Is there some step or steps I'm missing?

Knowledgeable help appreciated.

Hiya Band,

I must admit when I'm doing conforming clothing I tend to cheat, I don't use the PHI process because it's too easy to miss something and run into problems like the one you describe.  Generally when I'm doing conforming clothing here's how I do it:

Step 1:  Load the default figure the clothing is for in Poser in it's default pose.  It's usually best to use the default model that is "bare", meaning the one that doesn't have any morphs or anything with it.  It's not essential mind you, but it will speed up the process somewhat as it takes longer to load them.  Just be sure not to move or change the position of the default figure the clothing is for in anyway, leave it in exactly the position it was in when it was loaded.  The reason for this, you'll be using this as a reference to line up your clothing, and when you go to add bones to your cloths you'll be doing so by loading this exact same figure in the setup room, which has the effect of pulling in the bones from that figure in the exact same place they are in your current reference model.

Step 2.  Import the prop for the clothing item (in this case your boots) and then position them so they fit properly on the model in it's default Pose.

Step 3:  With the prop for the clothing selected, enter the setup room - then in the figures tab in your library click on the same base model (ie V3, V4, M3, etc) you used to load the default figure the clothing is for, this will recreate the exact bone structure of the default figure inside your current object file.

Step 4: Return to the Pose room, and save a copy of your newly created figure.  You'll probably need to change some names under properties so your figure won't show up as "Figure 1" and should it be necessary you'll might have to redo the auto grouping on the mesh slightly  for more realistic bends, but usually it does a pretty good job of this on it's own overall.

Hope that helps.

Actors in Poser have two names, the internal name - used by Poser for conforming and uniquely identifying objects, and the external name - the one you see in the menus. For conforming clothes, the internal names must exactly (including capitalization) match the internal names of the figure it should conform to. The external names don't matter at all.

The fact that your figure does not conform at all makes me think you've matched the external names, not the internal ones.

Example: the body part "Right Hand" has the internal name rHand. You can change the name "Right Hand" in your conforming item to "Right Gauntlet" or "Right Claw", but you MUST keep the internal name rHand.

The object groups should have the internal names for group names.

There's another flaw in your workflow: you should position the boots exactly around Apollo's feet with Apollo in zero pose - all rotations, translations and morphs set to 0 - BEFORE you add the bones.
One of the easiest ways to add the bones is loading the boots, switch to the Setup room and then apply the Apollo figure to the boots. Then you can strip out the bones you don't need (everything above the abdomen), remove all the morphs (save your figure to the library and use MorphManager to do that), remove unused materials (text editor or CR2Builder).

Now the boots should conform just about perfectly. You will have to adjust joint parameters on the boots to fix pokethru when Apollo bends his ankles, but the joint positions are exactly what they should be.

Important: there is a difference between default pose and zero pose. The default pose is the one the figure has when it is loaded from the library. For human figures, the default pose is often different from zero pose: the knees and ankles have been slightly bent. That'll give the inverse kinematics system hints as to how it should bend the knees and ankles when doing IK calculations.

The unboned clothing should exactly fit the figure in zero pose, not the figure in default pose. So when you load Apollo, first turn off inverse kinematics, then choose Window->Joint Editor and click the Zero FIgure button, then check the Body and Hip and set all translations and rotations to zero.
Now Apollo is guaranteed to be in zero pose.

I don't know if it really affects the model but you made a typo with the "rToes" . 
I've never made clothes for Apollomaximus, and I never used Phi builder, does this program makes bodypartgroups for the object? You can check that with the group editor in poser.

Best regards,

Bopper.

Edited: I see some others have given some valuable tips, I had some tips for fitting shoes for Victoria 4 in a thread some weeks ago. Steven is right about  the internal names, I had forgotten about that, the object groups have to be same to make it work.

Quote - Important: there is a difference between default pose and zero pose. The default pose is the one the figure has when it is loaded from the library. For human figures, the default pose is often different from zero pose: the knees and ankles have been slightly bent. That'll give the inverse kinematics system hints as to how it should bend the knees and ankles when doing IK calculations.

