Hi, fairly new to the poser game here.
I'm making some clothing and  it's not really working out the way I planned. I made the item in maya and named all the actors correctly, it conforms, but when I start posing it starts looking horrible...... I tried playing with the bend in the joint editor, but the thing is this is happening in a weird spot. I can't do an upload at the moment for a screen shot....

But can anyone point the way to tweeking clothing, a tut or something. Not about making the clothing itself, just making adjustments afterward.

The item im working on is shorts. The annomoly is happening on the front of the thigh but the inner matsphere whatever is covering everthing needed... but if I make it bigger it effects areas I dont want to be effected.

I'll post a screen when I can

Are you talking about adjusting the rig of a conforming clothing item (sounds like so)?  What is the character figure you're working with and how did you rig the conformer? 

I see what the problem is, but dont really know how to fix it. a portion of the shorts is following the thigh bone (ideal i think) and some of it is following the buttock ( which is what I thought it would do). The difference is causing ripping.

Any tuts would be appreciated!

The outer portion moves with the thigh, which I did not expect, the inner portion moves with the buttock, which is what I thought it all would do.

The only thing is there is no fall off. I would like to know how to get a smooth transition so i don't get weird results with posing.

This is where the joint editor "Bend" comes in?

I don't have nearme, how is she rigged?  Hip -> buttock -> thigh?

ok with shorts like that you actually need the buttock group more than you need the thigh group, the reason its breaking off on the right is becouse the thigh group cant effect the hip group at all, so there is no influence of the thigh on the hip. personally I would group both sides all buttock.  as far as the effect in the rear that has to do with deft control of inner and outer falloff spheres right now you have the inner (green) controlling the area too strongly you need to back off on that a bit and make the outer (Red) blend the falloff area into the area that doesn't move a lot more. rigging pants in the crotch and buttock area is the trickiest part of rigging because you have so many groups overlapping each other as far as falloffs are concerned.

I have to leave for a few hours, but in the mean time you may want to review these video tutorials Phil Cooke published on Poser's joint parameters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfcPu83gZNs

If you rigged the conformer using Nearme's own bones (the "donor" approach) then the falloff parameters really ought to already be done, but you'll want to understand this just the same.

I think part of your problem is going to be that you're bending the thigh, and because of the way the pants are rigged and grouped, you will see an abrupt break where the buttock group joins the hip group.  This is a weak point of Poser's group-based rigging, you can make a JCM for it but that's about it.  If you're used to rigging in Maya you probably won't be too happy to learn this.  Creating a JCM in a conformer by hand is a pretty complicated process involving editing the CR2.  I don't know of a tutorial that covers this process.

If the character is actually rigged hip -> thigh then you may be able to fix this with joint falloff zone adjustments, see the video tutorial.

edit: or as wdupre suggests you can also try changing the way the buttock is grouped on the conformer, yeah, but in my experience it can be pretty tough to find a compromise.

You may be tempted to try to make the pants all one group (hip).  That doesn't usually work because as wdupre says, the joint falloff zones probably overlap around the area of the crotch and inner thigh, so bending the left leg will result in deformation on the right side (bad).

The funny thing is, is that originally it was all hip and buttock. One side was acting differently than the other so to correct it I made one side all thigh. Now they act symmetrical. I'll watch PhilC at youtube to check it out.

The rig is hip--> buttock-->thigh...... the problem is hip to buttock. Again, I never included the thigh in the grouping till it seemed to fix the right side of the character. I did try some freebie stuff by evilinocense... (spelling?) but it seemed to have the exact same issue.

:b_sweat:

I haven't gotten to it yet, but does the Dependent Parameter business in Poser 8 help with setting up the JCM at all? It sounds to me like it should.

Whichway

You may want to try and create yourself a BlankCR2 fir your figure and use that to rig the clothing with, using clothing to rig other clothing can become messy.

Blank CR2:
Remove all of the morphs from the CR2 (MorphManager) then save to the figures library as BalnkCR2. It's basically a developer rig done before there were developer rigs.

Hope this helps.

Maybe I'm missing something in the way I'm rigging . Can you explaing how you get the blank cr2 into the setup room and the imported clothing?

I think i keep messing something up.

(neame comes with a blank cr2)

pj, the philc tut was very informative, I get in now. Unfortunatly it didn't solve the issue here, but very nice for the future!

If you have a blank cr2 then you import your clothing, it needs to be properly grouped and broken up into Poser body part names either in your modeling program or another app, enter the SetUp room and you should have your clothing on the stage...double click the blank cr2 and you'll see a bone set appear...that's it.

