Over the last 10 to 12 days, I've spent most of my "Poser time" examining, and experimenting with dynamic cloth; here are some of my perceptions.


1.)  The Poser 5 Manual was only useful for explainations of what the settings do.

2.)  There are several very good tutorials available online about the subject. (Some even go so far as to suggest reading about dynamic cloth in applications other than Poser.)

3.)  A particular technique that will work for one cloth item, may not work well, or at all for another. I found myself often using a combination of tips from various tutorials, to get the desired result.

4.)  In the "Clothroom", is possible to have open many of the same "palettes" as in the "Poseroom". This saves much time (...and some confusion...) over switching between the two. I don't recall any tutorial stating this fact.

5.)  If a cloth item behaves unexpectedly after trying a chosen technique, look to see it's grouping. I found that some creators made choices in "constrained", or "cheoreographed" grouping that was preventing me from achieving the desired results. This is especially true when using clothing on a figure it was not created for.

6.)  The quality of the item's modelling, greatly effects it's ability to "flow" naturally.

7.)  Sometimes, a small change in a setting (Fold resistance, cloth density, drape frames, ...) will cause very different results. Keep track of your changes; that way if it doesn't work well, it is easily undone.



That pretty much sums up my current observations. I will certainly do more experimentation; and I will post any additional obseravtions as they occur.

I have attached a text file with links to some of the online tutorials that I found during my experimentations. I somehow missplaced the links to some others; so if you'd like more info, feel free to PM me here about them.

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It's not what you look like, when you're doing what you're doing;
It's what you're doing, when you're doing what it looks like you're doing.

Thank you whazizname, the links on the doc file are these ones :

http://www.e-frontier.com/article/archive/321/  
http://www.fnproductions.net/?page_id=410  
http://www.poserfashion.net/tutorials.htm  
http://www.poserfashion.net/About%20cloth%20simulation.htm
http://www.render-lab.com/Dynamic_Clothes.htm  
http://www.imarend.com/tutorials/clothP5/clothp1.html  
http://www.3dmenagerie.com/goodies/tut/qcloth.htm

We've a tutorial on the site by rayera here http://www.posetteforever.com/viewtopic.php?t=1970 I think you started from it. For what concerns my technique , it changed with the morphing tool because now it's easier to fix little problems of the dress. generally I make several passages of the same cloth in the cloth room, sometimes turning the character on his or her axis to adapt gravity and or use a wind force. The final result is very good and as far as I'm concerned is superior than a conforming character dress  

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This sounds all very complicated and time consuming to me, still.
At the moment I stick to conforming stuff and to fixing the glitches with mags
But I'm still new to it cos my old poser3, that I was using until 6month ago, didn't have any working clothing at all

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After viewing "Egyptian Diva" by Casette, I was reminded just how difficult it is to get a cloth square to lay flat on the floor; so I did a few more experiments.

I never did achieve a "perfect" result (yes, I could do a little "postwork" and solve the problem; but that was not the point of the experiment...); but I did get pretty close, and learned another thing about the Poser 5 manual.


The manual states:
"The collision depth and Collision offset dials are limited to minimum 0.1cm and maximum 10cm." This is only half true; the Collision depth dial will acccept values lower than 0.1.

The manual states:
"Before adjusting these settings, be sure to enable the Object vertex against cloth polygon and Object polygon against cloth polygon options..." This is true; when using low collision depth setting without these options checked, the cloth will fall through some parts.

The manual states:
"You may also try reducing the Steps per value from it's default of 0.2 to as little as 0.005." I did not try this yet; but the default value is not 0.2, it is 2.0.
Since I did not achieve a "perfect" result, I will try this later to see if it will get the square to lay flat on the floor.



Since "a picture is worth a thousand words", here are some images:

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It's not what you look like, when you're doing what you're doing;
It's what you're doing, when you're doing what it looks like you're doing.

Oops, i clicked "submit" instead of "add attachment".
here are more images:

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It's not what you look like, when you're doing what you're doing;
It's what you're doing, when you're doing what it looks like you're doing.

Oh there.

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I won the Loebner prize !

I chose to use this point of view and a reflective floor; because it allows two views of the cloths fitting in one image.

Notice that the cloth is closer to the character in 2c; but is not closer to the floor.

Also notice how the changes in Fold resistance and stretch resistance change the cloth's closness to the character's breasts.

Notice also how the cloth spread out to obscure the character's reflection in 2a; this is due to the lower Stretch resistance.

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It's not what you look like, when you're doing what you're doing;
It's what you're doing, when you're doing what it looks like you're doing.

I conducted a few more experiments today; but nothing made the cloth plane closer to the floor.

I found out that in Poser 5 the value limits to the "Step per Frame" dial are 2.000 to 33333.000. {I tried an experiment with this set 3.000 and it doubled the draping calculation time, and did not visibly alter the result. I hate to think how long draping calculations would take if someone used the 33333.0 value.   }

I am going to take a few days off from this type of experimenting; but if and when I have any new perceptions, I will post them to this thread.

{Next experiments will be on EMC. I have a really cool looking set of clothing for Posette that uses it; but unpredictably crashes Poser.}

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It's not what you look like, when you're doing what you're doing;
It's what you're doing, when you're doing what it looks like you're doing.

I honestly think you should sit down, take a stress pill, and calmly think things over.

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I won the Loebner prize !

Thanks for the advice Posy.
 

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It's not what you look like, when you're doing what you're doing;
It's what you're doing, when you're doing what it looks like you're doing.

   I think that I'll follow your tutorial for the next experiments in Poser, they are very useful and will save a lot of time in setting the dials !

I think that I'll have to organize your and the other precious tutorial in the knowledge base soon, maybe in the weekend  

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