Shader emissive mode on, if anything else within VaM updates or modifies any material shader on the clothing item during this time it will break down. If you're not using physics on your clothing item you should turn this off. This might be why it breaks down eventually, I haven't used sim mode much myself but on a few clothing items.
" I'm using Shader emissive mode which is maybe the problem, even though its not a sim item, because it was thje only setting that actually made the original texture show up. This is an item I ported for a scene I'm working on. Without shader Emissive mode on, the object simply become smooth and black but glows. "
As I can't see how the actual clothing item's materials are all set, render queue, name etc.. for each material I can't troubleshoot remote with the information given. It should be enough to have the main texture set and have another decal texture for your emissive channel (or leave it blank). Set all material's render queue to 2400 (default) before activating the plugin and see if it helps. Almost sounds like a z-order problem of sorts.
Plugin settings only need to be "Render original texture" On for the effect and all other options Off.
If you have the emissive plugin as a session plugin too, then try to disable it. It might interfere if any material name contains "(em)".
Ok, so I just got it working on a clean install of vam with the default g2f on default create scene with my clothes that I've been porting. I thouight it was all good, and I just needed to clean up my main vam install but then I wanted to make sure so I just brought over the morph for my ported look that goes with the clothes, and installed CUA manager, and Clothing Rewrapper. As soon as I reimport, and proceed to rewrap the necklace that I had working, it does the same thing and covers the entire necklace with a blank textureless version of the necklace, but you can see bits of the textured necklace poking through.
So I'm pretty sure there is a compatibility issue with https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/clothing-rewrapper.35728/
Necklace on G2F base simply importing the duf and applying textures, no wrap adjustments. Messy, but Emissive is working great!
Necklace after using Clothing Rewrapper. Much cleaner wrap, but breaks everything else.