The unboned clothing should exactly fit the figure in zero pose, not the figure in default pose. So when you load Apollo, first turn off inverse kinematics, then choose Window->Joint Editor and click the Zero FIgure button, then check the Body and Hip and set all translations and rotations to zero.
Now Apollo is guaranteed to be in zero pose.

Man you just saved me a ton of work. Thanks for this one.

Is there a way, once in the Setup room to eliminate several bones at once? I've been trying to delete the bones but there are so many of them.

Another way to get the Apollo model in exact zero pose: don't load him from the library, but import Apollos geometry file from Runtime:Geometries (it's a Wavefront .OBJ file). The boots should fit exactly around this geometry.

Step 1: Complete
Step 2: Complete
Step 3: Done. I stripped the unnecessary bones as svdl suggested, but when I try to leave the setup room I get an error message saying that some groups are not assigned to bones.

The fact that your figure does not conform at all makes me think you've matched the exteral names, not the internal ones.

What svdl said here concerns me. How to I get at the internal names of my prop?
**

A polygon group only has one name, the internal name.
The polygon group that should match the Right Foot body part should get the internal name of Apollo's right foot bone: it is probably called "rFoot".

You can check out what the internal names are in the Setup Room: load Apollo, switch to the Setup room and confirm the dialog box that warns you that Apollo contains morphs.
Once in the Setup room, open the parameter dial palette (Object -> Properties) and switch to the second tab.
Now select a body part using the dropdown menu. Both the internal name and the external name appear in the parameter dial palette.
Best to write them down for future reference. Be exact, internal names are case sensitive!

When your list is complete you can leave the Setup room.

Now load your boots prop, go into the Group Editor palette, and check the names. You'll find some mismatches. For example, you may have called a group Right Foot while it should be rFoot according to your list.
Make a new group in the Group Editor, name it rFoot. Then click the button "Add Group" and select the group "Right Foot" from the dropdown list.
Your new "rFoot" group will now contain the same polygons that the old "Right Foot" group does.
You no longer need the group "Right Foot", so select it from the topmost dropdown in the Group Editor and click the "Delete Group" button.
Rinse and repeat until all group names exactly match the internal names on your list.

In this case, there's no need for extra body parts. So the list of groups in the grouping tool should only contain names that match Apollo internal body part names. Any other group should be deleted.
When you've done that, click the button "Show ungrouped polygons". There should be none, if there are, assign them to the correct group.

I prefer the Wireframe and Hidden Line views when working with the grouping tool.

Once this operation is finished, I advise you to save the boots as a prop. I've set up a separate runtime for this kind of intermediary objects; the finished objects (figures or props) go to another runtime.

One of the disadvantages of the Setup room is the limited Undo capability. When you make a mistake, there's often no other recourse than starting over. So - save early, save often!

Quote - @ Digger1967**

Step 1: Complete
Step 2: Complete
Step 3: Done. I stripped the unnecessary bones as svdl suggested, but when I try to leave the setup room I get an error message saying that some groups are not assigned to bones.

The fact that your figure does not conform at all makes me think you've matched the exteral names, not the internal ones.

What svdl said here concerns me. How to I get at the internal names of my prop?
**

Actually my guess is there are no groups setup at all then, just open the group editor inside the setup room, select each bone in turn that should have mesh from your clothing figure that moves with it and press "auto group" to create mesh groups for each individual bone, that should do the trick.  The group editor is the icon that looks like a dashed square with a dot in the middle.

The internal names should be auto created when you pull in the bone structure, you probably just need to assign various portions of the mesh to each of those names using the autogroup feature.. my apologies for leaving this out on the original run through, been a while since I converted anything to a conforming figure for Poser :)

There were no mismatches. I made the list as you suggested and all names matched exactly including cases & spaces.

In my version (Poser 7) it is "Show non grouped faces". I'm assuming its  the same.

You still has the typo "rhtoes" instead of "rtoes", that gives you the error message when you leave the setuproom.

