I'm taking my first tentative steps into making conforming clothing and was wondering if someone could give me a bit of feedback on the process I'm going to use? (it would be great if I could identify any flaws - I'm sure there'll be lots -  before gettting tied up in the process itself...)

what I'm planning to do is make a basic bra/bikini top for an extreme (partially custom) morphed V3 (existing clothing doesn't work very well because of the morphing). Also, I should point out that the clothing item is only for learning and personal use - it won't be redistributed... anyway here's what I plan to do:

1/ load the morphed V3, zero her and export the left and right collars as an obj (checking weld seams and include part names in polygon groups).
2/ import the obj (with nothing checked)
3/ use poser's grouping tool to make up the basic bra shape and spawn this as a prop
4/ delete the imported obj and load the morphed and zeroed v3 to check that the prop's position is correct.
5/ select the prop and go to setup
6/ load a zeroed V3 (not sure if it makes any difference if it's the base figure or the morphed one?) I'm hoping that, since everything's zeroed, the bones should load in the right place?
7/ delete most of the bones (leaving right and left collars, chest and upper arms)
8/ go back to pose and conform the bra to V3

anyway, I'd really appreciate your thoughts about this (I'm sure there are things I'm just doing wrong, or not doing at all!!!).

many thanks in advance :):):)

For personal use this is fine... but you also need to export the chest too.

I normally use the V3 Blank cr2 to import the bones. The joints are the same unless you changed any of the joint center, etc on your morphed V3. The rule of thumb is you need the body part above and below in the hierachy.

I woudn't delete any of the bones from the setup. That's something you can do later if you choose. I usually delete the body parts like the fingers and toes from the cr2 and hide the other body parts you do not need.,, This can be done by editing the cr2 in a text editor, but for you I'd leave everything in tact until you feel confident about editing a cr2..

In the setup room, just select the V3 Blank figure and the bones will be imported. All you will have in the setup window is the object  you want to make a conformer. Make sure you still have the groups in your mesh... the collars and chest. If they aren't there you will need to use the grouping tool to create them again. If everything went right.. you exit the setup room and your clothing will now be a figure ready to conform to your morphed V3. It won't have any JCMs so you may get poke through when the arms are raised or lowered.

Hope this helps some.
Ed

thanks - it really does help a lot!!! :)

Always leave one level of "extra' body parts. In your case, the rCollar and lCollar body parts have geometry, so you should keep the rShoulder and lShoulder bones.
Also, always keep the root bone (hip) and all intermediate bones (in this case, abdomen and chest). This will make sure your clothing figure will snap to the right bones in the right way when you conform it.

Thanks for the info! I've managed to get the item conforming to basic poses, but am getting mesh distortions on more extreme poses - ah well, time to read up some more - thanks again for the help! :)

Victoria 3 has ERC (Enhanced Remote Control) - in this case, morphs which work automatically when her collars are posed. Ideally, conforming clothing should have matching morphs to avoid pokethrough in all possible poses. Although I managed to make some ERC once (my Sandy blouse has it, albeit very basic) my usual approach is to stick my head in the sand and avoid posing the collars; or, better, use dynamic cloth. :D

I often use the Poser cloth room to create (ERC) morphs.

Me personally I have been using PhilCs Obj2Cr2 for clothing I have been making then runing them through Wardrobe Wizard2 to get the Body morphs.