Quote - A little away from the topic again (sorry): If you're interested in rigging skirts to do interesting things, probably a lot of that is better to do by hand.  I know this is something that SSAfam1 is interested in though.  You're welcome to look at how any of my freebie skirts are rigged for ideas, I've done some fairly nifty things with skirts (tooting my own horn a bit).

Toot toot!

Hmm let me load up V4 and one of your items to see these "interesting" things. lol

Quote - To get back on the tool topic, I have seen no-one mentioning quick-conform, It's from the same author as autogroup editor, and works very fast. I haven't used it for other models, but for V4 it works very good. It's an auto-rigging tool that works outside poser.

This is my workflow for making conforming clothes for V4:

1. Export a zeroed obj-modelfile from Poser.
2. Import in Hexagon (scaled up a 100 times).
3. Model your clothing around the model
4. Export your clothing-obj (scaled down a 100 times)
5. Load in Autogroup-editor to make the grouping (you can delete the groups you don't want)
6. Load in quick-conform to make a cr2 file.
7. Use 3Ddimension's morphing clothes to import the morphs and JCM's you want.

IMHO this is the easiest and fastest way (besides the texturing, but that's another story) to make a fully rigged and conforming piece of clothing.
But it has it's limitations:
It works only for pants and shirts, dresses,skirts, shoes need more work.
Morphs are not always perfect, some rimples and peek-troughs will show up.

Just my €.002

best regards,

Bopper.

Sorry to interupt, but I'm interested in trying to make my own clothing as well and I found your list helpful and I had a question...or two. lol

So you're saying that, with 3Ddimension's morphing clothes, I can get peek-throughs, but can I fix or adjust them in Poser to remove the peek-throughs?

There are a couple of ways to fix poke thru in poser.
 
Poser 7 introduced the Morph tool which can be used to fix poke thru in some cases. Unfortunately the Poser 7 moorph tool only works on one group at a time so using it near group edges can give some bad results. This was "fixed" in Poser 8. When using the morph tool use VERY low strength setting, much lower than the default setting the tool starts with. You can spawn a correcting morph in the figure with this tool.

in some cases you can use smal scale adjustments to the group to fix poke thru, at least from the camera;s point of view.

Another fix for poke thru IN Poser are the magnets. They are a really valuable tool that takes a bit of practice to learn. These have the advantage of being able to operatae across group lines in Poser 7 as well as Poser 8, You select a group to start the load the magnet to then in the properties pop-up you can add other groups for the magnet to affect. Magents can be saved in the prop folder for and loaded into other scenes if needed. These can also be used to create a morph.

Naturally this is just a sketch of the available tools, you should read the manual to learn to operate them to the best effect.

Thanks for the help, letterworks. I'm currently using Poser 6 and somewhere ( I can't remember just where) I got the idea that I had to group the bones from V4 with my dress, but bopperthijs didn't mention this in any of his seven steps. Is this not a necessary step for clothes making?

If I understand you then, yes it;s necessary to injet V4's rigging into the clothing.

In most of the discussions above this is being done outside of Poser in one of numerous "3rd party" applications. It can be done in poser using the Setup room (and there are numerous sources for the procedure to do it that way, including the Poser manual if I'm not mistaken). The 3rd party apps are a bit more efficient, since you can automatically strip out unneeded bones and morphs making a lighter and more efficient cr2 file.

Remember if you are making clothing to distibute (either freestuff or commercially) you can just inject V4's rig including morphs etc, you need to use the developement rig.

Honestly if you are planning to make more than a very few clothing items you should read thru the discussions and look up the various apps discussed then go to the marketplace and look them over. Doing all of your conforming work IN Poser alone is a very tedious operation.

Quote - Remember if you are making clothing to distibute (either freestuff or commercially) you can just inject V4's rig including morphs etc, you need to use the developement rig.

The Development Rig? Is that the development tool by DAZ?
http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/-/figure-setup-tools?item=8115&_m=d

*Thanks for the help, letterworks. I'm currently using Poser 6 and somewhere ( I can't remember just where) I got the idea that I had to group the bones from V4 with my dress, but bopperthijs didn't mention this in any of his seven steps. Is this not a necessary step for clothes making?

*I mentioned that in step 6. I use Quickconform to make the cr2 file. with this little utility you can inject just the bones you need. which is faster then the setup-room because you don't have to delete the unneccesary bones. You can also add "ghost " bones like the neck bone which you will need for strapless tops or bikini tops.

best regards,

Bopper.

*Ok let's take a model like G4. You'd have to inject her morphs into V4(in Poser) to model around her. There's no Geo obj for her.

I don't use the original obj-files. I export the obj from poser after unchecking the IK settings and zeroing the model with the joint editor. Around that obj-file I model my clothes.

Bopper.

The Development Rig? Is that the development tool by DAZ?

No I'm speaking of the file "V4 Dev Foundation" found in the same folder as V4.

They apps you;ve pointed to are a good example of the 3rd party apps I spoke of but they only work in DAZ studio and are useless if you only have poser.

Quote - *Thanks for the help, letterworks. I'm currently using Poser 6 and somewhere ( I can't remember just where) I got the idea that I had to group the bones from V4 with my dress, but bopperthijs didn't mention this in any of his seven steps. Is this not a necessary step for clothes making?

*I mentioned that in step 6. I use Quickconform to make the cr2 file. with this little utility you can inject just the bones you need. which is faster then the setup-room because you don't have to delete the unneccesary bones. You can also add "ghost " bones like the neck bone which you will need for strapless tops or bikini tops.

best regards,

Bopper.

Well then, there's my trouble. lol There are still some things that I just don't understand yet. Terminology mostly.

So, in Step 5 I make the maps for the dress and then in Step 6 I add the bones and make the cr2 file. And I have Step 7 down to a tee. So Poser isn't really needed for grouping. I like that!!!

So I'm guessing that you import the obj into Autogroup-editor, make your groups and then export out the obj. Then import it into Quickconform to add the bones and make the cr2 and vuala...for the most part. HA! And then use Morphing Clothes to inject the wanted morphs. Cool!

Oh, does Quickconform make the cr2 file or do you need one that it can edit?

One of the best tools I have found to use for group editing is called Pegasus Modeler.  It lets you select the only the groups you want, you can even rename them from with in the program. It is not the best modeler but it is a handy tool to have if you use AGE and QC (Quick conform).

I just want to thank all of you guys for helping me out! This has been the most informative thread yet!

Hey, I know that this may sound silly, but does AGE and QuickConform work with Vista?

*Hey, I know that this may sound silly, but does AGE and QuickConform work with Vista?

*Yep. I use vista 64 and I don't any problems.

regards.

Bopper.

Thanks, Bopper. That's just what I have!

John