hullo, this is my very First go at making a piece of clothing...(one day ) i wanted to start small.. 
a mini skirt....  i built the mesh in hexagon....  awesome program!
i then used... 'autogroup editor'  spent ages in that.. to get the  groups i needed..
i then uvmapped it... simple cylinder...  used p-wizard to throw it in poser and this is as far as i could go....  i think its somthing to do with the groups ... the problem is at the bottom of the skirt between the legs... which has caused a split.. front and back....   did i miss somthing...
whatta think soo far...    any help would be appriciated thank you.... Mike .. :)

my autogrouping....

The problem is that the geometries of the right and left thigh aren't welded together. A body part is always welded to its parent, but not to its siblings.

There are several ways to address this problem.
First solution: regroup. Make sure the rThigh and lThigh polygon groups are separated by a couple of polygons belonging to the hip group.

Second solution: 'illegitimate welds'. Open the .cr2 file of the skirt using a text editor or dedicated cr2 editor (CR2Builder by kim99 is a good free cr2 editor) and scroll down to the 'figure' section.
You'll find statements such as
weld rThigh:1
hip:1
Now add a statement like this:

weld rThigh:1
lThigh:1

Change the numbers into the same numbers that appear in your .cr2 file. This trick is called 'illegitimate welds', since you're welding two body parts together that do not have a parent/child relationship.

Third solution: this is a very short skirt. You can get away with assigning all polygons to the hip body part. You still should keep the abdomen, rThigh and lThigh bones, those will make sure that the skirt deforms as it should when the character bends her waist or leg.
This solution is only suitable for miniskirts. If the skirt reaches past mid thigh, you're better off adding additional body parts.

The third solution is probably best in this case.

ahha excellent , i will have to try these... thank you very much !!! :)

Attached Link: http://www.morphography.uk.vu/modtut7.html

My conforming skirt tutorial uses the "illegitimate welds" approach, if you need further help with that method. With a skirt that short, you often don't need to group it at all - to be precise, group everything to hip. The joint parameters in the CR2 will take care of everything, as long as the skirt doesn't get within the zone of influence of the thighs or chest. In other words, buttock and abdomen bends will be taken care of without the need for grouping; and this also makes morphs easier to make.

thread hijack...

english bob, does this apply to everything. like if you model something that is for the chest, waist, and shldr's and you just conform to the chest it will form correctly to the outside lying groups (waist and shldr's)?

I will add my opinion here DarkEdge, to answer your question, no. The skirt can just be conformed to the hip because it hangs from the hip, conforming to only the chest on say a tunic, would not create bones for the shoulder and arms, etc. So, when something was posed, it would go all cattywampus (technical term). :)

If the bones are present in the rigging an item containing only a single group will be affected by the group(s) before or after it in the hierarchy. In  other words a piece of clothing grouped to the chest (in most rigging configureations) will be affected by the abdoment group, the neck and the l&r collar group, AS LONG AS THE RIG CONTAINS THE BONES FOR THOSE GROUPS. Obviously if there are no bones for those groups they will be ignored. Another common use of this is the shoe. in most cases if the shoe only "covers" the thigh, foot and toe groups it can a be placed in the Foot group, if the CR3 file contains the shin, foot and toe bones these will affect the shoe as well.

mike

I suppose it comes down to how you conform the clothing.

Quote - thread hijack...

english bob, does this apply to everything. like if you model something that is for the chest, waist, and shldr's and you just conform to the chest it will form correctly to the outside lying groups (waist and shldr's)?

Yeah, what trav said. ;) The distinction is between "bones" (actors in the CR2) and groups in the mesh - they don't have to correspond one-to-one. In the skirt example (to bring us vaguely back on topic), the mesh would be grouped 100% to hip. The CR2 would need actors, bones, whatever you call them, for hip, abdomen, lButtock and rButtock. In your example, you'd group 100% to chest, and include actors / bones in the CR2 for chest, neck, lCollar, rCollar and abdomen; I'd also include hip for simplicity.

Sorry EB couldn;t resist jumping in there!

mike

all input is good input!
i've just never rigged any of my conforming clothing like that. 

if i was doing some chest armour i would have all of the groups that the mesh overlapped onto (ie; chest, abdomen, lShldr, rShldr) and then for the bones i would have all of the group bones and then i always add 1 bone to the top and bottom...so if the shldr's were the last group i would probably have a neck and forearm bones in there and if the abdomen was the last group then i would have the waist bone.

Well look at it this way. You addd an extra bone(actor) "past" the final group in your hierarchy becuase it can affect it 'parent'. This is the same thing, but reduced to the base level of only a single group. Just a way to keep it simple.

mike

hullo jus to let you know i fixed the welding problem in the skirt... you said to weld this: weld  rThigh:1             lThigh:1

this did not work until i added:
    weld    rButtock:1
            lButtock:1

now it works perfectly!!! :)

.....cheers for the advice ....    Mike

Good work Mike. In my tutorial I had grouped the skirt to have lThigh and rThigh, so the welds had to be between the thighs - but your skirt was grouped to lButtock and rButtock, so you did the right thing. I wrote it some time ago, and I'd forgotten I'd done it that way. Sorry 'bout that. :/

Very Cool Mike , Glad you got it working... Now to keep this discussion going a bit longer I have a question for you EB.  Lately I've been conforming in a number of high heel shoes and noticed a few things. 

THe technique I use is to build the shoes around feet posed for high heels , say foot bend to 25 and toe bend to -25. Then import the object inot poser. Load in a done rig form the figures stripped CR2. THen in the Set-up room, working directly on the bones displayed I adjust those bones to the same setting as the posed foot.

Problem is that back in the Pose room, even tho I've used numeric setting to try and match the number exactly when I conform the shoes to the posed foot there is a slight twist to the toe. Unforunately this happed even if I hav ethe shoe grouped totally to the foot or not. The Toe bone seems to be "off" slightly no matter how carefully I input the data. hadn adjusting the end point of the toe bone and reduce the twist, but no matter what I do it alwasy seems to be there. For that reason I've been sticking to smart proped high heels,w hic is ok for some tyles, but there are some I;d like to see have the toe bend. in particular high heeled boots.

I've even noticed the twisting of the toe on flat shoes with the G2 figures, once the individulal toes are removed.

So my question is, do you have a better technique for high heels? or any input on how I can improve this situation. 

thanks
mike