Bopper.

@bopperthijs

You're right. You know, you get so close to a thing you don't even notice it. Good catch. Thanks.

Yep, it's the same.
Switch to wireframe view to better find the non grouped faces (if there are any). The "Hide other objects" button is also quite useful.

*"Is there a way to delete several bones at once..."
*Alas, not that I know of. It may be possible using Python, I'd have to experiment with that.

Something that works for me is preparing a cloting development rig. Useful when you plan to make more clothing objects.

Here's how to do that:

• begin a new empty scene;
• load your figure (Apollo in this case);
• zero the figure (inverse kinematics off, see the drill in one of my previous posts)
• switch to the Setup room;
• delete the bones you'll never use in clothing, e.g. the eyes, the penis bones.
• switch back to the Pose room and ignore the warning about polygons not belonging to a bone;
• delete the prop that now has appeared in your scene. It's probably called Apollo_SETUP or something similar.
• save the figure to your library as "Apollo Clothing Base"

You can make an "Apollo Shirt Base" the same way (start out with "Apollo Clothing Base" to save some time).

For these clothing bases, you're completely uninterested in the geometry and /or materials. To save you some disk space you can do the following:

• load a box primitive prop from the Props library;
• fire up the grouping tool, create a new group called hip and delete the group box_1;
• export the prop as Wavefront .OBJ, name it "dummy.obj", place it in the same folder as the Apollo geometry;
• Now fire up CR2Builder by kim99 (free download from 3MinutesPoser) and load your Apollo Clothing Base CR2;
• Double-click the line that starts with "figureResFile" in the treeview, and use the Select button to brows for your "dummy.obj" file;
• Do the same for the second line that starts with "figureResFile";
• Scroll down to the "figure" line (the last line in the treeview) and expand this node;
• expand the "materials" node and delete all materials;
• save your work;

Fire up MorphManager (it's here in freestuff), load the CR2 you just saved from CR2Builder, and delete all the morphs.

Back in Poser, load up the Apollo Clothing Base figure. You'll see nothing like Apollo, just the box you used for the dummy geometry. No problem.

• Switch to the Setup room, and you'll see that all Apollo bones are still there. Now delete all bones above the abdomen (leave the abdomen and hip in place), switch back to the Pose room and save the figure as "Apollo Pants Base"
• Delete this figure and reload Apollo Clothing Base.
• Switch to the Setup room and delete all bones below the hip. Leave the hip, and the bones directly attached to the hip (either rThigh/lThigh or rButtock/lButtock) in place;
• Switch back to the Pose room and save as "Apollo Shirt Base"

A lot of work, but it'll save you lots of time in the end if you're planning on making more clothing items.

Here's my problem now. I finally got the bones to work. Here is an image of the Boots properly positioned before going into the setup room to attach the Apollo's bone structure.

I zeroed the figure before going into the setup room. But once I return to the Pose room the boots are all out of position.

Is there a step I'm missing?

You should leave the hip, buttocks and thighs in the rig. The hip is the "root" of the bone hierarchy, if you remove it, Poser will try to make a new "root", messing up the positions in the process.
Another reason to leave the hip and all the rest in: scaling. Apollo uses scaling for smaller/larger characters, you'll want your boots to scale nicely along with Apollo, and for that you'll need all the intermediate bones between the hip and the boots too.

Wow you really know a lot about ApolloMax. Thanks. I was wondering whether I should delete the hips. I checked out some of Anton's clothing and he leaves all the bones in. For boots he even leaves in the fingers and all.

Hehe, I don't know all that much about Apollo at all. But I do know quite a bit about rigging conforming clothes, and these tricks apply to all figures.

I think I know what's going on.

After loading the boots prop, did you reposition them to fit Apollo in zero pose, and then immediately switch to the Setup room? That could be the reason.

After repositioning the boots, you should export them as Wavefront.OBJ again (UNcheck "As Morph Target", and CHECK "Include polygon groups". Also CHECK "Weld identical vertices" 
Then delete the boots and reimport the prop you just exported.

