I recently made a fur coat out of a simple coat by creating hair growth groups on every character body part (chest, left collar, left forearm, etc...). Works like a charm, but I find it totally annoying that I have to assign the hair material to each of the hair growth groups seperately and also have to calculate the dynamics for each group seperately.

Is there a way to take all cloth polygons and create one large hair growth group on it? That would make life so much easier.

Unfortunately, the way poser handles grouping, it seems like the answer is no. The only way for you to have the coat need only one hair group is to have it be dynamic so there are no different parts.

If you are doing a static render just export the figure as a prop; re-import this new prop and use the grouping tool to select all polys, or just the ones you need; and add them to a new group upon which you will grow your hair. After the hair has been grown in the hair room you can delete the figure-prop you grew the hair on keeping your hair object(fur coat) to use in the final render. Parent the hair that the hair room generates (fur coat) to your original figure. It sounds way more complicated that it actually is. One thing though is mesh density. If the original figure's geometry is uneven, so will the hair that grows from it. This can be fixed easily in a modeling app using the re-mesh command or whatever the particular modeler terms the process of taking a mesh and evening out the poly size and distribution. Every modeling program, free or paid; has this feature available.

As parkdalegardner said, for converting figure to static prop. You will want to weld on reimport however or you will have body part seams at group boundaries. Additionally you can simplify the single group process by following these directions...

Export your clothing item with only preserve existing material names checked.

Reimport with only weld identical vertices checked.

Open the grouping tool and click add new group, naming it.

Click add: All; the entire prop will turn red indicating it is all one group.

Your figure/conforming clothing item will now be a seamless, welded static prop with pre existing uvs and material regions. You can use material collections intended for the original garment if you wish.

Thanks a lot for enlightening me! The static prop workaround doesn't seem to save much work, though. If the clothing would be a tight fitting dress, it would be easy to convert it to a prop once and then use the cloth simulator on it for the final pose and finally calculate the hair dynamics for the single hair group. But a fur coat is stiff and can't be properly handled in a cloth simulation. I guess I will decide in each case which way is the easiest, now that I know the limitations and tricks.

For a coat, you'll need to adjust your dynamic control settings. I found these settings worked well with the coat I tested. You may need to tweak for your clothes.