Free Dynamic Cocktail Dress for Antonia
copyright 2009 by Laurie Allen

Using this dynamic dress:

1. Load your figure (Antonia). Turn off all IK.

2. Load the dress from the Libraries: Props/AA Props/Dynamic Cocktail Dress/Cocktail Dress Antonia

3. Go to the cloth room. Make sure you are on frame one in the animation controls. With the dress prop selected click the "New Simulation" button under 1. Cloth Simulations.

4. Check the box called "Cloth self-collision" and type in the amount of frames you'd like the dress to drape and click "OK".

5. Click the "Clothify" button under 2. Cloth Objects. Choose the dress prop. Click "Clothify" in the pop up window. The window will close.

6. Click the "Collide Against..." button under 2. Cloth Objects and then the "Add/Remove" button in the window that pops up. Chose the figure you want the dress to collide against (in this case, Antonia). NOTE: Remember to also check anything else that the dress would collide against, such as a chair if she's sitting, the ground if she's sitting or kneeling on the floor, etc. Also remember to UNCHECK anything you want the simulation to ignore, such as ALL body handles, jewelry props, etc. Leaving those checked will at best give some "interesting" results, but results you probably don't want ;o).

   You can leave the "start draping from zero pose" unchecked if you like, but check "Ignore Head Collisions" and "Ignore Hand Collisions" unless you want the dress to drape against the hand/s. Set whatever collision offset and depth you'd like. Click "OK". The window will close.

7. Click the "Edit Constrained Group..." button under 3. Cloth Groups. Add the following materials to the Constrained group:
   belt
   bow
   neckline
   
Click the >> at the top of the Group editor window until you have the "Soft Decorated Group" selection and add the following materials:
   skirthem
   sleevehem
   
Click the >> at the top of the Group editor window until you have the "Rigid Decorated Group" selection and add the following material:
   bow
   
NOTE: If during the simulation, with the pose you are using, the sleeve hems dig into the arms, add the material "sleevehem" to the constrained group instead of the soft decorated group. Close the group editor window by clicking the "X" in the upper right hand corner of the window.

8. At this point you can set your dynamic controls under 4. Dynamic Controls. I'll assume here that you know what you want. If you don't, experiment :o).

9. Go to frame 30 on the animation slider controls. Add a pose you like to your figure. At this point, the dress will no longer line up with the figure, but that won't make a difference - the dress will drape correctly during the simulation.

10. Click "Calculate Simulation" under 4. Dynamic Controls and let the cloth room do it's thing :o).

