I've noticed that most conforming clothing items have a bit of thickness, standing away from the skin, with a narrow band of polygons "holding it away" and at least one more row of polygons going down the inside of the sleeve/collar/hem.

I was wondering what would be a reasonable way to approach this with dynamic cloth. An ugly feature of dynamic cloth is that it's usually visible that the garment is only one polygon thick, probably floating in space near the body.
So, what's a sensible way to approach making wrap-around cuff-like sections with dynamic cloth? We don't want it to lose its shape, we don't want it falling though the other side of itself... And we don't really want it in the constrained group either - it will hold its shape but won't flow!

I tried using the soft and rigid decorated groups, as well as keeping that section dynamic but making it really stiff. None of these were very good, and in the rigid group, it just plain exploded.

I'm sure some gurus have some input or settings to share! Please let me know if it's possible, or if it's asking too much from Poser!!

Try applying a displacement map. Create a white map with a thin black line at the clothing seams. When rendered the seams will appear to be displaced back (depending on your settings), towards the figure giving the illusion of thickness,

Posers dynamic assumes wrapped cloth as double-sided (a no-no with Poser). A workaround may be to split the wrapped part and "fix" it as a rigid group to the rest of the cloth.

A "cheap" way is to use a displacement-map.

I tried some different techniques with my freestuff items. This is one of them.

Its quiet difficult to get a thickness to dynamic cloth, im working on a dynamic set at the moment where i use some thick objects, and it seems to work ok, but it requires a bit of work to get it to behave correctly, but im not really that experience with working with solid dynamic objects yet, that im able to really help you, but to me a cuff can be easily made with a soft decorate, but then again it depends on how you have modeled it and so on. i tried rigid deco as well and to me it doesnt seem to do what they write it should do. But then again i havent worked a lot with it, as i also get those exploding meshes, but its only during the calculation, when it done it seems ok, except that they aint keeping there shape.

But personally im a huge fan of dynamic cloth and its more or less the only cloth i make and use, and think the thickness problem is a minor trade off  compared to the problems with conforming cloth. Think there is way to much dial tweaking and time spend trying to figure out what each of them does, and rarely i think its gets exactly as you want it. But then again i mostly make stuff where characters interact with the surrounding and think thats where conforming cloth really lacks behind. But you can try Phil C suggestion, and add some bump maps can help as well, to create an illusion of thickness..  

What I do is weld the wrapped back part to the front mesh, effectively creating a sort of "tunnel".
The side of the tunnel facing the figure (the "inside") is designated as either soft decorated or a fairly stiff dynamic part, the "outside" is designated as a fairly stiff dynamic group. I usually double or triple the numbers that go with the single sided main body of the dynamic cloth.
Works fairly well. 

Then again, the new normal mapping feature of Poser Pro might do the trick better than displacement does. Haven't tested it yet.

@svdl: Normal-maps can't generate "thickness". It's nothing more than a better bump. Displacement-maps are still required for some reasons.

A "soft-decorated" rim like SVDL said, is IMO the best solution, it follows the dynamic part. I used it with my freebie canvas chair. Be sure that the number of polygons of the rim is the same as the dynamic cloth, or you will get jagged edges.

Bopper.

Phil, you mentioned it so I got to thinking about displacement maps and thought they would be perfect for things like patch pockets, bunched cloth, and other low relief detail that can't be obtained (well) with dynamic cloth. That is something to think consider! I have not tried displacement maps yet to make a cuff. As I remember, though, hard-edged displacement maps tend to look a little jagged unless the resolution is very high...

I made a pair of test objects - a cylinder with some ridges and a hollow tube with the cuff area. I made the cuff a soft decorated group. The top looks better than the bottom part (which ideally would not be so droopy) but as a proof of concept it does indeed APPEAR that this is a thick piece of something, or at least that the cuff is supporting it. And as we all know, it doesn't matter that it isn't really what's going on as long as it looks like it is. :biggrin:

Now maybe we'll have to test this theory on a more compelling object...

Here's a different idea. This time I made a sleeve and "cheated" by having the edge of the sleeve go all the way through the wrist. I tried it as a soft decorated group but it didn't work because it was colliding with the figure. I put it in the choreographed group for this example, but obviously that would not be appropriate if it were actually moving from this spot. The constrained group seems like a better idea. But at least it's starting to look like cloth with actual thickness.

Now we are getting somewhere. By putting the thick part on the outside instead of the inside, we get this cuff, and don't have to worry about it colliding with the body. It's still floating a little, but it seems more natural regardless. The cuff is in the soft decorated group, but the INSIDE of the cuff, which you can't see, is in the dynamic group.