Hi there,

I've got clothes which I'm trying to convert to dynamic to get better cloth animation.
There's no problem turning a piece of clothing into an object, however more often then not seams and parts of the clothes come apart in a way where constricted grouping etc won't help either. The clothes basically just falls apart when you animate them.

Is there an easy way to permanently weld all parts of the clothing, so it becomes one piece?
The weld option that poser offers on export doesn't work.

Is there a program which does this like blender or zbrush or similar? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

Blender could do this fine, zbrush not so much.  It's probably quite a bit easier to make specific points members of constrained or possibly choreographed groups though, if you're not all that into modeling.

so you can't just export and weld or weld inside blender?
it sounds like you're saying you have to do it manually... yes, i wouldn't be able to do that I don't think, cause I don't model... is there a tool that does that automatically somehow

I've tried constrained groups, but it doesn't hold it together, not sure how choreographed works... but I assume if constrained doesn't work choreographed wouldn't either or am I wrong?

Sure you can export the model and weld stuff, but it's not an automatic process.  What you're talking about doing is learning modeling, which I encourage, but I am sure it's more work than you think it is :)

Go download Blender and go through some tutorials:
http://vimeo.com/5895637

I have had some limited sucess with the problem you are talking about by doing the following,
in poser select the object with the grouping tool, add a group that contains everything, and then "weld group". it will ask you to set a welding tolerance, you should increase this incramentally until it holds together, the big problem with this method is that the higher the welding tolerance, the more the object will begin to deform, so for somethings its no good, but this worked for me on hongyus t-shirt, which otherwise did not hold together.

It's actually a really good thing to learn to do (modeling) - not excessively difficult but tedious and time-consuming. At the end of which: you have this awesome item of clothing that you really feel is yours!

Seriously, it's one of the things I love about taking clothing mesh into Blender... you get a good sense for the mesh, you can add geometry if needed (do this sparingly) and redo the UV maps to your liking: Blender has a brilliant UV mapper, and you can sculpt in extra folds and seams and redo the material zones completely if you want to.

Much as PhilC's Wardrobe Wizard (which comes with Poser 8 and Poser Pro 2010) is an incredibly brilliant tool, sometimes there just nothing like getting vertices all over your fingers.

Haven't found anything to take the place of PhilC's Obj2Cr2, though: that's an absolute essential!

There's welding, and there's welding... If the vertices that need welding are already exactly coincident (don't worry if that means nothing - they usually will be in conforming clothing) then UVMapper will do the job - but by far the easiest method is to select the "weld identical vertices" option when you import the clothing into Poser.

I agree with what the others have said about modelling, but when you're working on a scene, the last thing you want to do is take time out to learn something new. It's worthwhile setting some time aside to do that later, though. :)

and actually, in Blender you can just remove doubles.  one step, no muss, no fuss.  two if you want to control the radius of what's considered a "double."

If the vertices are not very close you can issue weld commands until your fingers fall off with zero effect.
The method shown by EnglishBob is the way to start. If that doesnt work you need to start looking very closely at the mesh and see what has to be done. Its tedious but once you get a rythm going it is quite quick to weld vertices two at a time.  

thanks for the input

I'm going to give the weld group thing a try, sounds like it could help, thanks TetsuTora, got ask you about your lighting technique as well

hmm, not sure if I've tried to weld on import, worth a try also

was hoping I wouldn't have to mess directly with modifying polys, etc, but perhaps it gives you a lot more control

once you know you way around does it take long to do such edits? like changing geometry, uv maps, adding textures, sounds like hours of work?

Quote - once you know you way around does it take long to do such edits? like changing geometry, uv maps, adding textures, sounds like hours of work?

It can be quite quick once you're familiar with the tools. I have two thresholds, personally. The first is the maximum amount of time that I'm willing to divert from assembling a scene in Poser or Vue - it's probably around half an hour or so, although of course it varies according to mood. In that time, I can put together a simple piece of dynamic clothing and UV map it; or maybe carry out simple modifications to a pre-existing item, such as modifying the textures, making a transmap, or hacking a few bits off it. Converting conforming clothing to dynamic would fall into this category if the mesh didn't look too complex when I had it in my modeller.

The second threshold is the length of time I'm willing to devote a separate session to, and that's much more variable. If it's something that I think might be useful to others, and would be legal to redistribute when finished, then I'm likely to devote more time to getting it to a releasable state. If it's only going to be a one-off, which is standing in the way of getting a picture done, then maybe two or three hours is more realistic. There will always be a point at which I would start thinking about other ways to achieve my goal.

It's hard to say how long I took to do any given project, though, because I tend to have several ideas on the go at once; and often things are put on the back burner, then revived later, maybe even years later. I do it for fun, so I don't keep a time sheet. :)