I'm delving into creating clothing for the first time. I was wondering who should I model for?

Dork
P4 people
Posette
James/Jessi
Simon/Sydney
V3/M3
V4
Apollo Max
David/Stephanie
Aiko (really not interested in this character)

I think the most used characters are still V3/M3. But I may be wrong.

V4, Sydney or Simon by a huge margin, for the great majority of items you won't have to do any JCMs.  For any of the DAZ Gen 3 or the older EF figures, you will have to do JCM (joint controlled morphs) by hand for things like moving the Collars up/down - the whole breast deforms as the collar is moved up and down, and you have to build that morph into your clothing item by hand, which is a real pain.  For V4 or the Sydney/Simon figures, you can take advantage of the magnets built into the figures to do this for you.  Whatever other caveats or gripes about icky scary technology anybody wants to complain about, it's just a lot less work to model and rig clothes for the newer figures.

Don't forget Miki2, who is more populair then sydney or jessi.
I'm afraid that V4 still needs some JCM morphs especially for the elbow and knee area's, the magnets are not sufficient enough to avoid poke-through in that area's. I myself use "morphing clothes" from D3Dimension, which is an excellent program to transfer all kind of morphs( so also JCM-morphs) from any model to a clothing object, and it's superfast.

my €0.02

Bopper.

pjz99, that's interesting.  because V4 has like twice as many JCMs as V3, iirc, in addition to her magnets.  but your experience is that just working with the magnets suffices?

Coming from having modeled and rigged several clothing items for a variety of figures, yeah I'd say one of the magnet-oriented ones.  In my opinion copying JCMs with automation like Bopper is discussing does not leave you with a quality I'd be pleased to pay money for, I feel they really must be done by hand.  Not saying that ALL clothing items for those magnet-oriented figures wouldn't require JCMs, just the great majority of them.  The areas that require the most JCM work for the other figures were the collars and the buttocks - for V4, none at all for the figures I've done.

*In my opinion copying JCMs with automation like Bopper is discussing does not leave you with a quality I'd be pleased to pay money for

*I agree on some programs like morph magic and wardrobewizard, which makes some terrible distorted morphs, but I wouldn't recommend this program if I didn't like the results it makes. It makes rather good morphs for the most parts, only the more heavy morphs like bodybuilder are not so good, but I finish that morphs in hexagon, and it saves me a lot of time. I understand by your remark that you don't have the program yourself. Some kind of clothings  require another approach for making morphs, for things like shirts and blouses I rather use the magnets sets instead of the external programs. If you have a good solution for making JCM's by hand, please tell me because I'm still in the dark how to make those.

best regards,

Bopper.

I hope you don't mind me Site mailing some of you. This is all very interesting. I've created environments for Poser but never clothing. And my experience to date has been 1/3 modeling and 2/3 rigging for Poser.

It sounds like clothing is an order of magnitude more difficult that creating environments.

Quote - (re: Dimension3D's Morphing Clothes)*...*I wouldn't recommend this program if I didn't like the results it makes. It makes rather good morphs for the most parts, only the more heavy morphs like bodybuilder are not so good, but I finish that morphs in hexagon, and it saves me a lot of time. I understand by your remark that you don't have the program yourself.

Yeah I have not tried that particular clothing converter, but I'll take your word for it that it does a good job there, Rolf does some very very useful Poser utilities.

Quote - If you have a good solution for making JCM's by hand, please tell me because I'm still in the dark how to make those.

The cheapest and simplest way is to do it all in Poser with magnets - basically dial each of the bodypart JCMs to 1 manually, and fit the clothing around that morph left and right sides separately, spawn morph targets for these, and copy the JCM dial configurations from the target figure by hand.  If the clothing JCM internal names are all the same as the figure's JCM internal names, then they should "superconform" to the conform target.  Huge care has to be taken to make all the internal names match exactly, and is best done with some kind of Poser CR2 editor like maybe Rolf's here.  It is very easy to screw up and very hard to diagnose.  Making use of the magnet type tech is wayyyyyyyyyyyy easier.

Oops, I meant to say:  There is an expensive and powerful option very near on the horizon, but I probably shouldn't give any details about it just now.  Suffice to say - wouldn't it be great if you could do all this crap right in your modeler and have it write out a final CR2?

Quote - It sounds like clothing is an order of magnitude more difficult that creating environments.

Yes, by a huge margin, people greatly underestimate the work required to model and rig conforming clothing.

