Ok, so several passes in the cloth room have shown me a few things about using dynamic cloth in an animation:

1. Start with zero pose, and have the first pose of your animation start between frame 5 and 15.

2. The first 30 frames of your animation are to drape the cloth, so you are going to have to trim them in post.

3. The cloth will drape properly and follow the character throughout the animation, regardless of the length of the animation if you follow point 1.

And I can animate dynamic clothing. It just takes a bit to figure it out.

And obviously, I don't want the mechanical arm...

I gave the cloth room a try. It didn't work out too well. I started her out in a pose, and unchecked starting from 0 pose. I know where I went wrong. I still think you have to edit out the beginning of the render in post. Unless you want your character holding their arms out straight to the side at the beginning of the scene...

If the test of draping from frame 1 works, I may ask you to create the Jedi uniform for her after all... ;)

I did a quick (well the post work wasn't quick) render of a walk cycle with Sydney and the dynamic shirt I used for the renders on here. I added in the belt from BLLE for Ryan because I wanted to see how it would behave on a character it's not rigged for. Didn't do too bad, but it ended up underneath her shirt. It's on YouTube because I don't know how to post videos here. I never really tried to.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MrEstorey

I am going to try draping from frame one and uncheck the draping from zero pose and see what happens.

So I would just have to edit the beginning of the render post production then? Niiiice. I am going to mess with that later today.

I take back what I said. I have actually used the cloth room quite a bit for the renders that I posted on here. The shirt that Sydney is wearing is dynamic. Which lead me to questioning using dynamic clothes for animation. You have to animate the cloth to fit it to the character. I do it by setting the pose I want them in at the 5th frame, reset back to zero pose at frame 1 and run the cloth room sim. Leads me to believe I would have to do that for each frame of an animation, because if you move the character after that, the dynamic cloth stays where it was rendered in the cloth room...

I do have a lot of patience. And I also have a lot of free time on my hands in the evening while at sea. There isn't much else to do, so I work on learning these programs. I haven't had much luck with the cloth room , however. I need to work on that one next. Right now I am still working on lights.

I will be needing one for Sydney G2. I will want to animate it eventually, so that's why I need to learn blender. So I can make conforming clothes for Sydney. I don't think I can animate dynamic clothes, can you?

Yeah, thanks for the offer. I was going to ask for some Jedi Knight uniforms awhile ago, but I think I will see if I can make them myself first before I ask someone else for it. I want to modify them anyway, to get a more primative feel to them (and go along with my story which takes place a millenia before Luke Skywalker is born).

And that's a pretty cool prop. 30 minutes, huh? I have a lot to learn...

I bought Poser 8 back in March just on a whim. I had no idea at the time what it was about or how to go about doing anything. I am one of those few people who can learn something just by watching someone do it, and get an understanding of why they do this instead of that, so I am good about watching tutorials, and I don't think of it as work. It's part of the hobby this has become for me. I am really only limited financially. I can't buy props and characters and all the neat stuff that is on here for sale. I have too many family commitments and not enough free cash. Poser 8 just kind of fell into my lap. I am retired US Navy, and it was on sale in a Navy Exchange in Baharain. I didn't even open it (much like I am doing to Blender right now) for the first couple of months I had it installed on my computer. Once I did, and got passed the initial shock of the interface, I was off and running. I have really only begun to get serious about what I was producing after messing with all the different features and creating Gigabytes of deleted material. Now I am in full swing, and that's why I am on here more than I was when I first signed up. So lets see where the next month or so takes me until I have to get back to sea (I am a merchant seaman after retirement, the sea gets in your blood).

I added both links to my favorites so I can read it more in depth later on. I am definitely going to do some research and reading before I create too many more renders...

Quote - In addition to Acadia's great suggestions, I would recommend trying to not have the render centered all the time. I used to have my characters right smack dab in the center of the render, and once I started deviating from this, I was finding more dynamic ways of image composition. Though if you do a lot of closeups like I tend to do, there's not too many ways around that.. :)  By no means am I an artistic genius, though. I just try to convey what I know. :D

In my first render, Sydney was the only thing in the scene, and it was meant to be a close up camera shot a la a movie scene. And I guess the only other render that she is centered in is The Encounter. I am going to post one more render that I made, where nothing is really centered in the scene. I will put this in the back of my mind. I tend to think like a cinematographer, so in a sense, I am trying to look at the big picture and tell a story.

Thank you for the thought.