Quote - I have tried and tried to use Cloth Room for this but I can not get anywhere with it... the problem is no matter how I tilt and pose before running the simulation they always look "laid out" as opposed to dropped :(

 

A number of tricks:

Forcefield Generator (wind) can put some interesting and very organic twist on things as they fall/drape
You can't change gravity direction, but you can tilt the props (furniture, cloth)
Changing orientation of the cloth item can help quite a bit
Reshape the item before simulating with magnets/morph tool

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