Making use of the magnet type tech is wayyyyyyyyyyyy easier.

As long as it's working, I made a tight fitting sweater for V4 but I couldn't manage to avoid the poking in the elbows, so I had to made a JCM-morph there. Rolf's "Morphing Clothes" does make superconforming clothes, which is a big plus. I have his Cr2-editor, but I have to get used to it, so  I'm still using the free Cr2-editor.

Bopper.

I've been using Wordpad to edit CR2s. Is there a better freebie?

Maybe, but Rolf's CR2 editor is cheap and imo well worth the few bucks for its huge value.  E.g., it splits up morph targets from your modeler from a one-piece OBJ into Poserized groups of deltas, an enormous pain in the ass without some tool like this.

it splits up morph targets from your modeler from a one-piece OBJ into Poserized groups of deltas

It can really do that? I hope it comes with decent help files.

Try the demo, look at the bottom of the product page:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=62322&vendor=288865

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

I agree with pjz99's recommendation of the Dimension3D editor - it's what I use now - but if you want free, John Stallings' CR2 Editor is at the link.

Attached Link: http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_ide/komodo_edit.mhtml

Try Active States Komodo Edit. Which is fast, comfortable, opens 24 different posefiles at one time (or more, never tried), edits crossover them, runs perfect under XPPx64...

...and it is free.

I use the free CR2Builder by kim99 to edit my Poser files. (think I'd be lost without it)

bandolin, I have a clothing creation tutorial (modeling to rigging) I did up a while back...haven't had a chance to update it yet to reflect better work flow, but could send you links to it if you'd like to take a look. (was a specific step by step thing I did for the crew working on the 3dSC Sara projects) If it's something that might be helpful....might finally get off my butt and get it redone. ^_~

@ Realmling
Sending sitemail.

wouldn't it be easier to make dynamic clothing? then you don't need to worry about cr2builders or jmc or any of that stuff.

Thing is...not everyone can, or wants to, use dynamic clothing. Conforming clothing can be used in both Poser and D|S, while dynamic can only be used by those who have P5 on up.

A lot of the time, for items that don't have all the morphs I need, and I don't really feel like making the morphs, I'll use dynamic for one shot use. I've also released dynamic and conforming versions of some of my freebie clothes...just depends on what grabs me when I'm in the mood to make things.

Dynamics look really great, but require a lot of computing power and significant trial and error sometimes.  Also, for very snug fitting items e.g. a swimsuit or the like, it may not be practical to do dynamics at all, sometimes conforming clothing just makes good sense.

i dunno. i've only had problems calculating dynamics when i did something (very) wrong.  and i've only got a dual core and 3 gigs of RAM.  i haven't had snug items be a problem, but i guess i could see the complaint.  imho, it's more important that i don't have to go through a whole lot of rigamarole just to use my morphs.

personally, the only problem i've encountered so far with dynamic clothes is that all but a select few  people have done little more than slap a mesh together and call it done.  even the most basic conforming clothes seem to be made from tons of input from a multitude of knowledgeable people, and years of innovation.  but since that time of experimentation and new ideas, people mostly just do the same thing that was already done, and you don't see many innovators when it comes to dynamic clothes.  so there's a few select products i could buy, a few outfits, and that's it for anything decent. 

i just use conforming clothes,  but i have to work at using dynamic ones.  not because dynamics is harder, but because most dynamic clothes are the equivalent of trying to use conforming clothes without JCM, body handles, super-conforming, or any morphs at all.

This is just my early morning opinion, but I'd venture to say that some might shy away from detailed dynamic clothing because it does take a lot more thought as to how to set things up in regards to what would end up needing to be Choreographed, soft decorated, rigid decorated and the like. In this regard, conforming ends up being a tad easier.

I'm not saying dynamic clothing shouldn't have the same care taken as with conforming items...just noting that in my experiments lately it does take some thought and planning to get things to work right. (and I'm still trying to figure it all out...)

maybe you're right. i haven't made any clothes, so i really wouldn't know.  but i've never seen a dynamic clothes development thread go 1/10 the time of a conforming clothing development thread.  and that's with most conforming clothing threads i've followed being one piece, and most dynamic clothing threads i've followed being at least 3 different pieces.

it's an unfamiliar process, but i think a "tad easier" isn't necessarily accurate when it comes to having to deal with JCM, faux wrinkles and dynamics, etc.  i mean, i can't say how many threads i've seen just about how to make a skirt work. 
 