*After loading the boots prop, did you reposition them to fit Apollo in zero pose, and then immediately switch to the Setup room? That could be the reason.

That is what I was doing. So, I tried your way and still the boot reposition themselves.

Ah, that's it. Your clothing base figure loads in Apollos default pose, not in zero pose.
Here's how to fix that:

• load the base;
• choose WIndow->Joint Editor->Zero Figure;
• set all rotations and translations in the Body and the Hip to zero;
• choose Edit->Memorize->FIgure;
• and save back to the library.

Now the clothing base figure will work correctly, and if you apply it to the boots in the setup room, they will conform correctly.

Hmm.

Getting tricky. Here's what you can do:

• open the clothing base cr2 in a text editor;
• search for the word "initValue". You'll find quite a lot of them, and except for the scaling, they all should be zero (scaling should be 1.000).

Did you use the clothing base cr2 for the boots, or did you use Apollo's regular CR2? If you didn't use the clothing base, the editing won't do much good.

Don't just delete a .cr2, always make a backup copy! I usually rename them to .cr2.bak

I think I've got it.

The problem may have to do with IK chains. Those SHOULD NOT be present in the clothing, but they will be in Apollo!

Here's what you can do:

• load the boots figure in Poser, don't load anything else;
• fire up the Hierarchy Editor;
• see if there is an IK chains node. There probably is.
• If there is, delete all IK chain items using the Hierarchy editor;
• and save the boots back to the library, after zeroing the figure.

If this is the case, you also should remove the IK chains from your clothing base CR2s in the same way.

Thanks for all this help. Once they work I'll give you the boots as a gift.

Do you think that if I was able to get rid of the last two IK chains that this wouldn't happen?

I'm pretty sure of it.

There's a great free tool for CR2 editing (assuming you're on a PC): CR2Builder by kim99.
That tool will enable you to get rid of those last IK chain parts. It'll also enable you to remove surplus materials from the CR2, to create ERC slaving, and lots more.

You can download it from http://www.geocities.co.jp/Bookend-Ohgai/9483/tool/CR2Builder/index.html

Fire up CR2Builder, load the boots CR2 in the left pane, and scroll down until you see the second instance of the right foot actor.
Expand that node. You'll find three lines (amongst a whole lot of others):

• parent BODY:1
• inkyParent BODY:1
• nonInkyParent rShin:1

Delete the "inkyParent" and "nonInkyParent" and change the "parent" line to "parent rShin:1"

The number will probably be different in your case: make sure you use the same number throughout.

Do the same for the left foot.

Now scroll down to the "figure" node and expand it
You'll find a couple of entries "inkyChain xxx"
Keep them collapsed, select them, and hit DELETE.

Then save.

That'll get rid of the inverse kinematics.

CR2Builder is a great tool, but it lacks one major feature: it's got no Undo! So save early, save often.
The most recent version automatically creates a backup when you save.

No unfortunately it gave me the same result as my post where the IK chains in the legs were present.

I'm beginning to suspect my heirarchy now. In Apollo's bone structure the bones for the toes are there. Lots of bones lBigtoe1, lBigtoe2 and so on. I did not include these in my boots because I didn't want the boot ends to be controlled by the individual toes. His last bone before the toes is lToes and rToes. So, I figured this would be  the best place to stop.

But the end of the boots are being distorted. And I'm wondering if its because the boot bone structure is looking for the individual toes.

In your first CR2Builder screenshot, I see the line "parent BODY:1". Change that to "parent rShin:1" (for the right foot, for the left foot it should be "parent lShin:1"

About the toe bones: the boot mesh probably has polygons for rToes and lToes.

One of the rules for Poser boning is to always include one bone extra; you should keep rBigToe1, lBigToe1, and probably one of the other toes too (each foot), to prevent the end point of the rToes and lToes bones to snap to the origins of rBigToe1 and lBigToe1.

These toe bones will NOT have geometry assigned to them!

