I think I'm following the steps OK, and I think the items I'm working with meet the criteria for doable clothes (but not entirely sure there), but my clothes break apart as soon as the simulation starts. I'm careful to make sure that I'm checking the "welding" options on both the export and import.

The attached image shows you what I get. This simulation was done using all default settings and no constrained or other groups.

So any advice?

Welding doesn't always work because sometimes the 2 parts of the clothing don't have vertisies close enough together to weld. I believe what you need to do is use the constrain group on the vertisies on either side of each seam that is coming apart.

generally, cloth room is a physics simulator, so you do have to do with your virtual clothes the same thing as you do with real clothes. In this case: if nothing holds them together, they will be torn apart by gravity. Holding togeter as: in the mesh, not by simply chaining them in a parent/child relationship. Think of a mesh as a construction of little balls connected by little springs.

Then they will follow natural barriers, like the belt is blocked by Vickys hips. or you can staple a piece of cloth into her body, thats a constraint group. Like in real girls are using double sided tape to keep dress straps in place on their shouldres.

(tutorial will be out by end of June, I hope :) )

In this case you must select groups. Belt, rings and part covering pubic between thighs (sorry - I do not know the name) should be selected as constrained group. Moreover you must select as constrained group 1 line of verticles on the top of red/brown cloth which covering front (I do not know this name also). Anyway it is still possible that belt's rings will be deformed and do not fit to the rest.

You can have even better effect if you treat this cloth as hybrid. Select mentioned parts (belt rings etc) as choreographed and bottom of loincloth as default dynamic (except one line of verticles on the top, which should be choreographed)

I did this exercise for quite some time, hoping to take advantage of my 'vast' library of conforming clothing and making it all magically fit properly, finally. To be honest, results have been meh. In the end, I've found it quicker to model things from scratch than trying to get conforming-designed mesh to behave correctly when simmed.

I haven't entirely given up on the idea, mind you. There is still retopology...

Well, I got everthing to stay together by using constraining groups, but I had hoped and assumed that welding would have done that.

I think I'm going with Robyn's approach and just abandon these efforts unless a better conversion technique comes along.

why do you give up so easily?

as far as I can see (so please correct me where I go wrong) you've got three meshes, or sub-meshes in one large super-mesh, and they are not connected. Right?

The belt (sub)object will rest on Vickys hips in the sim. The black thing is - in real life - attached to the belt, but it's not attached from a mesh point of view. And when the belt moves and deforms, the black thing should follow.

Now when you put both the belt and the black thing in one sim, there is no way to do that because the black thing is not a decoration of the belt (but cloth by itself), and you can only constraint vertices of a piece of cloth to an figure which is not in that sim. So, the black thing should be constrained to the belt, but they should be in different sims. The same story holds for attaching the red thing to the belt. The black and the red thing are not stiched together, and so they can be in the same (second) sim. Check self-collission in that case.

The belt-sim should be created first, then you create the black & red sim. Then you run the sims in that order, as the movements of the belt is leading. Or, the menu: Animation > Recalculate Dynamics will run them in the order they are created.

Does this work?

Quote - why do you give up so easily?

Thanks for the encouragement, aRtBee, but I guess it comes down to how much time I want to spend on this hobby of mine. I started this in hopes of taking certain conformed clothing items that I felt would benefit from the natural flow of dynamics and convert them sort of as a batch process. My experience with this and other items leads me to believe that that's not a practical approach.

If I ever have a specific need to make a conforming to dynamic conversion, I'll keep your advice in mind.

While I've got you here (and RobynsVeil, presumably), I want to make sure that you two know each other. I commented on your "Missing Manuals" elsewhere, and RobynsVeil has done a tutorial on working in the Cloth Room, which I think is the best one out there. The world needs more good technical writers.

hi ElZagna,

rest assured: RV and I are aware of each other. Especially since RV started the great Dynamic Cloth for Dummies thread and I made it grow out of hand :) .

At the moment I'm involved in sorting out de details of Poser Render Passes (as in: when using IDL, raytracing and Alt_Diffuse as in EZSkin and MatMatic), my next step will be to turn the "Dummies" thread into a decent tut. I promised RV to do so a year ago, but I got sidetracked a bit. I aim for (end of) June for both topics. Might be later, as I want to make a serious contribution into the Vue Digital Environment Competition as well.
I'll deal with this turning conforming into dynamics too of course.

Which particular outfits did do have in mind? (when they're in my Lib as well, I can take them for tests and examples).

See ya

Linkto thread: Dynamic cloth - the cloth room For Compleat Dummies

Thanks for the offer. When I get a chance I'll select a couple of items a little more judiciously for your help.

I'm not speaking out of great experience or infinite wisdom, but from my really limited experience with trying to convert conforming to dynamic, then finally making dynamic cloth and simming that... cloth mesh design does play a major role in how an item is going to sim, particularly in Poser's cloth room, which has limitations compared to other sim-systems out there. This is from what I've read, my only 'experience' with another cloth simulator is Blender's, which has its own quirks.

For example: here I tried to sim an essentially magnet-driven prop dress... the mesh simply failed, Poser froze, it wasn't going to happen:

So, I ripped off all mesh under the empire waistline in Blender, re-did a very simple, quad-based mesh, UV-mapped, then imported into Poser. Made the bodice all one constrained group - it had always fit quite well, so I wasn't going to mess with it - except for the little bows which I made decorative, and the rest simmed really fast. Materials by KobaltKween.