Tad easier in that conforming is worked on by more people....so larger pool to go off of I guess. Variables are more "known" so to speak than those involving dynamic clothing.

I use multiple ghost bones parented to the hip in setting up conforming skirts....just takes some trial and error when first learning to figure out how many are needed to get the right effect going.

In the end, I think it just comes down to what people feel more comfortable with...regardless of ease of setup and/or use. I like dynamic clothing....cept when I try to take a short cut on a quick pair of pants for a one shot render and can't pose my figure too much. (but that's on my end and not Poser's) 

i definitely agree. i think we're basically saying the same thing, but i'm kind of bemoaning it while you're more accepting (and therefore probably wiser).  more people, larger pool, greater comfort... exactly.  it's not about effort, it's about trying something new. if people behaved the same about conforming clothes, we'd still be at  P3 figure quality in general and PPP level at the outside.  even when i started and V2 was already out, there was miles more experimentation and exploration than there is now. 

i think eventually dynamic clothes will be the way to go, but instead it taking the about 2 or 3 years it took to get to really good conforming clothes, it will take about 12.  and many, many, many fewer people will know how to create them. 

but because i think that, i also think about the choice between conforming and dynamic differently, perhaps.  conforming is OK if you want to play it safe, risk anonymity and stay in the middle of the pack.  dynamic is good if you want to create something for which there is an audience and need, but few providers, and if you want to risk unpopularity (for now)  in an attempt to become very popular and a respected innovator.  i say, why not risk it, and you seem to be saying why bother risking it.    i think both make sense, in a way. 

i will say this, though.  personally, i watched a very low quality dynamic rise to the top of rendo popularity charts for a long time.  i don't say low quality as a put down, but to mean low featured.  it had no edges on any piece, fit one figure, had no fitting seams, had no decorations, no details and no uv maps.  it still looked and worked well enough to make customers exceedingly happy.  i don't think i've seen the same reaction to conforming clothes with so few features.

Dunno, tomorrow I'll take a break and try a V4 dynamic dress freebie and see how it does.  Really a decent dynamic clothing model takes a lot less time to build than a conforming one of similar type, because of all the crap you have to do by hand (posing handles for skirts etc).  Dynamics just look sooooo much better if to take the time and have a bit of good luck.  You can't get that kind of natural-looking fold with bones.

pjz99 - question, if it's not completely out of place:  do you do all of your edges at once or one edge at a time?  and how do you do it?  i've been playing just a tad in Blender and would like to try my hand at some ideas i have for pictures (my own use,that is), and i'm just wondering how certain elements are constructed.

In the case of a lot of clothes I've modeled, what I do is import a zeroed Poser figure, and then start a shell of polygons for the clothing items with something like a cylinder with no caps, and then apply a shrinkwrap deformer to make the points adhere to the underlying Poser figure.  This is the general block shape of the model.  Then I smooth the mesh with the smooth brush and relax any really distorted polygons and get it looking even.  Then for things like trims, I select loops of polygons and extrude / bevel them to get the appearance of a raised trim, example here:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3223853

Helps a lot to work with symmetry, if your model is actually symmetrical.

I redirect you to this thread, and if you have any questions about how I'm modeling some element let me know and I'll make a few screenshots of the process.

thanks so much!

To be honest I never gave dynamic clothing a thought. Maybe you people are on to some thing here. Thing is I've never seen any detailed dynamic clothing. I'm making something with zippers and pockets with an elastic waste band. I automatically assumed it had to be conforming.

The other question I had, how is dynamic cloth applied to a specific figure. People generally want to load their figure, load their clothes and props and click "Conform to". Can you set up dynamic clothing to slap on to a specific figure?

Quote - Thing is I've never seen any detailed dynamic clothing.

 
Well, now you have!

Quote - I'm making something with zippers and pockets with an elastic waste band. I automatically assumed it had to be conforming.

For something tight-fitting like a jumpsuit, yeah imo it makes all kinds of sense just to rig it the same as the character it's designed for.  However for anything baggy, it will ALWAYS look better if it's at least partially dynamic.  Snug bits like your hypothetical waistband can be either constrained, or rigged as conforming, and the baggy bits attached to it could be dynamic (this is known as "hybrid" dynamic/conforming clothing).

