This isn't so much a product-related post as it is a user preference post.

Nowadays, there are basically three types of clothing:

CONFORMING. Conforming clothing can have intricate geometry, and automatically poses with the figure. Probably the easiest to use, but it doesn't always pose the best. Especially things like capes or skirts. While body handles can help the situation, they aren't often easy to understand either, and don't always obtain realistic results.

DYNAMIC. Dynamic clothing doesn't pose automatically. You have to use the Cloth Room to get it to work, and some are afraid of the cloth room. The geometry can't be quite as complex as the conforming clothing either. BUT, the results are much more realistic in clothes that flow (like capes or skirts).

HYBRID. This is gaining in popularity, but not everyone is familiar with it. More intricate parts of the geometry are conforming and automatically move with the figure like regular conforming clothing. But the flowy parts (capes, skirts, etc) would involve going into the Cloth Room for simulations. The result is something that is the MOST realistic, but takes a bit more time to set up properly, especially for beginners.

Which types of clothing are you most apt to use? Just curious.

Right now, Deecey, I'm using either Conforming or Dynamic, depending on what I need.  I'm really interested in learning about the hybrids but you don't see any of them around.

I Love Dynamic clothing mainly because i am getting heavy into the animation side of poser then single frame projects after gaining understanding of the cloth room (Big ups  to PhilC for his tute, and the good Doctor) i don't fear all the controls in the room
so i would go for the Hybrid to get the best of both worlds. 
which, by the way is how i think male shirts should be made because a full conforming shirt the front seam down the front do not look real when the torso is bent.  the opening bends unnatural for cloth whereas dynamic will flow like cloth

I lean toward hybrid clothing as well ... to me, it seems the best solution. If instructions were clear I think people could really get into using it! But I'd like more opinions too, because I'm just trying to think of what would suit the needs of most everyone.

I haven't tryed hybrid yet. My only problem with dynamic clothing is it takes forever to set it up and render it. It would seam that the hybrid would be a little faster to set up and render, (mostly render) because less things have to have be calulated by the computer. I have only seen about 1 or 2 of these Items for the hybrid for sale, or maybe there are more, I just bypass them till I get Poser 7 and see if that speeds up the process of rendering and the setup room to make it worth while.

I prefer dynamic because a dynamic garment will fit any character, and it looks more
natural in an animation.  But I can see where for a beginner  conforming clothing
would be easier to work with.  Haven't seen much in the way of hybrids, but
that sounds like an interesting option.  Still, the conforming part might tend to
limit it in the amount of characters it could be used with.

For tight-fitting clothing, Conforming.

For loose flowy things like skirts and capes, I prefer Dynamic.

I'd like to use more in the way of Hybrids, but there haven't been very many clothes designed for such, which kind of limits the possible use. The Morphing Fantasy Dresses can be turned into fairly decent hybrids, but there's the possibility of pokethrough and mesh separating at the boundary between conforming and dynamic.

If Poser 7 Cloth Room did not have the problems that it currently does, I'd likely only use conforming clothing for shoes and snug fitting things like lingerie and bodysuits.  As it stands, Cloth Room is so frustrating for me that it makes me not want to use it at all.  I really hope it get some fixing with the next patch.  The specific bug that I'm having trouble with is where cloth simply will not collide against parts of a figure.  It's consistent and very frustrating, appears to be that if there are too many elements in the hierarchy tree then cloth won't collide against "some" things - but even in the same figure it's not easy to pin down.

No easy anser to that question, I use whatever fits the bill for the image I'm doing, I don't have a preference per se` I just use each as the mood dictates!

Personally I would love to see more information on the Hybrid types of clothing.

There are just aspects of most cloth items that you do not want to have moving around like the rest of the cloth. I know you can set various groups in the cloth room, but this has always been a buggy area for me.

So for me, Dynamic or Hybrids (if I can ever figure out how to make them work.)

Unfortunately 95% of the clothing types out there are conforming, not sure if that is just because that is how people are used to making clothing or what. But a lot of it only looks good in a single frame setup, and even then it sometimes take a lot of work to cover up poke through.

Anyway... Just my 2 Cents into the mix.

Thanks
V

I think I'd still go with conforming, followed by hybrid then dynamic for most clothing.

are you going to have a tutorial about this?

i would say a hybrid. i personally use conforming most but there are many times when i want to have a seperate part that is dynamic. body handles are too much trouble, both to make and to use. seems there should be an easier way.

