Thanks. You're explanation makes sense, will try increasing the subdivision bit by bit and see how it improves but I have no idea how to edit it or change the mesh polygon count. I didn't make it myself, I bought it from 'volacce' here on renderosity marketplace. It's supposed to have bebeen built specifically as dynamic clothing for the M4 figure in Daz Studio or Poser. That's why I joined here, just to make the purchase but then I hit the forum to say hello and ask for help when I encountered problems. I'm a karate instructor and hope to use the model and clothing on my karate website to help students learn and to catalogue the hundreds of techniques. I'm a beginner to 3D modelling but would like to get to grips with Poser as it will be handy for art as well. Is draping a good idea for this cloth? At the moment drape is set to 'off' thanks again.

I don't know the set or how it was made, maybe you can increase the subd for specific parts depending on how it were made. Meaning if each part, like the top, pants, belt etc are individual parts, then you should be able to.

Regarding drape, I personally never use it, because i Pre-fit my cloth, meaning they are designed to work with default T-Pose for the figure that i made it for. Draping for me is mostly useful if you need something to drape over something and you made it to be out of the way at the beginning of the simulation, like a cape over something or if you need some cloth to be relaxed before simulation.

But if the cloth is made to fit the default T-Pose it shouldn't be necessary. But there are several ways to relax the cloth, in Poser you can add the cloth and just simulate it while the figure is in the T-Pose, the cloth will then relax to the pose, then you export the cloth as a OBJ, at the frame you like and reimport it. Then it will have the relaxed pose and you will save time having drape it.

This is a set of cloth I made for the image below (Which is also for M4).

As you can see the cloth is already draped to fit the default pose and each piece of cloth is made so they are relaxed to the pose. Also items such as the belt and shoulders, where you have a lot of bending or deformation have higher mesh density already built into it, to avoid bending problems. So the mesh in the cloth is not uniformed evenly across the cloth set, but increased in areas that needs it and reduced where its not needed as much.

Now in the final image you cant see the belt, but you can see that the cloth folds nicely around his shoulders and around his legs. But it looks to me, that your set doesn't requires draping. But you can see that in the default pose, if the cloth is hanging on the figure as you would expect it in the real world or whether its surrounding the figure. Easiest place to see it is with the arms, if the top part of sleeves is resting on his arms and the lower part is floating beneath it, then its already relaxed. If its not you can do as i suggested above, but its not needed i think, because its a pretty tight outfit, meaning no cape etc. Also it seems to simulate fine enough, but certain parts might simply not have the mesh details required to make them fold correctly and relaxing the cloth or drape it, wont solve that.