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Getting the best out of Dynamic clothing every time...

eclark1894

Visionary
Hey, guys and gals, I'm thinking of writing an article/tutorial on how to get the best from dynamic clothing in Poser and thought I'd ask everyone to chime in if they have a tip or a question about how to get something to work right in the Poser Cloth room. I swear it's just pure coincidence that I planned to do this right when Hivewire is having a sale on dynamic clothing. I swear. :whistling:
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Hey, guys and gals, I'm thinking of writing an article/tutorial on how to get the best from dynamic clothing in Poser and thought I'd ask everyone to chime in if they have a tip or a question about how to get something to work right in the Poser Cloth room. I swear it's just pure coincidence that I planned to do this right when Hivewire is having a sale on dynamic clothing. I swear. :whistling:


I think a good addition of any tutorial would be a couple of cloth setting groups for certain basic materials such as Satin, Leather, Cotton and so on. Not only would this give users a starting point it might help them understand the how such settings may impact the result, for example comparing the cloth density for cotton when compared with leather.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
Actually Phil C has a group of presets already for the Cloth Room, but I intend to go through them one by one and experiment to see how realistic the presets are.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
Right now, I thinking of breaking this up into sections such as mesh types and construction. Not every mesh is a good candidate for running through the cloth room. And some others simply aren't being run through properly.

That will lead me into my next section on how to set up the cloth for simulation. This will definitely be the biggest section.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Actually Phil C has a group of presets already for the Cloth Room, but I intend to go through them one by one and experiment to see how realistic the presets are.

Right now, I thinking of breaking this up into sections such as mesh types and construction. Not every mesh is a good candidate for running through the cloth room. And some others simply aren't being run through properly.

That will lead me into my next section on how to set up the cloth for simulation. This will definitely be the biggest section.

I wasn't aware of the presets from Phil C so thanks for the information. I think you are right to break the tutorial into sections and, as you suggest, mesh types and construction is very important. If someone tries the cloth room for the first time with the wrong mesh and it all goes wrong there is a tendency to give up on the cloth room as being too complex or not worth the effort. I know that was the result after my first few attempts, I took one look at the end result with 'jaggies' everywhere or a pool of cloth on the floor and gave up disappointed. It was only when I purchased some of Lully's dynamic clothing here and they worked for me that I could see just how easy the cloth room can be and the potential it has. Thanks to that, and a lot of advice and encouragement from people here, I now use dynamic clothing on a regular basis. I now try poses and scenes I would never dreamed of doing with conforming clothing such as Dawn seated in a skirt.

Anything that encourages and helps others find the potential that the cloth room has is great in my book so I wish you every success and look forward with interest.
 

Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
So I think one of the big things, I do all the time that helps, is to not start with the figure in the 0,0,0 spot (even if they are in a t-pose) on frame one. I find the best way to get the cloth to 'move' in the direction your want is to start with the figure to one side of where you want them to end up on the final frame, or sometimes to add in some rotation, to give the fabric a 'twirl'.

So I usually figure out what I want on my last frame, and then move the figure on the first frame in the opposite direction I want the cloth to move. This gives much more interesting results than just simulating in place.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
Did you know?

That Poser has changed the file format on dynamic hair and dynamic clothing? I rarely buy dynamic clothes because I can so easily make them myself, so when I save them to the library, it's usually as a prop. So as I'm reading the reference manual for the Poser 11 Cloth Room, I see this:

"Beginning with Poser 11 and Poser Pro 11, hair and cloth dynamic files are saved with an .abc extension (Alembic format)."

If this goes like in the past, this will be mostly ignored, particularly by the stores and vendors.
 
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Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
That Poser has changed the file format on dynamic hair and dynamic clothing?

So that doesn't quite mean what you think. When I make a dynamic item to sell or share, it still ends up being a prop, not an .abc file. But when you create a scene, add a dynamic item, then run the simulation, a .abc file is created along with the other saved files for your scene that has the information for how that specific cloth simulation ran. So for instance here are the saved files from when I was testing out the Angel dress I recently made:



But in my library, the actual dress is still a .pp2 file. I think they warn you about it in the manual, partly because if you threw away that .abc file not knowing what it was you would loose all the cloth sim info for a saved scene.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
So that doesn't quite mean what you think. When I make a dynamic item to sell or share, it still ends up being a prop, not an .abc file. But when you create a scene, add a dynamic item, then run the simulation, a .abc file is created along with the other saved files for your scene that has the information for how that specific cloth simulation ran. So for instance here are the saved files from when I was testing out the Angel dress I recently made:



But in my library, the actual dress is still a .pp2 file. I think they warn you about it in the manual, partly because if you threw away that .abc file not knowing what it was you would loose all the cloth sim info for a saved scene.

