…Or 5 More Things I wish I knew before wasting many hours doing the wrong things modeling Poser Clothes!
Continuing in the tradition of 10 tips for making poser clothes, here are 5 more helpful tips. There is some math involved but don’t worry, you won’t have to do any calculations!
1. Don’t use triangles in your mesh.
If you plan to use the clothes you have modeled in Poser’s Cloth Room, triangles will kill the simulation process. If you try sub-dividing a triangle mesh using Nevercenter’s Silo (type ‘C’), the result will be a mesh with huge gaps; some polygons will be smooth while others fly hundreds of units away from your figure. There is probably a mathematical reason for this; all manipulations in 3D Applications are based upon linear algebra. I suspect division by zero may be the culprit. At any rate, its best to avoid triangle meshes. Better to use meshes composed of quadrilaterals (4-sided shapes. e.g. squares, rectangles, trapezoids, and parallelograms).
2.Keep your meshes as straight as possible.
This tip makes a big difference in UV mapping. the closer to 90 degree (right) angles the mesh is, the easier it is to create a smooth UV Map over-top the mesh. The ideal mesh would consist entirely of rectangles. To create realistic looking folds it sometimes becomes necessary to violate this tip but try as much as possible to follow it.
3.Group your meshes as you model them.
What newbies often do is create clothing as a single object and then create groups for the abdomen, chest, etc. afterward. To save time and to ensure your clothes bend as naturally as possible, it is best to define the groups as you model them. Depending upon your modeler, you may be able to copy the exact locations of the body parts of your target figure (Victoria 4, Apollo Maximus, etc.).
4. Use Multiple Threads in Poser for your renders.
Splitting your render into separate threads will speed up rendering time. I also found it prevented a problem with crashing in Poser 7. The maximum number of threads you can use is 4 in Poser 7. I tried rendering a separate process but I found that actually slows things down. You can find these controls on a Mac under Poser 7 > Preferences > Render. On a PC, Edit > Preferences > Render.
5. Be careful of exploding Morphs!
This tip applies to all figures, not just clothes. When creating morphs, be careful which programs you use to create them. Edge order matters for morphs and some modelers will change the order of your edges resulting in the exploding mess shown at the start of this article. If you create morphs within Poser itself this is usually not an issue but Poser has limited morph creation tools. I use Nevercenter’s Silo for morph creation. This tool is extremely powerful for creating morphs, improving models made in other programs and making models from scratch.
