Hi folks, has any body been sucessful in using Zbrush created .obj eg jackets etc in the cloth room?  When I import my creation, it takes forever to even calculate the draping, so long I just cancel the operation.  Jan 

Polygon count is the biggest factor, along with geometry that intersects the character before the simulation is allowed to run.  Zbrush itself is not likely to be the problem.

Yep, know about the poly count, is there any way to decrease it in Zbrush, yet retain the fidelity? Jan

That's called decimation. There are several decimator functions in a variety of 3D modeling software. Each with varying levels of success.

I thought that ZBrush has a way to export a lower-poly version of your creation. Don't have ZBrush, so I can't be sure, but...

Decimation is one way, but it will make a massive mess of the topology of the model - usually OK for static models, often very bad for models that are animated (e.g. dynamic cloth simulation).  The mesh of the model will be a big mess of randomly sized triangles and will not deform anything like what a uniform mesh of quads will.  This might still be OK but I don't recommend it at all.

If you're interested in redoing the geometry of the cloth you may want to look at this tutorial:
http://www.jcappelletti.com/z3tut03/

I fully agree, Paul... should have mentioned that I didn't like the results I got in Blender, to name one example. Lisa Richie recommended retopology.

There is a way to retopologize a high resolution mesh inside of zbrush. You can manually draw quads of the desired size, which will stick to the surface of the underlying object. I prefer 3D coat for this sort of thing because of the variety of tools and the ease of use.

 I haven't used Zbrush, but have played a bit in 3dcoat which is similar, for experimentation..  Personally I don't see these programs as the best place to finalize the mesh.  :)  What worked best for me was to mold the shape in 3dcoat, then bring it into Wings3d with a fairly low polycount, then do the last touches there..  You can use any other modeller obviously, whatever works with you..

That way you get the best of two ways.. The intuitive workflow of zbrush or 3dcoat, and the more direct vertex/face editing control of a traditional 3d editor, so you can do your own subdividing or decimating or whatever is needed to get the right poly count for the draping.  I'm very particular with that stuff. :)

Personally I wouldn't (and don't) use Zbrush for generating geometry at all, I do all that in my modeller.  Zbrush is great for texturing though, and probably unbeatable for things like detailing a bump or displacement map.

Yep, I tried decimination by importing the Zbrush .obj into Carrara.  The resulting mesh had about 7 sub groups (I guess one for every time I released my mouse button.  Oh yes, it made a wonderful mess of my mesh, rips and tears all over the place.  Even deleted some of the sub groups (those that didn't seem to have an affect on the mesh).  Well that resulting .obj was a larger size than the original imported .obj.

I guess I'll try enlarging the mesh in Poser so that it absolutely doesn' touch me Vicky and see if there is any movement at all in draping--anything even a krinkle.

Thanks Paloth, well since I have 18 days left on me trial version, I'll begin exploring that in Zbrush.

Zbrush must have something like that in there somewhere, it does cost $600.  Before I spend that money, I'm going to get one of them there Zbrush for Dummies book  from Amazon. 

Shoud go in the ZBrush forum, however I get more replies here.  Jan 

Put any questions you have about Zbrush functions into the Google search engine and you'll likely  find links to video tutorials explaining things.

If you sculpted your cloth object out of one of the zbrush tools and have found that the lowest SDiv level for the geometry is still too high for your needs, you can try pressing the 'Reconstruct Subdivi' button in the tool's  'Geometry.' menu This will decrease the polygon count provided that the mesh doesn't have any triangles.

Hi Paloth, thanks for the information, use quads instead of tris.  I thought I had a brilliant idea that turned out worth exploring, after making the first clothing extraction save it as an .obj, then import it again, reduce the mesh thickness, mask it again and try that mesh.  The only problem is that it has an outer and inner mesh separated by air and I need to go into Carrara to delete the inner mesh--carefully.  Worked fairly well once.  That inner mesh does not play at all well with Poser's cloth room-it gets embedded in the figure morph.

I'm using Poser figures for now, because I need to do something successful (a morale booster) before plowing back into the converting a perdy sphere into manikins to make clothing for. 

Video tutorials, I'll try one and see how fast my speedy 56K downloads it.  Jan

Quote - The only problem is that it has an outer and inner mesh separated by air...

This is your problem.  Really, don't model like that for Poser, it is asking for all kinds of trouble, whether for dynamics of if you're going to rig it and make it a conformer.  Delete the inner layer of polys/points and it should simulate a LOT better.

This is a tutorial I wrote a long while back about subdivision modeling a dress for use with dynamics:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2748221

Many images, a lot of specific technique info - I really hate it when I read a tutorial and you have some useless garbage like "Step 1, make a sphere, Step 2, now do stuff and turn it into St. Peter's Cathedral".