If you have heavily tweaked morphed the original figure then you are going to have to adjust inner/outer mat spheres with the joint editor.

Yup that is the "donor bone" method (the usual method for setting up conformers).  If the clothing mesh is grouped close to the same as the character, then the deformations will be close to the same.  As wdupre said you can try adjusting the way the clothing is grouped to try to get a smoother bend, but with a hip -> buttock -> thigh arrangement you may still heave some problems when moving the thigh bones a large amount, producing a sharp  break where the buttock polygon group joins to the hip group.

If the character has joint controlled morphs tied to individual bends, these need to be reproduced in the clothing also, for every bone and rotation axis that has them.  Sometimes if the clothing model is loose-fitting enough, you can get away with skipping some of these.

Yeh, the "donor method" is what I'm using. I played with it but can't get an awsome result. I guess I'll have to rely on magnets to make morph adjustments for poses.

Real important question (could save me A LOT of time)...

Is there ANY way to rename groups on a mesh once you've gotten it into poser. I'm in the group editor but I can't seem to find a way to rename the group, or, copy the grouped polys and add the set to a new set.

I'm going from Zbrush to poser and was hoping to cut out the middle man (maya) for renaming my groups that I had created in ZB. The only thing is in ZB you cant name a group, you just creat it.

Question: How long does it normally take you guys to kick out a model. making, rigging, cr2, texture, readme, zip, product renders....... How long (hours, or if 8hr day in days) does it take? I feel like I'm moving in molasses sometimes.

Quote - Is there ANY way to rename groups on a mesh once you've gotten it into poser. I'm in the group editor but I can't seem to find a way to rename the group, or, copy the grouped polys and add the set to a new set.

You can create a new group, and add all polys from an old group, but this leaves the old group - you can't remove it in Poser.  IMO it's simpler to do this in your modeler and just re-export the OBJ and redo the rig.  I guess you could also edit the Poser-written OBJ and try to remove the group that way, but that can be pretty messy.

Quote - I guess the best thing to do if you want the figure sitting or legs at a 90 degree angle you have to split it up betweein the thigh and the buttock. 60/30 works ok.

Yeah that's the way.  Your model came out really well, nice job :)  The character probably has a little JCM at the knee bend to compress the calf, a lot of figures do; you may want to try to duplicate that in the boot.

Quote - Question: How long does it normally take you guys to kick out a model. making, rigging, cr2, texture, readme, zip, product renders....... How long (hours, or if 8hr day in days) does it take? I feel like I'm moving in molasses sometimes.

For the big bunch of freebies I did recently, they were all "familiar territory" in terms of design and I didn't have to learn any unfamiliar modeling techniques, and the UVmapping was pretty simple, so I got most of them done in under 3 days each (pretty full days).  Some of them in about a day.  The textures were procedural for the most part, because I'm not a really great texturer, so they didn't take a whole lot of time.  For the commercial item I'm working on right now, it's taken a lot longer because the geometry is a lot more complicated and the UVmap was very difficult, plus I've been sick - and Poser 8 was released and I wanted to make sure it looks good under Poser 8, so it's taken more than a month (way too slow).

*You can create a new group, and add all polys from an old group, but this leaves the old group - you can't remove it in Poser.  IMO it's simpler to do this in your modeler and just re-export the OBJ and redo the rig.  I guess you could also edit the Poser-written OBJ and try to remove the group that way, but that can be pretty messy.

*How do you add the poly from this old group?? Can you explain? I do see how you can delete other groups. So, i can make a new group, add polys, and delete the old one...there is a delete group button!

pj - its taking me about 3-4 days for most items (sets of one to three or morphs)... of course my modeling lvl needs to be raised just a bit, but I'm getting there.

Sure enough, there is a delete group button.  I don't know why I thought there wasn't a way to do this, try it.

In the lower part of the group editor window, there are buttons for "add group" and "add material".  If you wanted to rename a group, you could:
Go to the Setup room
Select the bodypart you want to rename
Rename the appropriate bone
Open Group Editor
"Create group" button
"Add Group..." button
Select the original bodypart from the pulldown box that pops up

Then to remove the old group:
Select the old group in the Group Editor's pulldown box
Press Delete Group (if that works)

Odd little blind spot I had there, I never realized the Delete Group button was there.
 

But after you do all that do you have to go in and re- rename the bone?

renaming the bone is one of the steps I listed...

Thanks pz, I'll give it a try next time I make something in ZB.

The PhilC tut really explains the joint editor well.