Another option would be to assign the toe polygons to the foot. Then you can leave the children of the lToes and rToes bones out.
The endpoints of lToes and rToes will probably end up in the wrong place - one of the peculiarities of the Setup room.

Another option, maybe even better: strip the bones you don't want using CR2Builder. Just keep the nodes collapsed, and delete all entries you don't need.
After you've done that, expand the figure node and delete all weld statements for bones that do not have geometry.
Also delete all addChild statements for the bones you have removed.
The advantage of this method is that CR2Builder will keep the endpoints of the bones in place, unlike Poser.

*Another option, maybe even better: strip the bones you don't want using CR2Builder. Just keep the nodes collapsed, and delete all entries you don't need.
After you've done that, expand the figure node and delete all weld statements for bones that do not have geometry.
Also delete all addChild statements for the bones you have removed.
The advantage of this method is that CR2Builder will keep the endpoints of the bones in place, unlike Poser.

I'm not sure I follow this. I'm in the process of UV unwrapping the boot now. But I don't want to lose this line of thought.

Should I start from scratch or can I use the existing figure. The bones I don't want have already been stripped.

What you said about "one bone extra" makes sense. Max does the same thing.

I'll try to make an Apollo clothing base figure for you - I have him, but I've never used him, so far.

Found the problem with the rig. Apollo has some initial translation values set on the feet - which works fine with inverse kinematics.
I stripped those out using CR2Builder, and now I have an Apollo clothing rig.

The following bones have been stripped out:

• eyes and ears;
• line of sight;
• upper and lower teeth;
• all tongue parts;
• all genital parts;
• the  xToe2 bones.

All materials have been stripped out of the CR2, so the only material names that show up on your new figure are the material names that ar present in your .OBJ file.

I haven't stripped out the morph data yet.
Apollo has an impressive amount of morphs. I don't know if you plan to incorporate morphs in the boots; if so, I can help you set them up in such a way that they automatically adjust themselves to the settings in Apollo himself (the so-called ERC slaving).
If you want to know a little bit more about ERC slaving, look up the thread "Compendium of .pz2 techniques" started by lesbentley, in this forum. A wealth of information there.

*Apollo has an impressive amount of morphs. I don't know if you plan to incorporate morphs in the boots; if so, I can help you set them up in such a way that they automatically adjust themselves to the settings in Apollo himself (the so-called ERC slaving).

Holy crap!!! I'd love that.

I've sent you a sitemail concerning the boots. I want to keep this as public as possible. I believe others can benefit from this knowledge, but I've sent you a private message.

OK, svdl. I've d/l your clothing base figure. I placed my boots on Apollo's 0ed figure then went to the setup room.

I loaded you clothing base and returned to the Pose room. Saved the boots to the library and started a new document.

I load Apollo and then the boots. But the boots are invisible. They appear in the list of objects in the scene but the boots themselves are invisible.

Any ideas?

If I don't save the boots as a new figure, you system works great. The boots conform wonderfully. I would really like to know what you did to get rid of my twisting toes problem.

The second time I created a new figure it worked. So, disregard my previous post.

The twisting toe problems had to do with initial values for rotations, and especially translations, on the feet. I fixed those using CR2Builder, and also stripped out the inverse kinematics.

You should be able to save the boots as a new figure. I don't know why that doesn't work.

It did work, my 1st post was nonsense. My error.

Now, I would like to slave Apollo's morphs to the boots. So that when Apollo's legs are muscled up, the boots will follow. That thread you mentioned in an earlier post will show me how to do this?

OK, here we go.

First, you'll have to create the morphs themselves. I assume you've already made matching boot morphs in your modeling program.

Export a morph as Wavefront.OBJ, make sure the vertex ordering is the same as in the unmorphed boots. If you use the HABWare exporter for 3DS Max, you're - well, hosed. I have to check the newer gwObj exporter, it might be better.
Make sure the mesh is split the right way before exporting.

