I was woundering if any one here would give good sugestion. Would you make your cape figur or Use morph targets to make your cape posable thanx

Hi Grid, much would depend on what you wanted to do with it. The more traditional methods these days would probly be to make it a conforming figure with ERC channels, but many prop base capes exist with morphs to help shape them. I am partial to using a prop cape, parent it to the neck or chest of the figure, and then use magnets on the cape to pose it. I can get a much great range of poses this way than with morphs alone or by making it a conforming figure. If I were going to make it a figure, I would set it up with body groups only for the neck and/or chest and conform that part to the figure. The other body parts for the cape would be non traditional groups, and I would use a combination of ERC and morphs for shaping and posing. Hope that helps.

I'm contemplating using body handles to get a "grip" on places where a cloak would drape over arm or knee. Might be possible to get a more organic look with that, I'm thinking...

@nomuse - I'm not really up on body handles. From what I have seen illustrated, they sort of look like extended not traditional bodyparts that can be hidden when rendered and are used to manipulate the mesh. If you could give me more info on body handles, or point me to a thread where they are discussed more in depth, I would appreciate it. All I really know about them is that Anton - genius that he is - came out with the first applications I had heard of in his Eygptian skirt. But I have no real knowledge of how they work, nor any clothing that makes use of them to look at.

I managed to figure them out after buying Anton's Spywear at DAZ (which are also really nice illustrations of the power of AltGeom dials). You are pretty much on the money. Body handle is actually a little bit of geometry (I suppose you could slip in a call to a poser primitive instead), treated like a regular body part with parent, weld, and so forth. The first one I got to work I did by including it into the heirchary when I made a character right in the window (Poser 4). What it can do is give you ability to apply rotations to a small zone (defined by spherical zones, of course) of an otherwise contiguous mesh. I have not yet learned if you could do translations in the same way you can with a magnet. It's just a thought, really. Most of a cape would be better with body parts and some key morphs. And for one of those long, trail-in-the-wind types, maybe a lot of body parts and some EasyPose dials....

Thanks it sounds very interesting. But that does not surprise me given it was Anton's brain child. I like keeping things simple, and for me magnets are simple and effective when it comes to moving mesh around freely in Poser. Morphs can get messy, and jp settings are limited. But Magnets can move mesh in ways not possible with other methods I have tried. And I haven't tried everything - like body handles, so there may be better ways. I will have to look into them more, just to get an understanding for what they are about.

I have found morphing only will work Well with one surface cape. Not like mine I have made into 2 surfaces So your able to texture both sids Difrently,and See them right off in poser. The morphing Kinda Distorts them to much and you get breack through from The other mesh =( I have never used magnets befor I was Messing little last night With them It seems like it has its posabilit`s. I would like to Try this more when i get home from work.

Keep us posted on how you make out. Always interested in seeing what others are doing. Particular, for me, if you go with magnets as I find them very useful. :O)