That is one great piece of information, I am just the sort of person who would delete a .abc file and than curse at Poser when I tried to reload the simulation some weeks later while forgetting all about my little dabble.
 

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
Out of curiosity, I just checked both my P9 and PP11 Runtimes, and it appears to me that the new .abc files are the replacements for the older Poser version's .dyn files. They just gave them a new extension.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
Quick question for those of you who want to understand the cloth room better.
Where exactly are you getting confused and how? I want to make things simple for everyone, but that means making a lot of assumptions about what people know about Poser, and the Cloth Room. Since advanced and power users pretty much know what they're doing at this point, I'm assuming the people reading this tutorial will be mostly new Poser users and people who've only glanced in the Cloth Room's direction before.
 

Dakorillon (IMArts)

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
I have never even clicked on the tab for it (does it have a tab? Do I even have it in Poser11?) Nor have I as of yet, looked at a video tutorial or read a manual. So for me, break it down like I don't know anything. Then maybe do an advanced hints and tips for the experienced users. My suggestion!
 

eclark1894

Visionary
I'm doing a quick test right now on PhilC's Cloth Presets, and I'm having a bit of an issue. I've known about these presets for quite awhile, but I've never used them myself. Anyway, so far as how to use them, if you follow the instructions, they do what they're supposed to, and the numbers are entered in the fields they belong in. However, when I attempt drape the cloth over Andy, the draping dialog window appears, but it just sits there until i finally cancel it. On the other hand , if I change the numbers in the fields manually, the draping will begin almost immediately.

Just wondering if anyone else might have had an issue with Phil's Cloth Presets recently? Maybe it's a Poser 11 issue? Maybe my laptop is just crap?
 

eclark1894

Visionary
I have never even clicked on the tab for it (does it have a tab? Do I even have it in Poser11?) Nor have I as of yet, looked at a video tutorial or read a manual. So for me, break it down like I don't know anything. Then maybe do an advanced hints and tips for the experienced users. My suggestion!
You're the kind of user I'm thinking of, and yes Poser 11 has a Cloth Room and there is a tab for it.;)
 

eclark1894

Visionary
Okay, so I was testing PhilC's Cloth Presets in Poser 11 earlier and I had a problem with them. They loaded just fine, but then either nothing happened, or it was delayed for ever. And the Mesh just started exploding when it did move. So I tried the presets in Poser 2014 and it worked just fine, which indicates that because the Presets use Python scripting, apparently they are broken in Poser 11. You can still add the preset numbers manually though. They work just fine that way.
 

VortigensBane

Busy Bee
I am interested in learning (more) about meshing for the cloth room, but most especially about different fabric parameters. I have to admit, though, I haven't run a simulation in Poser's Cloth Room ever since I bought VWD Cloth and Hair, just because it integrates with DAZ and lets me drape cloth on Genesis 3 figures. I am still trying to figure out how to get a cloth simulation to imitate wet cloth, though, so that would be a huge bonus!
 

kobaltkween

Brilliant
Contributing Artist
I think a good addition of any tutorial would be a couple of cloth setting groups for certain basic materials such as Satin, Leather, Cotton and so on. Not only would this give users a starting point it might help them understand the how such settings may impact the result, for example comparing the cloth density for cotton when compared with leather.

Um, except that dynamics don't work that way.

Exactly the same settings perform _totally_ differently on different clothing. Clothing topology and shape matter as much as posing. You should no more change the dynamic settings on someone else's clothing than you should re-rig conforming clothes. It's cool if you know what you're doing and you make dynamic clothes yourself, but otherwise you're probably going to create problems for yourself. I know when I put out settings I've done dozens of tests in with different settings, and then tested my chosen settings in different poses. Change those settings, and you might run into major errors that I've already observed and tried to account for.

In my experience, if you want realistic results out of dynamic clothes rather than the shapeless look, you have to build your clothes to work like they should. Not only is a lot of fabric directional, but a lot of clothes are sewn to allow draping and folding in specific directions. A skirt with perfectly uniform topology will not sim _at all_ the same as a skirt with a higher radial density. You won't even get the same performance out of a circular/A-line skirt that loads in a draped position as you will exactly the same skirt if it's loaded in a circle around the hem at the waist and draped in the sim. The former will sim more like a cylinder. Though the latter will take longer, it will sim more correctly for skirt sewn like that (more folds from draping).

