In another thread I was told that the ruffles aren't attached.  I tried editing the soft constraint group on the top edge of the ruffles, butI can't get all of the edge or even all of the ruffles, and what I can edit, didn't make a difference.

So I decided to try and fix the problem in a modeling program, only I don't know how to model,  lol

I downloaded Wings3D and the interface seems pretty user friendly. I googled and found some video tutorials that have walked me through the interface and I've been working along.

However, I still don't know how to go about fixing the dress. Though I've gotten pretty good at turning a square into a semi rounded soccer ball ;)

Are there any tutorials that can help me get started with what I need to do to weld/stitch/glue the ruffles so that they don't break apart during a simulaton?

Is the skirt a freebie ? If so from where ?

The easiest might be to connect the upper edge of each ruffle so they stay together but let the bottom edges move freely. 

Here is a screen capture.

The skirt is from ShareCG, I'll look for the link.  It was conforming, but I converted it to dynamic following the tutorial in the tutorial section here.  However, the skirt behaved the same when it was conforming as it does now that it's dynamic. The ruffles break apart in the same manner.

Here is the link to the outfit. It has a dress and a skirt. I only want to use the skirt though.

http://www.sharecg.com/v/49610/gallery/11/Poser/Gothic-for-V4

I'm now wondering that since the ruffles seem to be floating, if the dress could have the top removed somehow and the ruffles attached to the dress underneath?  Again, I'm willing to try doing the work, I just need some serious direction on how to go about doing this.

I'm sure I can help you, but ATM my internet connection is very slow (storm or other problem). I do not know if my answers are sent

I see that ruffles top edges are not the same. Lower ruffles do not touch belt.

You must use part of dress as a "engine" which move them. If you do not like it make it transparent.

In wings select whole dress object and press ungroup.

In wings create "loop" around belt and "loop cut" deleting upper part of dress. Now you should have skirt and ruffles.

On skirt select loop of polygons on the top (belt) and add them new material.

Export mesh as an obj and import to Poser.

In cloth room edit constrained group => add "new material". Edit soft decoreated group => add ruffles.

I'll try make tutorial with picture within few hours.

There's no way that skirt will work as dynamic.I just downloaded it and tried to group it.

It's ruffles ONLY. There's no 'inner skirt' for them to attach to as a soft deco group.

Create a new prop from it, and put in an inner skirt?

It would be easier to just remake it IMO, instead of mucking around with trying to align a skirt on the inside of the ruffles (I've been fiddling with it here).

So Linda, if you want a dynamic skirt like that, I'll see if I can throw one together for ya.

I read this whole thread and weighed my options vs my skills ability and realized that I'm out of my league on fixing this dress inside a modeling program, at least at this time.

However, I did go back to the cloth room and reran a different simulation and pose with 70 frames hoping the ruffles would fall down enough that I could access the tops of each ruffle to add them to the soft constrained group.  And for the most part they did. With the help of rotating the camera and zooming, I managed to get all of the top parts of each of the ruffles selected and grouped.

Here is the result of my efforts without having to have another piece of clothing under the skirt.  This is a 20 frame simulation with the pose at frame 10.

I think it worked!!!  At least for short animations. I can see that for longer animations the ruffles would still fall down as I can see some slight downward movement with the lower ruffles.  I'm going to try this again with the dress under it. I can easily make a transmap to make the top of the dress invisible so just the skirt is left.

Thanks to everyone who replied to help me!!! :)  I'm going to continue my learning with Wings now that I have an understanding of the interface. I'll be searching out tutorials that will walk me through the steps of actually creating something rather than just manipulating a box between square and round.

I'm just trying to make what I advised and I'm not sure about results.

Anyway my connection is ok then I'll try explain what I did (including wings commands).

1. Import skirt.obj and gown 1.obj. Using object select mode (cube on the top of screen) I selected and deleted abdomen, collars and chest.

I did the same with belt and belt trims.

In object selection mode select belt and ruffles and in select menu choose "hide selected"

3.1 Using edge select mode I selcted only one horizontal edge few lines under top of skirt. Then press "l" ("L" without "shift") and you should have vertical loop under belt. Then  press "shift" + "L" what change edges selection to polygon selection (see pict). If wings choose polygons under loop do not worry press invert (ctrl shift "I").

Now you can make selected polygons "hole" (RMB in polygon mode)

On the bottom of skirt (because this was most "loose" part of mesh) I selected every second verticle edge. There is no special way just click, click, rotate, click...

Then press "L" and press delete. With my processor wings deleted them over 5 minutes.

When edges are deleted in select menu (menu bar not mouse buttons) choose "select by" => "isolated verticles" and delete them as well.

To be honest this step should be repeated, but I was too lazy to make it for tutorial.

That was easier, because that was only few.

In edge mode selected few horizontal verticles and press "L". Delete, select isolated verticles, delete.

Select horizontal edge 2-3 rows from top. Press "L", later shift + "L" and under RMG choose materials. If you click on .materials. with LMB you can choose existing materials, but with RMB you can create new. Name and attributes are not important - it is only selected for easier work in cloth room, later can be deleted. I named new material "constr".

In Poser skipping loading figure and importing obj I explain cloth room setting.

Selecting constrained group add materials constr, belt and belt trim (you did not add belt trim and you have weird wire on Victoria stomach.

Soft decorated add overskirt.

Rest is default.