Then load the boots, make sure they're selected, and run this Python script: www.svdlinden.nl/webposerstuff/downloads/morphfromobjP6.zip It'll load the morph in the boots.

Next, conform the boots to Apollo, and save the boots to the library.

Open the resulting .cr2 in a text editor with search/replace capability. Replace all occurrences of : with :1. Thats and <number 1>.
Save the .cr2 file.

Ran into a little glitch: the latest version of CR2Builder (02m) doesn't seem to have the ERC utility anymore.
Version 02k has it though, and is still available from the same site.

It's easiest (but quite repetitive and boring) to build the ERC code using CR2Builder 02k.

Here are the steps:

1. Load the boots CR2 in the LEFT pane;
2. On the RIGHT pane, click the tab "RightTV" and load ApolloMaximus.CR2;
3. Now click the tab "ERC" on the right pane
4. On the tab "List" in the center of your screen, choose "RightTV" as the source for your ERC code;
5. Include all "targetGeom" parameters and "Scale" parameters;
6. and click "Update". The right treeview now gets filled with a subset of Apollo's CR2.

That was the preparation
Now click the tab "Add" in the center of your screen.

1. In the center of your screen, you see a dropdown with the text "Figure 1" Edit that text and change it to "Figure"
2. In the "valueOp" pane, make sure the radiobutton is set to "valueOpDeltaAdd";
3. In the lower text area of the middle pane, make sure the text is set to "deltaAddDelta 1.00000"

Now expand the lShin actor on your boots in the left pane, and the Shin actor on Apollo in the right pane.

1. Select the text "targetGeom pDevShin" in the RIGHT pane, and click the RIGHTMOST "<-" button.
   The text in the middle text area changes to
   lShin:1
   pDevShin

Remove the ":1" after lShin.

Now expand the lShin actor on your boots in the LEFT treeview pane (the SECOND instance of the lShin actor), expand the channels node and select the "targetGeom pDevShin" channel - I assume you've named the morphs in the boots exactly the same as the morphs in Apollo.

Now click the LEFTMOST "<-" button. This will add the ERC slaving code to your boots. 

Go back to step 10), and select the next targetGeom in Apollo
Select the corresponding targetGeom in the boots.
Click the RIGHTMOST '<-" button, and remove the ":1" again;
and click the LEFTMOST "<-" button again.

Rinse and repeat for all targetGeom and xScale, yScale and zScale channels, rinse and repeat for all actors in the boots.

Tedious work, I agree. And all it does is add five lines to each channel in each actor:

    valueOpDeltaAdd
    Figure
   
   
    deltaAddDelta 1.00000

This is the actual ERC slaving code.
Actually, I think I'd better write a Python script to do this kind of work. Fully automated and all, no chance for errors like forgetting to select the correct channel in the correct actor...

The fact that the figure numbers and body part numbers are left out of the ERC slaving code has a very nice advantage: if you load the boots while a morphed Apollo figure is selected in the scene, the boots will immediately copy the morph settings to themselves! Fully automatic.

Sorry for the long winded post...

Decided to write a little utility that can add the ERC slaving code automatically.

You can download it here: www.svdlinden.nl/webposerstuff/downloads/ercaddersetup.zip

The zip file contains an .msi setup file which will install the program ERC Adder. Written in C# 2005, so you'll need .NET 2.0

Usage is extremely simple. Load your clothing figure (e.g. the boots) in the "Clothing Figure" textbox, using the Browse button (haven't implemented functionality for directly typing in the textbox yet).
The "target figure" is the figure the clothing should conform to, e.g. Apollo Maximus. You should load his .cr2 too.

The program then analyzes the list of targetGeoms in the target figure.
Next, it opens the clothing figure .CR2, reads it line by line and writes the lines to a new file.
As soon as the block of five ERC lines should be written - when it is in the process of writing a targetGeom channel that also exists in the target figure - it'll do so.
Finally, it renames the original clothing figure to .cr2.bak, and the new file will be renamed to .cr2.

No exception handling implemented, it's a quick and dirty solution (took me all of 30 minutes to write...).