I'm working on a Victoria 4 fantasy armor outfit, and I have run into a rather fundamental question.
The armored top consists of a pair of round cups held together by chains. Not very surprising or original maybe, but here's the rub: if I make it a "normal" conformier, the cups and chains will distort when Victoria bends her arms or back, in a way that metal does not do. 
Yet a "normal" conformer is easy to use - just conform and magnetize it, copy Vicki's morph dial settings, and you're done.
But if I make it as a partial conformer, it's not as easy to use. The advantage is that the cups will stay perfectly round and the same size, doesn't matter what pose Vicki is in, and the chains run straight from the cups to where they're attached to the shoulder harness. The realism is better, and the way I've rigged them also allows for some extra effects - for example "snapped chain, dropped cup" - without having to dial morphs.
The disadvantage is that after putting Vicki in her pose, the cups have to be shifted/rotated in place, and some work has to be done to make the chains fit. Not as easy to use as a straigt traditional conformer.

I'm planning to make this a freebie. I'd love to hear your opinions on what would be better - ease of use, but less versatile and realistic, or better realism and versatility, but not as easy to use?

By the way, I've been wracking my brain on ways to combine the benefits of the two ways into one figure. Haven't succeeded yet, and my head still hurts...

Frankly, I'd go for versatility. If the things look wrong in the render, we'd only have to go in and postwork it in PS or our favourite image editor anyway, which is more work (and for some, more fiddly and time-consuming).  Speaking personally, I prefer to do as little postwork as possible, and get as much in Poser as I can (much the same as when making and kind of FX for a film, I would prefer to get it in camera than rely on post-production - maybe it's just me, but it feels neater and more 'real' that way).

We've learned fro other great content providers that giving people a new way of doing things, which results in a better result, ends up with the new technology being adopted elsewhere - even if it's not always credited as such. So don't be afraid to make us work for a good result - if it's worth it, we'll do it.

jonthecelt

I'd rather do a bit extra work in poser and save on the postwork

Can you get anything from turning off bending in the conforming clothes?

How about moving the cups and scaling or morphing the chains,
to fit a few basic rotations ....

Left collar forward/back
right collar forward/back
left collar up/down
right collar up/down
chest bend

Then make those complex moves follow the figure's moves,
either through Python or through the new 'keyframed ERC' 
(dependent parameters) in P7?  Seems like an ideal
situation for the latter!

The harnesses are a WIP too - messy UVs, no morphs, far from ready. They're only included to show that the loops that attach the bra to the harness do exactly what they're meant to do - stay on the harness. The loops are body parts of the bra.

The 'versatile' version has a body part for abdomen that only contain the loops that attach to the harness.
Chest and collars are "empty" groups.
The cups are their own groups, and each chain actually consists of two groups that "point at" each other. The bones have been placed very carefully so that the ends of the chains - with a little scaling, that is - always end up at the points where they must be attached.
The posing proecure of the "versatile" version is as follows:

• pose Vicki;
• move and rotate (even scale! Works too!) the cups in place;
• move and rotate and scale the center ornament in place;
• move the endpoints of the chains (they point to the collars, the abdomen, and the ornament) to where they should be;
  - Y-scale the chains so that they connect with their endpoints. Optionally y-rotate the chains so that the links neatly match up with the rings that they should go through;
• The longer chains can simply be bent by using a magnet.

Since the endpoints can be freely moved, it's possible to have a chain point at something completely different. So a "broken chain" effect is possible.

For now, this is the most user friendly version of the "versatile" armor bra I've been able to cobble together. It may be enough, it may not be enough.
One of the advantages is that there is almost no need of morphs. Instead of morphing the body parts, you just move them. So you won't have to worry about any new custom morph packages that may be released in the future.

One of the things I'm thinking about is "internal IK". Chains made up of several bones, the end bone being an IK goal, parented to a body part. A combination with EasyPose dials should make it possible for the chains to be deformed in a natural way, while their end points stay attached to where they're supposted to be. Even if those end points are moved.

I'm not sure whether such a trick will work. It'll have to do some experiments first.

This sounds like a complex job but it looks great!

I like versatile and realistic, but go with your vision first. You can create the other after.

i just did some armour for g2 and i have smart propping and conforming. the actual armour is smart propped and the connecting thingys (chains, straps, cables) are conforming. it's worked pretty well so far.

please share any insights!