the clothroom ate her skirt! LOL  did I say how disappointed I was after waiting 10 hours?

 ok I tried this 3 times last night and today but I created a new character first that was identical to my screenshot of above.  The first time it calculated in about 30. minutes and while the skirt draped nicely it went straight down as if she were standing.  The second time it was taking forever to calculate so I went to bed and let the computer do its thing.  When I got up this morning it was froze so I had to reboot.  The first time I created a new character, put her in the same pose with the same hair and clothes but I used a different texture set.  The second time I used my original character from the screenshot above.  So I'm wondering if there's something wonky about the texture set that I just don't know how to deal with.  After I rebooted I loaded up my file again (the one from above) and started a new simulation like Arcadia said, but I used your shortened method Drew.  It took 10 hours to calculate.  It just finished.   I haven't rendered it yet, but here's what happened.   I"m going to render it now.  Hopefully it will be right in the render.   What did I do wrong?

 ok I canceled the calculations and I'm going to try the first method you told me about above but first I have to go feed the aminals in this house before they start eating my flesh!  I'll be back in a bit.

 just out of curiosity if I were to cancel this right now and do it with your method or Acadia's method any only set the dress skirt and hip as the collision target would it still take several hours or should I just let it go?  It's been about 3 hours now (give or take a few minutes) and I'm at frame 7.

what's the difference between draping and simulating?  Are you saying if I use your method that I wouldn't pose the character first and that the clothing would still conform to the character correctly when I do pose it?

waiting on this calculation is like watching the grass grow  8)

Quote -

Believe me, I wish I had these resources when I started way back with Poser 2. I still feel like I am only using a tenth of poser's features!

I started with poser 4 (which I still like) so I'm probably using 1/1 of poser's features.  ;)

eta: the resources were available to me but they were just way over my head.

Quote - If this isn't for animations, there is always using a morph brush, using magnets, and exporting the dress into a modeler to make a morph.

I appreciate the suggestion but this is so far over my head I don't have any idea what you are talking about but I may hit you up about this at a later date.

Quote - > Quote -

and this does the same thing that Acadia's method does?  so there are 2 methods?  And here I've avoided the clothing room.  Now I wonder what's in the face room! LOL

It does. You just skip posing it at frame 15  and pose it at frame 1 when using conforming clothes. The rest is the same. I find this actually works better for for hybrid (part conforming/part dynamic" which is what you have now) clothes since you can skip all that moving between Zero pose and frame 15.

So many of poser's features have seemed beyond my capabilities that I haven't used them and I've been using poser for awhile now.  I'm glad I posted here because this has opened up some new stuff for me.  I've never even messed with the clothes in poser because I could never get them to look right but I've seen what others have done with clothes and I had to try it finally.  Thanks to all of you for going out of your way to help me.  I"m no artist by any stretch of the imagination, I'm a writer actually  with a love for art that I could never create without a computer, but you all may have created a monster. LOL

Thank you, thank you and thank you again!

 I"m at frame 6 WooHoo!  lol  now I wish I hadn't selected v4 entirely. 

Quote - If you are using clothifying part of a conforming outfit, you can actually skip some of that.

Pose your figure at frame 1. Go to the cloth room and start a new simulation. Set it to drape for 20-30 frames. Set the cloth simulation to 1 frame. Select the skirt part (usuaally the Hip) and hit clothify. Set up collisions to collide only against the legs (will save some time when it comes to the simulation). Be sure to uncheck "start draping from zero". Run the simulation. Will drape for the frame and simulate for one frame. The drape should be enough for what you want.

If I left anything out, refer to the excellent tutorial above!

and this does the same thing that Acadia's method does?  so there are 2 methods?  And here I've avoided the clothing room.  Now I wonder what's in the face room! LOL

Quote - Yes.

When you aren't using the cloth room, you don't worry about the frame slider.  You simply pose your figure at frame 1 and carry on.

The only time you have to worry about the frame slider is if you are doing animation or running a cloth room simulation.

Just like they used to make cartoons.  They  used to put parts of the movement on various pages and by the end of all of them, the figure was running.

ok I gotcha now!

 ok just so I am understanding correctly, what you are saying is that when I pose my character each step of the pose is a frame?    Is that right?   

eta:  I set all of v4 for the collision target because I couldn't remember which parts the dress touched and couldn't see it with the boxes in the way.  Is that why it's taking so long to calculate?  It's only at frame 5.  lol

etaa:  
* No.  After you have finished the calculation, go back to the pose room.  Render your image from the last frame.  If you want to add more things to the scene, you can do it at the last frame too.  Don't delete the other frames because you will undo what you just did :) 

does that mean I need to move the frame slider to frame 15 and then continue to add things to the scene or to frame 30?

I got sidetracked clothes shopping in the marketplace last night so I didn't get around to your method until a couple of hours ago.  It's been 2 hours and it's still calculating. lol

I've never messed with the animation frames because I don't do animations so I had no idea that pertained to anything else.  Can you explain why I had to move the slider to frame 15 and what exactly the frame slider does?

Also after it's done calculating do I have to set the pose again?

I just saw your clothing room tutorial thread so I'm going to check that out too.

Thanks again for your help.
Kelly

 oh wow that's a pretty detailed tutorial.  thank you so much for taking the time to do that.  I'll give that a go right now.