So while you can talk about in _general_ about the differences among satin, leather, and cotton, you really need to start with settings inherent to the item of clothing. For instance, IIRC, "density" isn't computed by the size of the cloth, but how many polygons the cloth has. If two items have different polygon densities but the same size and dynamic density setting, the one with more polygons will behave as if it's heavier (AFAIK, it's been a bit since I tested this). You can't use a single dynamic density setting to be "leather" weight when it's not the same weight on different props.

In my experience, what using dynamic clothes really takes is understanding simulations in general. For instance, the big thing to understand is that the default is 30 frames per second. So when you want a simulation to only take 10 or 12 frames, that's a fraction of second. Which isn't a big deal for a figure to make a slight move, but is wicked fast to move from standing to lying down on the floor or moving across the room. And unless you give it time to settle, the cloth will respond just like cloth should to sudden movements.

Which gets to the other core aspect of dynamics in Poser. You are simulating your clothes going from state A on frame 1 to state B on frame n (final frame, whatever it is) as if the clothes are not changing, even if the figure is. You have to consider what that means, and think about how the figure will get from state A to B, and how the clothes will respond.

For instance, you not only need the clothes to be able to fit on the figure when posed in the final frame, the figure can't just tear through the clothes on the way to state B. Sometimes I'll do a sim and find I have to move an arm or a leg half way through because a straight interpolation from the original (usually default) pose has the figure putting a hand or a foot through their clothes. Also, as GadgetGirl mentioned, you want your first frame to give you the difference you want. I still remember the time I couldn't figure out why my clothes were _exploding_ until I realized that my first frame was at default location as well as pose, and my final location was 100+ meters away. The clothes were ripping off my figure as she zoomed across the scene. Proving that while superheroes may _look_ as if they're wearing spandex, it must actually be some sort of special space-age fabric.

On the other hand, controlling the initial state can help you a lot. If shoulder straps are supposed to stay because they're supposed to be taut, until clothing has a stretch or tension feature (which it should, but doesn't), you can make things fit more tightly by scaling down in the first frame and letting the figure go to full size in the last frame. Even if the prop is parented, it will stay at the smaller initial size and stretch to fit. Conversely, if you know you're going for a character that's so much larger than the default in certain areas, and the clothes are stretching too much, you can just scale up in the first frame.

I pretty much took to dynamic clothes as soon as I tried them. I followed one tutorial, and that was it. But I came to it understanding animation and keyframes from Adobe Flash (now Animate). Well, and I'm a person who visualizes a lot. So I had no problem thinking of the subject of my image as doing something before the still, and about how to fake getting there. I think what's hard for a lot of people is partly that Poser's interface forces them to switch from a still to an animation even if they're rendering a still (it would be a lot more popular if you had an option to just pose and sim to fit the pose). That's something you can address generally.

But I think the other aspect is that the problems people encounter are as specific and varied as clothes and scenes. Telling someone how to sim a skirt of someone dancing won't help them if what they want is the skirt spread around the figure (not tucked around her legs) while she's kneeling on the floor. One of the first or second things I tried with dynamics involved using magnets to change the initial state of some clothing by LLF that I'd converted to dynamic. I figured out how to get the effect I wanted, coming naturally to the how sims worked in terms of initial states. I think a lot of people have a vision of what they want, follow generic instructions that work for a standing there pose that doesn't interact with anything but the figure and maybe the floor, and then have things go wrong with their particular pose and scene and don't know why.
 
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Hornet3d

Wise
Thank you for all that information kobaltkween, while I enjoy using dynamics I am reasonably new to it hence my simplistic view of the subject. Your description is very helpful and gives me a better understanding of how it works and why things go wrong. I understand you comments on not changing things but I often find clothes just do not work straight from the box. I am not sure if this is because I am doing something wrong or if some vendors are not as careful as you are with the settings.

Clearly I have a lot to learn but your comments have given me something to think about and I clearly need to play a lot more in the cloth room and try your suggestions in an effort to better understand the cloth room.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
That is good info, Kween. One of the things I want to discuss in the tutorial is mesh topology and construction. People need to understand that while poser will take almost anything thing and clothify it, ultimately, this all begins and ends with the mesh. There's an old saying, "garbage in, garbage out."
 

Hornet3d

Wise
That is good info, Kween. One of the things I want to discuss in the tutorial is mesh topology and construction. People need to understand that while poser will take almost anything thing and clothify it, ultimately, this all begins and ends with the mesh. There's an old saying, "garbage in, garbage out."

The mesh topology and construction is clearly very important which is why I think your tutorial has a wider audience than just total beginners. I have a basic understanding and do use dynamic clothing but I would be very interested in this aspect of the cloth room.
 
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