Daz Studio release a new dynamic system that can drape a dress in a single frame. I discovered that Poser has had this ability for some time. It's in the under-used Cloth Room.

Basic workflow
Here is the basic workflow of draping a dress in single frame. If you have questions about the Cloth Room or settings, please consult the user's manual.

Step 1
Load the figure and conform the clothes. Set the morphs and pose the figure as normal.
Here we have Freja and Adiene's Destrah all setup and wearing fabiana's lovely Baires Liberty 2010 outfit.

As you can see, her right leg kicks up through the skirt. While the skirt does have movement handles, we are going to use the Cloth Room.

Step 2
With the skirt selected, Open the Cloth Room and click the New Simulation button.

Since we are only working with the first frame, set the Start frame and End frame to 1.
Set the number of frames that will be used to drape the skirt. I find between 10 and 30 are sufficient.

Step 3
We need to setup the portion of the clothing we want to drape.
Click the Clothify... button and select the Hip body part.
This technique works if the skirt is a single body part.

Step 4
Now we have to setup what the skirt will drape against.
Click the Collide Against... button.

Use the Add/Remove... button to add the figure to list of what objects and body parts the skirt will collide against.
Importantly, Uncheck Start draping from zero pose. Now Poser will use current pose start the draping.

Step 5 Too keep Destrah's skirt from falling off (unless that's the look you are going for) we need setup a region that will not move during the draping.
Click the Edit Constrained Group... button.

Now this is where it gets tricky. You have to use the Group Editor to select a region. If it possible, I like using a belt material to select the group.
Please read the manual on how to use the Group Editor tool.

Step 6
Use the Dynamics Control section for the cloth settings. Again, read the manual and/or look up videos on how to use this section because I don't know. Despite what my ego thinks, I don't know everything.

Once everything is setup, click the Calculate Simulation button.
Poser now drapes the skirt for the number of frames we set earlier and the single current frame. Depending on how complex the geometry and the pose, this could take a several minutes.

Job Done
If we did our job right, Destrah's leg now kicks up the skirt.

If someone with more knowledge with the Cloth Room knows a better way, please let us know. We could all learn.

Great tip, thank you for sharing this!

(Still can't auto-quote the OP in a thread? /sigh )

@willdial

Yes, this has been known for some time, though it's still worth bringing up since hybrid items can provide a great deal of flexibility and good-quality effects.

One thing to note is that not all clothing items have good geometry at the group boundaries to set up a realistic soft-conform zone. But, for most dresses and skirts that use ghost-bones and handles instead of thigh bones for their deformations, they are usually set up with a nicely defined waist/skirt region that can easily be converted. (I tend to combine both regular rigging and ghost-bones for fine-tuning skirts and similar items that can move independently of the figure's limbs.)

There are a number of products and freebies that are intentionally set up like this. These "hybrid" or "combo" items can be pretty neat, though one often has to hunt for them, specifically.

It's worth noting that buttons, separate trims, decorations and accessories that are supposed to appear "attached" can all be set up to be soft-conforming. Varying the settings for those particular groups can help retain their shape and/or help them follow the underlying geometry a bit better.

Lastly - If one wishes, for ease of use, editing the object file in a product that can edit the UV/Group/Material zones is often the most pain-free way to create a good boundary area. All that is needed is to set up a new material zone and then pointing to that in the Cloth Room. (Select by Material Zone) UVMapper Lite (Free) is probably most people's go-to mapper. Roadkill is another and has a 3D interface to make face-selection easier. Though, saving the resulting object with a new name and then making a copy of the CR2 and editing it to point to the new object is the way to go. Editing an existing object without at least creating a backup is "A Bad Idea." :)

Seriously, you JUST now figure this out? Was it the word "Drape" that gave it away?

Seriously, though, one of the biggest problem's with Poser is that the company doesn't do enough to de-mystify it's own product. I'm constantly attacked and criticized when I say that SM needs to have a higher web presence to point these things out in the forums.

EClark1894 posted at 4:32PM Wed, 01 November 2017 - #4317129

Seriously, you JUST now figure this out? Was it the word "Drape" that gave it away?

Seriously, though, one of the biggest problem's with Poser is that the company doesn't do enough to de-mystify it's own product. I'm constantly attacked and criticized when I say that SM needs to have a higher web presence to point these things out in the forums.

Uh, yeah. When the Cloth Room first came out, I tried it a few times. Since no one explained on how to use dynamic clothing with a heavily morph figure, I completely forgot about it. Like Morkonan pointed out, not all skirts work well in cloth room and there are ghost bone options available. The skirt I used in the example has great working ghost bones.

I agree with you that Smith Micro doesn't do enough to show how to use Poser. When I look around in the 3D Studio, Maya, and Lightwave sites, they use the word. Workflow. Basically, workflow is the steps involved with the tool to achieve the output you want. It seems Smith Micro doesn't think about Workflow. So we have these features with no idea on how to use them. Vendors have no idea on how to use them. So they crank out the same old conforming figures.

Vendors have no idea on how to use them. So they crank out the same old conforming figures.

There are lots of vendors who have created dynamic clothing for Poser: Karanta, Tipol, Biscuits, Frequency, Nerd3d, Lully, Esha, Kaleya, adh3d, Leilana, Nirvy, Yaneelis3d, Leilana, threedplayer, sshodan, Vyktoria, Fugazzi to name just a few. Many of them include workflow and/or tutorial on dynamic clothing.

Hybrid clothing would be nice though (partly conforming and dynamic)

wimvdb posted at 8:17AM Thu, 02 November 2017 - #4317202

Vendors have no idea on how to use them. So they crank out the same old conforming figures.

There are lots of vendors who have created dynamic clothing for Poser: Karanta, Tipol, Biscuits, Frequency, Nerd3d, Lully, Esha, Kaleya, adh3d, Leilana, Nirvy, Yaneelis3d, Leilana, threedplayer, sshodan, Vyktoria, Fugazzi to name just a few. Many of them include workflow and/or tutorial on dynamic clothing.

Hybrid clothing would be nice though (partly conforming and dynamic)

I've got a whole list of both conforming and dynamic clothing vendors from Hivewire, Daz and Renderosity listed in my directory.

Conforming clothing is a problem for the Cloth room, BUT as I understand it, the answer to that is the Fitting Room, which, unlike the Setup Room, (or so I've been told) doesn't slice up the geometry files to make them conform.

I'll take a look. But, I have never found a good workflow with dynamic clothing and a heavily morph figure (ie, Victoria 4 with the She Freak morphs).

EClark1894 posted at 12:23PM Sat, 04 November 2017 - #4317129

Seriously, though, one of the biggest problem's with Poser is that the company doesn't do enough to de-mystify it's own product. I'm constantly attacked and criticized when I say that SM needs to have a higher web presence to point these things out in the forums.

If you've read any of my other posts, you know I'd be right beside you and would viciously defend anyone who dared attack you for stating... the obvious. :)

Just a note on real-time stuffs, this Rooster Teeth vid shows them animating physics in real-time using Poser's incorporated Bullet-Physics. It's pretty darn cool, really.

https://youtu.be/V1lNSidRkJ0?t=2519

(Around 42:00 or so.)