Okay... I'm pulling my hair out, and there must be something I'm missing...

I have modeled a simple skirt that I'd like to turn into a conforming figure.  I'd like the skirt to have a "sit" morph.  It does not seem to matter how I group the mesh to the bones, I cannot get the skirt to deform correctly when Vicky's thighs are bent much past 15 degrees.  Either her skirt is embedded halfway into her thighs, or there's a line of cloth between her legs that doesn't move up in the back... or both!   I've had somewhat better luck with shorts/pants than skirts, but am having similar issues with that too.  (Shirts are okay... perhaps Vicky will just go pantless?  giggle)

There must be something I'm missing here.  Can anyone offer some tips?  Tutorial?  Anything?  Do I need extra bones? More subdivisions in my mesh?  A FORK to poke in my eye??

My modeling was done mostly in 3ds max, which I'm admittedly VERY new to...  But the skirt fits delightfully in every other case, just not when conformed while V4's legs are bent in a sitting pose.

Help?

Thanks!

Have you tried Poser's magnets? I don't mean to imply you don't know anything about Poser (and I'm not a modeler), but I've seen others that do mention magnets when making a morph for bending body parts. Of course, there are quite a few modelers here who are very knowledgeable in that area who will give you some help and great tips. But my first thought were magnets.

Laurie

Hmmm... You know, I haven't tried magnets yet.... Thanks for the suggestion.  I'll give that a shot! 

for V4 you need to use the magnetize clothing pose so that the inbuilt magnets affect the clothing, or the clothes dont fit properly.

RuntimeLibrariesPoseDAZ's Victoria 4Magnetize Clothing

I tried that already.  The magnetize clothing pose does not resolve the problem.  Her skirt is still embedded severely in her thighs.

I guess the only "good" news is that I've just gone back and looked at several other skirts and pants from high-quality vendors, and most of them exhibit the same issues, if to a lesser extent.  Grr!

I suspect that most of your problem is how you're trying to rig the skirt.
Trying to rig a longish skirt with thigh and leg bones is not the best way.
You need just a hip bone with body handles to move the skirt portion, or use cloth simulation (both methods require a single skirt group).

The skirt is actually quite short.  Here's an image showing what the skirt looks like when V4 is standing, and what it looks like sitting.

(please pardon the non-materials, and the default V4 skin... just a quick screenshot to show you what I'm talking about.)

As it's grouped now, all the cloth is grouped to her hip -- which seems to be the norm for skirts, though I won't profess to be an expert.  If I group portions of it to her thighs, the front part looks moderately better, but then the back part looks ridiculous because a line of cloth in the middle of her leg sticks out funny. 

I've tried adding another bone attached to the hip bone in the skirt, and while doing this DOES make the skirt bend when not conformed (and the x-rot value of the extra bone is adusted), it doesn't do anything when the skirt IS conformed, except make the parts of the skirt not embedded in V4's thighs stick WAY up in front.

I'm open to using handles... Have done so before when rigging wings... but adding extra bones only seems to be affecting the portions of the skirt NOT embedded in her legs.  And it's irritating the crap out of me, LOL!

Using magnets, again, doesn't seem to be affecting any portions of the skirt that are embedded in her legs.  It's like when the skirt is conformed, it simply refuses to budge from within her thighs.

I feel like I must be missing something obvious.

BTW, using Poser 7 &  V4.2, in case I didn't already mention that.

EDIT:  Forgot to add this...
If I use cloth simulation, I can obviously drape the skirt when she's sitting and generate an obj for use as a morph target.  However this morph does NOT work when the skirt is conformed to her.  Does exactly what adding another bone does... just makes the non-stuck parts of her skirt jut upward.  

The ONLY way I have gotten the sit morph to work is to NOT conform it to V4.  If I parent the skirt to her hip and use the cloth simulation morph OR the extra bone, then the skirt works in a sitting position. 

I just wonder how ANYONE gets conforming skirts to sit... I OWN at least a few... I'm mystified as to how it's done!  LOL.

Being an end user, I would agree with nruddock. On conforming clothing, handles always worked better for me than anything else. I like skirts that have them.

That's just an opinion though ;o).

Laurie

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2768971

Cloth simulation can be used to make "sit" morphs, even if you decide to persevere with a full conforming rig.

V3 and v4 colored to show body parts

Thanks... I think I'm going to try handles again...  My brain hurts, LOL!

Is it still a dynamic skirt?   Cloth simulator doesn't like figures, only props.

If you're moving a dynamic skirt with a pose, you need a simulation to follow her pose,

in cloth simulator you would check the start from zero pose.   There was something in the DAZ wiki pages about this, I'll see if I can find it in my bookmarks.

If you've converted your dynamic skirt to a prop to make it conforming,
I would suggest importing the bones from another skirt, rather than her body bones.
(The body bones tend to rip skirts in half when the figure 'walks'.)

This explains how to pose the Baby Doll dynamic dress.  
similar principle for your dynamic skirt.

artzone.daz3d.com/wiki/doku.php/azproduct/6070

you would also need to check if your mesh is dense enough with polygons to move with the figure.

The skirt is conforming, not dynamic.  When I attempted to create sit morphs in the cloth room, I did not conform the skirt, I parented it to Vicky's hip.  (Since the entire skirt is one group, this was easy to accomplish.)  The morph was easy to create using a drape/simulation, but when the skirt is conformed and the morph is applied, the skirt stays embedded in V4's leg.  I have no idea WHY, but if the skirt is conformed it does not work.  It works fine parented.  B

I understand that I can use an existing skeleton to make the skirt work... but I'm not sure how ethical that idea is.  And it doesn't tell me WHY someone else's bones work, while mine don't.  I'm assuming there is something -- perhaps with the red and green spherical falloff zones? -- that I'm missing when I rig the skirt by hand.  I would really like to learn what the heck I'm missing in this process.

Skirts and sitting poses, probably one of the worst poses in poser!

There are a couple of ways to make a skirt fit a sitting figure and NONE of them work very well, or very easily. You can make a full sitting morph (i.e. shape the skirt to a sitting figure so it looks good and make it a dial in morph), THis probably is one of the best looking and easiest to use ways to do this, but it;s big drawback is it only ones if one uses the same sitting position that the morph was made for, anything else just doesn;t work.

On the other hand there are body handles that allow you to "pull" various parts of the skirt depending on how many handles are included and how they are set up to affect the skirt you can get a large variety of poses in the figure and the skirt, but it takes a lot more work and even then there are limits.

Lately I've been trying a combination of the two. Pose the figure, Use the built in body handles to get the skirt as close as possible, then add adjustment morphs to help poke thru and shape the sitting skirt for a better look. Still not a perfect or universal solution but the best looking I've made so far with out resorting to dynamics (which have their oen problems).

In the pictures above one thing you have to remember is that Vicky has JCMorphs that "balloon the front of her buttocks/tighs in a sitting position to stop the earlier "flat thigh" look caused by the shape of the inner and outer MatSphere zones. You'll probably need to make your own JCM;s to match the build in Vicky JCM's (I know the manetize poses are suposed to fix this but since the skirt only has a HIP and NOT the BUTTOCKS or THIGH zones the manetize poses (basically magnets made to follow magnets in vicky's CR2 groups), won;t work.