The title says it all. How do I make a hybred dress that is top part conforming and lower part dynamic so it drapes properly?

I attempted to do just that today and it turned out to be a pile of dung. Any help would be most appreciated!

It's all in the grouping.  When you group the dress for conforming, make the skirt a single group.

Go through the conforming process as normal, adding a new bone for your skirt group.

I guess you could just call the skirt group hip, which would mean no extra bone was necessary.

Once the conforming is completed, you can add the garment to the scene, conforming it to your figure, then run a cloth simulation.  Clothify the skirt group and run a simulation as normal.

it's been a while since I made a hybrid, but I think that should do the trick.

John

Did you try defining the top half as a Constrained group?

Quote - I guess you could just call the skirt group hip, which would mean no extra bone was necessary.

It depends how you go about rigging the conforming part. The important thing is that the dynamic part shouldn't attempt to conform to anything, or else you'll get conflicting influences and it will crumple up.

When I made the Posh Dress for V3, I named the skirt group "Skirt". Since there's nothing with that name in the figure, the skirt is unaffected by conforming and is reliant only on the cloth simulation. The top part has the usual abdomen and chest groups, of course. Another example is DAZ's Morphing Fantasy Dresses - on those, the skirt is grouped as all hip. However the CR2 has had all influences from the legs removed, so again conforming with a leg pose doesn't affect it and you can clothify it. I've done this by editing the CR2 to make hybrid versions of existing conforming clothes; deleting the leg bones in the setup room might have the same effect, I'm not sure. I rarely venture in there.

By the way, if you're searching for information on this topic, the correct spelling is "hybrid". ;)

1. the conforming group is Choreographed.

That means that the verts of it follow their own (Poser) procedures according to animation.

Constrained = the verts follow the object they're constrained to in its animation

Decorated = the verts are constrained to the cloth instead and hence follow the cloth sim result

1. as I understand, the dress is a single mesh with various groupings. One kind of grouping is ment for posing/conforming/bone-driven morphing/animation, the other kind of grouping makes material zones. Although Fugazzi refers to the first kind, you also can use the second kind to define the dynamic group. And, if the skirt consists of various materials  with different dynamic properties, you can define a dynamic group for every kind of material. So a lether-and-lace dress not only can look like that, but can behave like that as well.

so: first put the entire dress into Choreographed, then pick the areas you want to have the same dynamic behaviour into the same dynamic group.

have fun.

Thanks for all the replies! I have a starting point now.

Thanks for the clarification Bob, my brain was not entirely convinced about the hip thing.  You have it right I think by naming the group Skirt, which makes perfect sense :)

aRtBee, The only problem i can see with your second method is the welding.  If a conforming skirt has more than one bone/group then the mesh wont be in opne piece, even looks like it in Poser.  Where it is unwelded, the skirt will fall apart.

The sad fact is that not all Conforming Clothes are suitable for turning into hybrids.

All that said I'm not sure whether rokket is making a dress from scratch or converting an existing conforming item.

Quote - I guess you could just call the skirt group hip, which would mean no extra bone was necessary. It depends how you go about rigging the conforming part. The important thing is that the dynamic part shouldn't attempt to conform to anything, or else you'll get conflicting influences and it will crumple up.

When I made the Posh Dress for V3, I named the skirt group "Skirt". Since there's nothing with that name in the figure, the skirt is unaffected by conforming and is reliant only on the cloth simulation. The top part has the usual abdomen and chest groups, of course.;)

So if I understand what you are saying a simple test to see if a dress can be converted to a High-Bread (snicker) is simply edit the dress's hip to skirt and check for thigh and leg bones in the Cr2?

FYI: I have to assume there is a bakery in Colorado, now making High Bread:ohmy:

@Fugazi1968: I am making the dress from scratch.

I made a couple attempts at it with minimal success. After messing with the cr2 I can see the mistakes I made and will retry it later on.

I deleted the unnecessary bones in the cr2 and it deleted the polygons with it when I brought it back in Poser. I thought I had the grouping set up right, but apparently I have to not have a hip actor in the grouping for the dress at all...