I'm thinking a tutorial would be a great idea, since I have a feeling this is the way to approach clothing that would react most realistically!

OK, it's on the agenda. 8-D

Unfortunately 95% of the clothing types out there are conforming, not sure if that is just because that is how people are used to making clothing or what. But a lot of it only looks good in a single frame setup, and even then it sometimes take a lot of work to cover up poke through.<<

Another reason might be that a lot of people are afraid of the cloth room. So part of the solution might entail devising a method that would make hybrid clothing easier to use.

Not being a Python wizard, I'm not sure if it's feasible. But I wonder if there might be a way to create some sort of "Wizard-like" thing that would allow a user to specify which parts of a piece of clothing are to be dynamic, and to set up the simulations for those parts without accessing the cloth room. Then, you can use the "Animation > Recalculate Dynamics > All Cloth" command to perform all the calculations at once.

Any thoughts from the Python gurus?

personally, i use/create conforming because it's dynamically quicker. what i mean by that is once i put it on my character i can quickly pose them around and see instantly what's going on, not concerned about poke throughs yet as i'm just establishing a pose. so no renderings just getting camera angles and poses first.

then once i have something that looks decent then i start manipulating the clothing and/or turning off visable body parts.
i honestly don't know crap about the cloth room and that's why i don't use it. lol! just haven't gone in there and tried to learn it yet. it was enough learning cr2's and joint editor stuff, besides all of the other stuff (materials, maps, etc.)

your tutorial would be an awesome idea.
one of the other areas that is limiting to me with conforming is if you have an item that is conforming to multiple body parts (chest, abdomen) you can't put a decent texture on your clothing as it can really smear/distort out when you pose the figure sometimes. chainmail would be the obvious example here.

Its not something to be scared of.

Here is an on screen flash video tutorial showing how to use the Cloth moor.
http://www.philc.net/CC_sampleVideo.htm

Hopefull that will dispel a lot of the mystery.

If you then navigate back to the home page then the tutorial link you'll find some more Cloth Room tutorials.

Cloth Room presets here:-
http://www.philc.net/ClothRoomPresets.htm

Quote - Its not something to be scared of.

it bit me once.
mean nasty rooms. :biggrin:

Its not something to be scared of.>>

Ah, just the Python Guru I was thinking of! ;-)

there is so much more that can be done with hybrids.

the main drawback of conforming is that you can either have a 50 meg piece of clothing with tonnes of preset morph poses, but then its inevitably still not going to look as good as dynamic, and wont be suited for any poses that havent been accounted for in the built-in morphs.

the problem with pure dynamic is that most of it that isnt skintight, IMO, looks nowhere near as realistic as the characters we use it on. even if there are rudimentary seams, cuffs, etc it still comes nowhere near properly modeled conforming clothing. it also brings its own issues with pokethrough, jaggies, etc... in order to have a piece of dynamic clothing that folds and wrinkles well youre going to need a mesh far more dense and less optimized than the average conforming clothing item -- yet still with far less detail.

hybrids bring the best of both worlds together... you can conform the tight-fitting parts and those that are better suited to conforming, and then have loose flowing or draping parts that are dynamic and will animate better, look better, drape better and be suited for almost any pose.

i think that until now many people avoided dynamic clothing because it seemed like a hassle, and also not all of the dynamic clothing on the market is very appealing... but now that everyone should have at least poser 5 (come on, it was free... there is no excuse anymore) and dynamic capability more merchants will be using it and more customers will be open to it.

Agreed, Gabe, on all counts!!! Those are precisely the reasons that I am leaning toward going this route in my products as well. The possibilities of emulating real-world clothing are much greater with hybrid clothing.

For it to catch on, we have to educate the community in how it works. That will have to be a community effort!  I'm all for setting up some tutorials that will combine input from all those who care to give their two cents.

I've been stuck using conforming because I really don't what to do with dynamic when you want to change the pose with the same cloth. I do story boards, I guess you could classify this as frames if I were animating, and I truly do not know what to do when you want to change a figure's pose while using dynamic clothing. Is it as simple as re-calculating the garment?

That should be all it takes! Once you have the simulations set up, you should only have to recalculate the dynamics when the pose changes.

