Hi,

I'm only a beginner at Poser, but one of my pet peeves about a lot of conforming clothing items in the market place is the fact that many consist of multiple, separate meshes.  For example, I bought an outfit that includes a tank-top.  It has edging which is completely separate from the rest of the mesh.

Now, when I want to use the Poser Morph tool, to say, fix a poke-thru, I often find that tools like Push, Pull, and Smooth will cause this edging to shear away from the rest of the mesh - which is so annoying!  I know I have the Tighten, Loosen & Sag tools, which are a major improvement, but sometimes I need to use Pull or Smooth.

Why to content creators feel it necessary to include separate meshes in clothing items?  Can't they join them together?  It would make morphing them so much easier.

Without trying to be smart the best answer may be for you to try and create a similar model and see the problems incurred.

Consider a small square of cloth with an edge seam. You could make this by:-

1. Extrude the edge of the plane to create the seam. Simple for one edge of a small plane, very complicated for the pleated hem of a skirt. However it would be a single mesh.

2. make a simple plane and edge it with a small cylinder. Many 3D modeling applications include tools to automatically extrude shapes along a path. Here the edge of the plane could be made into a path.

I'm sure that other factors are relevant, just my two cents.

A lot of the modelers are use to making cloths before we had Poser Pro 14 tools.
or what ever version of Poser where talking about.

A lot of people might not have Poser Pro 14 not even content creaters.

Some adapt to new tech faster then others.

Hi,

in order to fix poke-throughs, try to use magnets instead of the morph tool. My impression is that magnets allow an easier adjustment, because I had lots of problems with the morph tool (I heard it got better in P10 / 2014, but I'm still on 2012).

Magnets would affect all mesh parts (additional settings might be needed if more than 1 body part should be covered).

Best regards,

   Michael

Thanks Michael - I never thought of that.  I never really found a use for magnets, but I'll give that a try.

One reason modellers may choose to separate part of a mesh from the main geometry is to ensure that there are hard edges where they want them.  Poser tends to smooth over things like creases and seams that may have been defined in the geometry as a "hard edge" in the modelling application, unless it detects that the edges are borders of separate elements.  Then it will crease them as expected.  Crease angles can be adjusted manually in Poser of course, but leaving this up to the user isn't always a good idea as a modeller.  You want to be sure the object is going to look as you intended it to look as soon as it's loaded.  First impressions are important.  Detaching some geometry, by unwelding or splitting the verts that connect it's border with that of the main object, is an easy way to make this happen.  The other option is adding support loops, or chamfering the border edges, which adds more geometry, and many modellers for poser use modelling packages that may not support the necessary features to make this an easy, or even possible, task.

...and just to agree and add what Maxx said, sometimes adding that separate element cuts down on poly count so the modeler didn't have to add supporting loops to achieve that look. Lower poly counts help the end user.

For me, since I have modeled tank tops, I've added that seam and stiches with a combination of normal and displacement maps instead of modeling them in...looks just as good without the added polys!

A lot of those separated edges are also due to how the item was grouped when they rigged it to conform.

It very often depends on the structure of the item. Some things are easier to make as a separate mesh peice , and some are easier as built in.  When building a model you have to balance ease-of-use, flexibility, polygon count, polygon distrubtion, ease of mapping .. and a host of other issues.

also most programs dont like more than 2 planes of mesh intersecting .. which is to say in english .. a skirt is fine, a skirt with a ruffle on the end is fine .. but that same ruffle 4 inches up the hem on the main part of the skirt and poser will complain and do awful things.  So .. we make the ruffle as separate mesh and hope that it stays where we put it.

As for fixing poke issues .. I always go to magnets first (which should surprise nobody) The very even distortion fields tend to be easier on most mesh, preusming of course that your underlying fabric and overlying parts have the same general poly size and distribution.

These days the morph brush in the latest version is very helpful .. there are a couple little things I wouldnt mind seeing added .. but in general its excellent for small poke issues and refitting. I've been messing with it a lot recently in my current mad project to fix Jessi 1's bend issues

I use magnets to get things more or less in the right place and then the morph brush to refine as needed.

Lyrra

Thanks to everyone.  I think I get the 'picture'.  I've noticed how Poser's renderer has this tendency to smooth everything, so I understand why hard edged meshes are often made separate.  I bought a tutorial some time ago in which the author suggested an alternative.  He mentioned something called 'smoothing across material groups'.  Apparently, if you take your model into a UV editor, there's a way of specifying different crease angles for different material groups.  Has anyone tried this?