Quote - The other question I had, how is dynamic cloth applied to a specific figure. People generally want to load their figure, load their clothes and props and click "Conform to". Can you set up dynamic clothing to slap on to a specific figure?

If you have enough polys to work with, pretty much any dynamic clothing item can be fitted to pretty much any character with a little fussing.  Basically, load the figure at zero pose, and set up a cloth simulation to run for 30 or 60 frames; at frame 1, the character is at the default morph/scale/whatever.  At the final frame, dial all your morphs up.  When you calculate the simulation, the character wil gradually morph from the default shape, to the target shape, and the clothing item will stretch or sag to fit.  There are various tricks to make this work better like scaling your character down at frame 1, or making them flatter or whatever, to fit into the dynamic clothing at the start of the simulation. See Phil Cooke's many tutorials on this.
www.philc.net

That looks really great. Funny, I didn't describe exactly what I was doing and you pretty much guessed it. I'm making a somewhat snug fitting coveralls.

Your tutorial has a plain white dress, I take it you can UV map any kind of texture just like conforming clothing?

Yeah and in fact the UVmap is further down in the thread (after the modeling was finished).  Shown with a checkerboard shader but any bitmap could be stuck on there.

I've done a number of Max's cloth simulation tutorials. As always, if you let the sim run too long, everything starts looking out of whack. However, the number parameters was staggering. But it came with a lot of presets. What's it like in Poser?

In your tutorial it looks like thick cotton or wool like material. Can you make it look like silk with lots of folds and can you make pleats (oh, I guess that would have to  be modeled)?

I like the idea of making a hybrid. That sounds really interesting.

It's not terribly fair to compare Poser's cloth simulation to Max - even taken by itself the cloth room is very very painful to work with and I found a big ugly new big (see the end of the thread).  There are no presets.  Everything is trial and error, heavy on the "error".  You can have a lot of folds, but in this example it's a fairly snug dress and gravity naturally pulls the cloth down, so there aren't tons of folds going on, mainly due to the cut of the dress and the pose. 

Frankly this was such an irritating exercise, with the new bug, that I'll be avoiding the cloth room for a while :/  This was supposed to be a fun little project and a useful demonstration, not a prolonged tooth-gnashing angst fest.

Oops, important bit of trivia: if you want a lot of folds, you must have a lot of polys to work with. Personally I think 15k-20k polys is a good budget for a major clothing item that is intended to be dynamic.

Quote - Frankly this was such an irritating exercise, with the new bug, that I'll be avoiding the cloth room for a while :/  This was supposed to be a fun little project and a useful demonstration, not a prolonged tooth-gnashing angst fest.

I'm glad you owned up to that. You were making it sound just a trifle but too easy. I've ventured into the cloth room on occasion, and scurried back out just as fast.

Oh, without the bug it wouldn't have been nearly as painful.  If there was a good way to roll back SR3 and go back to SR2 I'd do it.  Still wouldn't compare to Max or Cinema's dynamics though (and it shouldn't, considering the price).

pjz - have you noticed if there's a difference between a typical quad mesh and one that's more "irregular" in the cloth room? Was a site I came across a while back that had some demo shots of a quad mesh, and I guess what you'd call "messy" stating an irregular mesh "grid" worked better.

I tried some experiments on a small scale, but not enough to say for sure either way. Just wondering if anyone else had noticed anything like that mesh wise.

I think all the irregular mesh approach is really good for is making Poser's usual seemingly inevitable render flaws appear as different inevitable render flaws.  I have tried the chaotic mesh approach with an export from 3ds Max in the past, and it still looked wrong, it just looked a different kind of wrong.

Figured as much.

Working on a wedding dress project for a friend...thought I'd experiment with dynamic on the skirt and sash thing she's going to have, but I think I'll have to make an under skirt part to keep the fullness there but still allow for movement...and figure out how to keep all the friggen gathers I have to model in.

i've always thought that if you make sure to model your folds all outward, you could try them as a morph.  might create problems in some poses, but do the trick in most.  depending on where you're talking about, of course. 

edited to add: i thought of this because i've actually found it effective to use some morphs after the sim, as well as before.

Thing is, with the specific style she's going to have...the skirt part is all these gathered bunches from hip to floor. So there's a large amount I have to model in that isn't just from a body moving around.

So if I make it dynamic, they need to stay in place while the skirt moves and not drape out like can happen on occasion if you don't get your settings right.

mmm.  sounds like you need to plan carefully no matter what.