Just now Poser finished simulation which was started about 2 minutes before first post of this tutorial was sent. I should delete more edges (step 3.2)

As you see Lower ruffles poke thru upper. It cannot be fixed in Poser. Simulation setting improve it a little bit but not fix all problems. Collision offset and depth should be higher, or maybe polygon vs polygon...?

What I suggest improve in wings:

Repeat step 3.2. (I thin twice, but I'm not sure)

Hide skirt and belt, show ruffles. Select them and under RMB select ungroup. Delete 2 ruffles on bottom - left only 3 upper. In lowes ruffle which left add some polygons. You can hide upper for easier work, then select verticle edges which are longer then rest (see pict) then press "G", what select all vertical edges in rows. Press "C" to add vertex on each of them and join them.

Cut skirt under lowes ruffle. Select horizontal edge, "L", shift "L" select "hole".

And what should I write first. Shortcuts and wings controls.

LMB - left mouse button.

RMB - right mouse button.

clit - wheel between mouse buttons

In wings LMB is used only to selecting items. On the top you see 4 cubes which show selecting mode - verticles, edges, polygons or object.

RMB click on screen opens different menus depending of mode. For example in tutorial I explained that in polygon mode under RMB you can find .materials.

clit is very important, because is used to move camera. One click cause rotate camera, ane click + click hold moving camera. As I remember you can either press clit and "Q" to move camera. Roll clit zoom in out.

"A" center camera on selection. Very usefull, especially if you cannot see selected edge or vertex on huge object - then press "A" and roll to zoom selection.

"Space" very important - delselect all. Press it from time to time if you do not want delete or deform something important.

That all folks. Skirt still does not works, but we know why :)

Thank you Shuy! I'm going to try that, even if it doesn't fix this particular dress, it will help me learn what to do for future items like this!

In the meantime I tried the editing constrained group fix in the cloth room, and it sort of works, but some things still break apart.

The above image shows a 30 frame animation. First done with the hip of the conforming dress clothified.  And a second simulation of the skirt after the tops of the ruffles had the soft constrained group edited.  I also adjusted collision offset, collision depth, static friction, dynamic friction, and cloth density (.0001 the lowest).

The next post shows a screen capture pointing out where the pixels separate.

Here you can see where the pixels separate. 

And the ruffles do seem to fall down a little. The whole dress and skirt is about top of the ankle length in default pose, but after simulation it drops to top of the foot, so about 3 or 4 inches.

So I guess I'll just continue to use the dress as a conformed object.

Thanks to everyone who offered input and advice :)

no help with wings cos I haven't looked at it for yrs

but I have tried a similar sort of dress (home made lol ) and got the same sort of thing Shuy was getting! anything like a pose would cause all the layers to merge poke thro' explode gosh if it could go wrong it did, not got back to that yet but did wonder if making each "ruffle" a diff cloth setting would help, inner one quite "stiff" then each layer going out a lighter cloth dont know if it would work, dont even know if one item can be different cloths but if I ever get time to test it I'll post results.

For your item I wondered if you could delete the inner dress (apart from bits u might see) then add a line of polys to attach each ruffle to whatever is left (think suspenders lol ) again I have no idea if it would work like that but should stop the falling down

Quote - Selecting constrained group add materials constr, belt and belt trim (you did not add belt trim and you have weird wire on Victoria stomach.

Acadia - weird parts on the top and bottom of skirt were not grouped correct. On the waist you can see belt trim and loop on the bottom should be deleted in wings.

Quote - no help with wings cos I haven't looked at it for yrs but I have tried a similar sort of dress (home made lol ) and got the same sort of thing Shuy was getting! anything like a pose would cause all the layers to merge poke thro' explode gosh if it could go wrong it did, not got back to that yet but did wonder if making each "ruffle" a diff cloth setting would help, inner one quite "stiff" then each layer going out a lighter cloth dont know if it would work, dont even know if one item can be different cloths but if I ever get time to test it I'll post results.

For your item I wondered if you could delete the inner dress (apart from bits u might see) then add a line of polys to attach each ruffle to whatever is left (think suspenders lol ) again I have no idea if it would work like that but should stop the falling down

I think that you choosen the worst possible model to start learn anything. I'm not sure but as I rember it has about 500 000 edges (!!!). Wings works very slow with high res models. Simulation takes hours, then if you do not obtain correct results you must fix and wait next few hours.

Separate simulations should resolve problems with poke thro but you must weld ruffle which is on the top (pict),  ungroup ruffles, and create separate simulations for skirt and 4 ruffles, selecting top edge of verticles as a constrained group.

I had similar problems with soft deco group here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2825570

Quote - I think that you choosen the worst possible model to start learn anything.

I'll say!  I figured how hard could it be. With some guidance I can fix this myself!  Then as the thread went on, I saw that I was biting off more than I could chew and realized I was way out of my league on this project.

I think I'll start by learning how to make a sword or something little, and work my way up to fixing broken things. :)

Quote - I think I'll start by learning how to make a sword or something little, and work my way up to fixing broken things. :)

Not exactly. For Poser user Wings is not only modeling software. It is very useful if you need edit model. Most people uptate Poser 7 => 8 for IDL and advanced rendering option. I still use P7, because most important tool (grouping), is still the same crap. I use Wings for grouping objects, create morphs, delete unwanted parts and of course UV mapping. Wings UV map is not very good, but due to easy selection of edges map is easy to adjust.

Due to loop and slide creating morphs like wrinkles or remove wrinkles is easier then with Zbrush. Unfortunatelly Wings have problem with symmetry.

I think I should make some experiments and create real tutorial with more pictures and less language misstakes ;). This dress inspired me.