I'm just starting out using the cloth room. I'm trying to pose a single frame with cloth draped over a figure. All I want is for the cloth to look convincingly draped. I don't want to animate anything. Just one frame. But here's what is happening:

First try: I posed the figure, added the cloth, went to the cloth room and set it up and ran it. The cloth draped perfectly. But I decided I wanted the cloth to be a little smaller, and while I was at it, I changed the figure pose a little, and moved the camera to a different angle.

Second try: I ran the cloth simulation and the figure started jumping around, the camera angle shifted, and the cloth ended up in the wrong place relative to the figure.

Third try. I deleted the figure and the cloth and started all over. I got the figure posed, added the cloth plane and went to the cloth room. As soon as I clicked on "clothify" with the cloth plane selected, the figure went back to his zero position instead of lying on his side, and the cloth, which had been scaled and positioned, went back to default size and was laying on the ground.

Now when I try to put the figure back in its pose, the cloth room always puts it back in zero posture, and when it drops the cloth it flips the figure all around and swings the camera around like crazy.

I suppose this all has to do with it trying to animate something it thinks I want to animate taht I don't really want it to animate. I've tried every button and tick box I can find to fix this. I even saved the file, shut down poser and restarted. Same thing. My figure dances the jig and my cloth drops where the figure used to be.

Can anyone point me to a tutorial, or give me some information on using the cloth room for NON-animated posing?

The way I do cloth - start the figure in its zero pose on frame 1, with the cloth positioned over it. Move to frame 30 or so and pose the figure in the way that I need the figure to be. This gives the cloth enough time to drape itself as the figure is moving into the desired pose. Set up the cloth with whatever decorative groups, pins, etc, then simulate.

You can use the posing camera to move around the figure while you're working on it, and keep the main camera positioned where you want it to be. Any camera movements you make between frames 1 and 30 (or however many frames you need to use), will be keyed along with the pose animations, so make sure you set your main camera up and then move to a different camera (posing camera) before running the sim.

As far as I'm aware, there isn't a way to successfully drape cloth without using the animation pallet. Because the cloth is (usually) built in a T-pose like the figure is, it requires the figure to move through animation in order to drape around the figure as it is moving into its final pose.

Fizwig2, it sounds like maybe you inadvertently added keyframes close to, but not in, the last frame. That can make the spline interpolation go berserk You could check for this by clicking the little "key" icon on the timeline to open the keyframe palette. If you see keys in some frames other than the first and last frame, delete them.

Generally, a dynamic cloth sim is inherently an animation (the cloth moves). Even if the doll doesn't move or change pose, the cloth moves. But you can set the simulation to do several -or dozens of- frames of drape in he initial frame. That may suit you.

Fizwig2, esha has some brilliant tutorials for dynamic cloth over at RDNA. Her masterclass tutorial is pricy, but worth it. She also has a free tutorial that is also very good and teaches you the basics. Just look in the free section :)

If you make any changes to the figure's pose, you have to do them all in the same frame. As AmbientShade stated, you load your zeroed out model at frame 1. I usually pose the figure at frame 15, giving me 15 frames for the cloth to settle on the figure. If you do make changes to the figure or the cloth, do it at the frame you did the pose in. And before you begin a simulation where you made changes to anything, there is a button on the bottom right that says 'Clear Simulation'. Click that before you run the simulation again.

I did my cloth room tuts in

Missing Manuals - Cloth Room = http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?book=cloth-room

It's all there, about.

Enjoy.

parenting the cloth to a bodypart of the figure will keep the cloth with the figure. for skirts i used to parent to hip.

havent done much in cloth room experiments since poser7

"parenting the cloth to a bodypart of the figure will keep the cloth with the figure"

This is not true (*) for all cloth vertices in any dynamic group, these are driven bij the sim mechanism only which looks at external forces (gravity, wind/air damping), at other cloth vertices (stretch), and at the vertices of any underlying object (collision)

This is true (*) for all vertices in the choreographed group (this is what choreographed is about, child object follows parent)

This is not true (*) for all vertices in the constrained group, these will stick to specific vertices of the underlying object whatever parent/child relationship is present

This is not true (*) for all vertices in the soft of rigid decorated group, these will stick to specific vertices of the cloth itself from any of the other groups

(*) as tested on PoserPro 2010, and communicated in this forum and in my tutorials. The sim result is not relative to the position of the parent object, when you move / animate the parent figure after the sim, the cloth won't follow but the sim needs to be re-run. Not retested on PP2012 / 14. You never know :-)

Thanks to all for the suggestions. This isn't clothing to be parented to the figure. It's a blanket thrown over a dead body, and it's not an animation, just a single panel.

Once I figured out to work animation, I made sure to make all my changes in frame 1 and that cleared up the problems I was having.

Thanks again to everyone who offered help.