to their site where it's priced at €99  so I'm guessing you get the €89  price after entering the promo code, or that they've just goofed up again.

http://www.virtual-fashion.com/html/en/store/

In anycase, it's priced in Euro's which when converted today came out out as the following price:

89.00 EUR
Euro = 116.559 USD
United States Dollars

No they didn't goof.  I probably read it wrong.  I think I'll get it because the site mentions they've fixed the mesh options to remove the extra polys that are generated.  And I want to import cloth materials, which could probably be done in Poser itself.  But I'd like to see it in Virtual Fashion first.

I'd like to see some side by side mesh comparisons of VF Pro output compared to PhilC's Clothing Creator output. That's what I'd like to see.

Actually, they both work quite well, but a lot of times I get better cuts in VF simply because (probably) I had it first. They both have good and bad points-however, if you're making something for a quick animation for yourself, not for sale, I also prefer VF because you can texture it in the program.

So did you upgrade to the pro version Renee? I'd really like to see some side my side mesh images of the basic starting props for both VFPro and Clothing creator. I never bought Phil's program because I already had VF Basic when his came out. 

Now I'd like to know which would be better for me to upgrade to. VFPro or Phil's Clothing Creator. His definately supports more figures. I'd like to know more about the quality output of the meshes from each program.

Hm-if philc gets scissors running for P7 soon (I uninstalled p6 due to space constraints) I will try to post some for ya. Yes, I upgraded to pro for the extra figures thinking I'd get sydney soner-lmao-now really don't know, but do like VF pro a LOT better than basic for the texturing possibilities alone....much less the extra figures and such.

However, philc's program is nice too, if I can ever get the hang of the darned scissors

I finally got some time to finish my VF clothing set for V4. It's a kind of gipsy-outfit with a skirt, blouse and a silk cape /shawl. Nothing special really. I first did the dynamics for the dress (skirt and blouse ar on piece, but different materialsettings and after that I did the dynamics for the cape, I made the cape transparant so you can see the folds. Originally I also had a pair of dynamic(!) boots, but the skirt got glued to it during simulation so I skipped that one. I used the origina; VF clothroom settings, it makes different dynamic groups for every material and I also believe that the enforcements you can make in VF are exported to Poser. I 'm quite happy with the results, I like the way the clothes are draping, something that's almost impossible with conforming clothes.