Ah I see not so difficult as one thought. Thanks!!

Perhaps along with just education, a small freebie to go along with it so people will get hands on learning and be able to decide for themselves if it's for them :)

I'm definately a hands on person and although I don't use P6 that much, strangely, the one thing that I do like to use in it is the cloth room.

With proper directions for the product that you are using, it really is quite easy.

True, it can take time, but the end results are worth it.

And this is from someone that doesn't use P6 much and hasn't been able to get P7 yet :) So there ya go :)

I think that a hybrid would be freakin' awesome myself :)

Dee, I promise, at some point I will get your book  :)  Just gotta figure out the money situation :)

I LOVE the Cloth Room! Mainly 'cos I can't do all the rigging/boning/fall-off-zones etc required for conforming..

The pic is of an early, test pair of Harem pants that I modeled for Posette (currently being made into a full-set freebie, but alas at another site unless I can find someone here who can help me host it for 'rosity).

I defy ANYONE to get that sort of flow into any conforming clothing as a product:-))

More seriously...

Yes, the best way to go (where required) might be Hybrid.
Since I don't have the skills to do conforming, I'm left with Dynamic.
But Hybrid still requires you to use the Cloth Room (for the dynamic parts) and so you still have to go through the animation simulation, with all the resulting time, and maybe just constraing the "close-fitting" parts might work? Never tried that - I'm still new at this game (as far as products are concerned).

Also, (was it mentioned in an earlier post?), dynamic clothing can, within reson, be fitted to almost any character, with a bit of time and effort. The same cannot be said for Conforming clothing, notwithstanding Wardrobe Wizard et al.

Errm.. Maybe I've outstayed my welcome, so..

Cheers,
Diolma

I'll often make a part of my conforming clothes dynamic like a sleave or something just to add realism to the render. Love esther

I mean easier because with both these dresses you can just select hip, enter the cloth room and run a standard simulation, no need to constrain anything, infact the only choice that needs to be made is what parts to collide the skirt against, if you have poser 7 you don't even need to worry about the fold settings as the smooth tool will fix any errors in seconds, so no need to run a second simulation.......We have been putting up hybrids for some time, i'd be happy to put one up for folks to try if anyone who hasn't tried one wants a go.......Steve

But we have done that already!
The runtime includes a ReadMe with instructions on how to use the dress, and suggested render settings.  It's not hybrid, it's fully dynamic, but it should work go give people an introduction.

The link will download the file directly; I should be setting up on the website soon, as well as submitting it to freestuff here.

And oh, just for the record, I'm in favour of hybrid, for the reasons already mentioned.

It's just more time consuming really - but worth the results.

wow, excellant character and render/cloth simulation.

now stop spying!
goes and closes curtains

I don't believe it! That has to be a real person? Is that really apollo? My goodness, you are amazing. That pic is just totally awsome. Love esther

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2680487

But that doesn't have to be. I'm nowhere as accomplished a modeler as Blackhearted, but the blouse I'm working on is full dynamic AND has modeled seams and hems. See the attached link (you might have to scroll down a bit for the more recent screenshots).

Nudity flag set since the attached thread contains nudity.

This is the first I've heard about Hybrids, and I for one am excited!

I may only be a Poser 'NOOB' but one of the first things I attempted in Poser 6 was a cloth room simulation...and I've never looked back. The first half hour I was going around in circles, producing nothing. Then it just clicked! I urge everyone to give it a shot.

And like carodan, I've found a great many conforming clothing pieces can be converted into dynamic clothing. With a little tweaking and some common sense, you can get excellent results. A somewhat blurry example of this can be found in my gallery (Ambush). These were just the standard Baggy Jeans for James confirming clothing.

