I tried the blender node, unfortunately it just gives me 50/50 of each image, rather than 100% background image, with the transparent image 100% strength on top of it. :(

Ah, that's a really good suggestion, Khai.  I'll try that. :)

Meh... So would another browser work better, like Firefox?  I like Chrome because it's fast and uncluttered, but in the best interest of Poser it may not be such a good idea then.

If you have a lot of pokethroughs that the simulation has to try to correct, that can slow things down a lot, too. I've had some extremely slow simulations when I tried to convert some conforming clothes, due to the way the mesh was built.

Could be really interesting!

If your simulation doesn't take long, it's not really excessive if you get the detail you want. :)

Over 70k faces is quite a bit. Never worked with more than 40k or so.  Very nice dress, too. :)

Quote - Are there any tips or rules of thumb to getting the dynamic calculations to run faster?  I have noticed the more I use dynamic cloth that the simulations can run for 20-30 minutes, even on my 6-core Phenom II.  I leave the cloth settings pretty much stock, except sometimes drop the collision offset and depth to .5 to get better results.  I even went so far as to export a cloth item as an .obj, import it into Max, optimize the mesh from several ten thousands of vertices down to around five thousand, but that didn't have much effect.

It probably depends on several things.  I run cloth simulations with clothing that have over 30k polys and have very little problems with it. A bit slower, but not 20-30 minutes unless it's a very long animation, then it can take quite a while. And I have slower processor than you. 

I think BB already mentioned somewhere that the cloth engine doesn't take advantage of multiple cores?

One thing you can do is to check that your cloth is not set to collide with unecessary things (like feet for a shirt etc), and other objects in the scene, like hair, jewelry etc that are not needed.

Also check how the character goes from start/zero pose to final frame. Make sure the anim graph doesn't have crazy splines between the poses. Also, check that your character is taking the optimum path. Some poses I've seen have the body or hip rotated 355 degrees instead of -5, which is hardly efficient for cloth simulations. :)

You can also pre drape the cloth, if it has a lot of fabric that needs to settle. (Like wide skirts or fluffy clothes in general) Pre-drape it to your zero pose, let the fabric settle, then just export the obj, import it again and run the simulation. You may have to set constrained, decorated groups again.

But... 5k polygons shouldn't have to take very long, so something else may be wrong.  People here love screenshots, so don't hesitate posting them and describing them!

Quote - Thanks thewebflea and RobynsVeil for the earlier suggestions. Thanks Grappo2000/PhilC, putting the top row of vertices into the choreographed group does the trick.

Grappo2000 - yes, parenting the object to be clothified works and the cloth moves with the parent.

Problem solved - Time to play!

 

You're welcome :) Glad you got it working.

If you want the vertices to truly stick, try putting them in the choreographed group and see what happens. I don't know if they will move with the rod when you move it.. It might work if it's parented.

I saw that earlier...  more realistic butts are good too.

I second that. Been using Ralfetas Bend to simulate that effect on V4.

Any realistic body physics would be really nice. 

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/vicky-4-nipples-/61411

If you want good animated breast movement, Dynachest still works like a charm

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/dynachest/66004

Combine it with NBM at Daz and you got everything you need. I've rarely used the Vicky nipples bones because I never found a need for it. The other stuff does the trick. :)

Looks like I got a lot of different tools and options.  Thanks. :)

I will definitely try that, thanks both of you for the insights and tips.