This is a continuation of what I was trying to do when I ran into this problem - Cloth Room: Calculates okay, but when I play - nothing

I wrote a long OP for this new thread but, as commonly happens, the forum software here screwed it up and deleted everything I'd typed. So this is just a placeholder to start this thread

Fascinating idea ... complex, but should be doable.

I've done several tests with the 16 streamers and, as I suspected, getting sensible values for the dynamics parameters (because the cloth room dynamics isn't really designed for this) seems to be the biggest problem.

And getting a good mesh for the streamers - that seems to be the biggest problem too :o) !

I'll be using the choreographed group to do the movement of the dancers (i.e. the bottom few vertices of each streamer will be put in the choreographed group).

Simply moving the whole Streamers prop vertically upwards so that the ends tof them are 4 feet off the ground at the final (key) frame works nicely - the streamers drape in a nice, natural manner. I should probably use that pre-draped version as the starting mesh, rather than what I'm currently using

Rotating the Streamers prop through 360 degrees by setting Y-Rotate to 360 on the final frame... well, it sort of works. The ends of the streamers do what they should, and the tops of the streamers wind around the maypole, but the rest of the streamers stretch and billow ridiculously. And of course, since I haven't set the collision parameters appropriately and haven't really thought about the streamer mesh, the bits of the streamers that end up wrapped around the pole intersect each other and the pole.

Choreographed groups seems the obvious way to the in and out, clockwise and anticlockwise weaving of the dancers. My first thought was to have two choreographed groups... but Poser sauys no - just one. My second idea was to have two separate streamers props, one for those that go widdershins*, the other for those that go deasil* - but Poser says I can't do both cloth simulations together, so that's out. Morph targets next - tried a few things and it went haywire, but I think I've worked out a way to do it. It basically requires as many MTs as there are streamers. I'll try to briefly explain the idea - the first MT puts each dancer at the position where they're passing their neighbour, so I apply this MT at let's say frame 20 - so from frame 1 to frame 20 MT1 increases by 0.05 per frame, and from frame 20 until the end of the simulation MT1 stays at 1.0. MT2 will take the dancers to the next passing point, and will be the vectors from the positions at frame 20 to the required positions for the next passing point. Etc. I'll need to test this with a simple setup, just 4 streamers, and I'll need to do a couple of drawings to make sure I get the MTs correct. I'll post those drawings when I get the thing worked out.

I just can't get the constrained group to work when the maypole itself is a prop, although it works fine when it's a figure. So a maypole figure it is then.

Final problem for the initial stage of this - I've just (re-)realized that Renderosity's forums don't let me upload PZ3s or ZIPs. So maybe I'll take this topic over to the Hivewire forum instead.

*truly getting into the maypole spirit here

You do this and you become to the Cloth Room what bagginsbill is to the Mat Room!!

No chance of that - I don't even like the cloth room, and I've already had enough 'fun' in it doing dynamic necklaces and earrings just over four years ago. That was the last time I used it - the idiosyncracies were just too much for me ! ;o) - Experiments in creating necklaces etc for use in Poser's cloth room

I'm only doing this for a laugh ! (I have a very strange sense of humour...)

I've just completed my first basic test of the MT approach - the principle's sound, and the idea works !

Further updates over on Hivewire, where I can post PZ3s, OBJs, ZIPs etc - Using Poser 11s cloth room for a maypole dance !