Bring on the hybrids I say! The potential detail of conforming married with the realism of dynamic. Who could resist?

to me, the obvious answer is hybrid.  it's always better to make the solution fit the situation rather than one blanket solution.  that said, i love that i don't even have to think about fitting fully dynamic clothes.  one of my issues with fitting clothes, including using built in morphs, is that they don't really work, usually.  that is, they follow the figures morph precisely, rather than just fitting differently.  it sounds subtle, but it's the reason a lot of renders look ridiculous: the artist dialed up the figure's muscles, applied the built in morphs, and what you have is clothing that bulges oddly and has a very action figure flow.  dynamic clothes handle that better, in general.  that said, i still mostly use conforming clothes, because that's mostly what's out there in the types of clothing i like.  people mostly don't put lots of detail into dynamic clothes, even though it seems possible.

deecey- i have to say this.  a hybrid pantsuit or realistic jeans would be absolutely invaluable.  every single render i've done with pants makes my boyfriend grimace because of how unrealistically they balloon around the shin and ankle.  even after postworking away the ballooning, it doesn't pass the grimace test, because it still looks immobile.  he's taken to saying, "i just don't think poser can do pants right."   if you look closely at adzan's avatar at daz, he's got a figure sitting where the pants fold correctly. 

conversely, i don't know of a dynamic pair of jeans with as much detail as the conforming ones i have (young soul: vanilla, for one).  maybe a hybrid pair is the answer.

svdl .... GREAT job on that set!! I assume some of it was done by welding vertices, and some by using hard and soft decorated groups? FANTASTIC, and I also love the materials!

estherau ... carodan's gallery is filled with excellent examples of Apollo and V4 that have the most amazing realism. He is doing some fantastic stuff lately!

cobaltdream ... yup, pants are tough, as are belled medieval type sleeves. Hybrids are the way to go!

I'm working on a set for Sydney that is hybrid. IMO hybrid is the way to go for dress period.

I modeled them to be hybrid from the start. The top is conforming and from the hip down is dynamic. I need to put the hem on the dress, but other than that it is done. I don't think I'll release another strictly conforming dress or long sleeved shirt again.

One thing to mention too.... The groups used by the cloth room are retained in the cr2 when you save it to the library, so it's really easy to run a sim on them... just load, conform and create your sim in the cloth room. The groups are already set up, so all you have to done it clothify the hip and set the collide against figure or body parts and calculate the sim. On my older machine it takes about 2 minutes to do a 30 frame sim. On the new one it takes about 30 seconds

Ed

i have to agree.  it's a crap shoot and occasional p.i.t.a to clothify an item that hasn't been designed to be dynamic.  that's where i've had things take forever or behave problematically.  but since i'm going against the instructed use, i'm more surprised when it goes well than otherwise.  most clothes i've had that were designed to be dynamic has worked beautifully, because all the settings were already in place.

these are the issues i've run into with making conforming clothes dynamic, so i'm guessing they sort of hold for what i'd like in dynamic products:

full skirts or other such items flared into a circle at default.  to get both xena's hope gear and lady littlefox's oriental fantasy to behave drape properly in my chosen poses, had to use 4 magnets to flare out the skirts.  on the oriental fantasy outfit i had to flare and raise the sleeves.    basically, where draped items fall from matters a great deal, and for maximum flexibility, it seems  to me in my very limited experience, that it's works better for draped items to fall into the pose rather than start from a more fitted pose.

if there are important features, please make a specific material for them.  that way they can be constrained more, and kept from distorting.  frankly, this would be helpful in general.  i find it equally frustrating to find that a modeled detail has no separate material for me to customize (m3 marauders, a great set, disappointed me in this one respect).  even though hope gear's stripes weren't modeled, they're highly integral to the look of the set.  in this case, i ought to learn to make them a separate material and group.   that is to say, if i want it to work differently, i should change it myself, since it was never meant to be dynamic.  but it would be great if fine details like trim could be handled separately in general. 

and please couple it with lots of detail.  svdl's set is a  perfect example.  the lack of detail coupled with my penchant for action gear has kept me from buying most dynamic sets.  though the stiffness of some sets, especially fantasy ones, has kept me from doing more than trying out several conforming sets.  

svdl - those look like extremely interesting items you're working on (twidling fingers in eager anticipation).
The Hybrid examples I've seen so far look like the way to go for many items. The best of both - sounds good to me. I don't know the technicalities of modelling such items, but having details that remain intact during a sim would be very cool.
Someone mentioned earlier about being able to see the clothing while you're posing the figure (an obvious advantage of conforming items) - I agree that this helps a great deal with frame composition, and working with dynamic clothing can sometimes be a lengthy distraction. Hopefully running simulations will get quicker.
EdW - 30 seconds to run a cloth sim! I've got to get me a hardware upgrade!

Thanks for the comments on the Apollo and V4 renders BTW. That P7 morph brush is quite a liberating tool for making head morphs.

All my poser figures are naked.  Not  because I like the porn, because I can't figure out how to get any of the damn clothing to work no matter how much I spend on it : /.

This my friend I believe is the true reason for all the poser porn.

HollywoodBest, are you trying to say, "Oh! This ole thing, Oh I just threw it on." 
Then you show off with your athletic ability to bend where no one has bent before.

I really wouldn't say that I have bent where noone has bent before. There use to be a guy on Renderosity that use to do alot of testing with dynamic clothes and he was talking about hybrids at one time. But I haven't seen him since. But the outfit was something quick. Cause evident faults is when she bend her butt crack is out. That wasn't intentional. So it still isn't bending natural. Not to  say that it doesn't happen in real life, seen many girls bend over and instead of their butt crack you see their red satin thongs. But I haven't done anything GREAT, I took what they said to do and did it. To see how it would work being that I don't make dynamic clothes. But there is more work that could be done to make it better. And most of the people are taking conformed clothes to make them dynamic. That outfit was built to be a hybrid so I wouldn't have as much headaches.

HollywoodBest,     Ah! you cracked me up laughting. 

*"Not to say that it doesn't happen in real life, seen many girls bend over and instead of their butt crack you see their red satin thongs."

*I remember the first mini skirt I saw which was on a model, I was hoping for a breaze! 
 Well, smack my face! Shame on me for being a guy!  

Anyway, I do animations, and something I'm soncerned with is, if I have two people carring on a conversation. "A lot of the time I can zero in on their face, and there's no problem with what kind of clothing they are wearing."  But there are times when, each person talks back and forth and they are both in the frame, I like to do that to break up the manonty, (hey, I'm an animator, not a english major.) Poser won't let you carry over the animated face poses using Mimic, in the animated clip. It starts from frame one, on.

With conforming clothing I can save that last frame of the two charactures slide them to framd 1, and start the conversation from frame 1, and contenue that conversation, and it is seamless.  

I've tried Dynamic Clothing, but with Dynamic clothing, from what I understand, you have to animate so the clothing catches up to the pose. My concern is, in doing so, when both people are in view. i doubt that the clothes will line up correctly in doing my animation the way it needs to be set up fairly often. I love dynamic clothing, the flow. but when the clothes don't line up in an anmation, then I can't use them.

Because of it. most of my girls have to wear short dress's. or they don't have that natural flow of a long dress.

Attached Link: Hybrid Test

Here you can see it in motion with the included link. The only fault is in the wrist area being that I missed some of the vertices in that area. But not that bad.

wow, that sleeve looks nice. 

i have to say, one of the huge criticisms i hear from over my shoulder (boyfriend and i share the computer room, though not computers) is clothes that look inflated.  hybrids seem to be a way to have jackets with sharp cornered shoulders, but sleeves that actually obey the laws of gravity.  pants that have pockets, and zippers that open, and belt loops but don't balloon around the ankles and calves when the figure is sitting or lying down.

i really hope merchants start selling hybrid clothes.

There is one caveat about hybrid clothing that should probably be mentioned. Let's say you are creating a hybrid clothing set for a figure that has body morphs. You build the body morphs into the clothing so that you can fit the conforming parts to the figure, and still use the dynamic parts correctly. And in most cases, you should also follow through with adding the morphs to the dynamic portions as well, so that the clothing fits as it should.

You have to dial the morphs in before you clothify the clothing. There is something about the clothify process that, once applied, causes morphs on the dynamic portion not to work. I'm not sure if there is any way around that, just thought I would throw it out there.

actually, i find quite the opposite. most fit morphs have the clothes completely inaccurately but precisely follow the body. most muscularity morphs in jackets look frankly ridiculous.  my experience with dynamics is that they drape and stretch properly.

That's true, but you would still have to add the morphs to the conforming parts in the hybrid clothing, which you won't be running through the cloth simulator. In that case, those morphs have to be dialed in before you run the simulation on the dynamic part.

actually, i don't think i've had that problem either, having made some conforming pieces dynamic.oh, wait, i know it hasn't worked that way for me.  in making some conforming items dynamic, i've added morphs so they would drape better. i had no problem dialing these morphs after generating the simulation.

Hmmm interesting, I'll have to test this a bit more to determine exactly where the problem occurs.