hi all,

I'm glad to help you out on this. It doesn't take a month, trust me. But perhaps each one of you, or just Robynsveil, is able to wrap up the debate into some questions for me to address.

BTW I'writing a tutorial on this aimed at non-tech users like artists and photographers, but I won't let you wait till it's finished. I'm happy to share right now.

Perhaps I can kick off with the following.

Like all 3D, Poser is about 3D meshes. It cannot create them, but it has (limited) tools for deforming them. The root of all is a bones-driven deform, you can Pose all meshes (tables, houses, figures, clothes, hair, ...) by altering the relative posing of "bone"pseudo-objects which in turn drive the deform of the surrounding 3D mesh. You can create and alter (and just view) bone structures in the Setup Room. Here you can turn table-legs of a straight prop into legs, and make it walk. When object A conforms to B, it means they will share the same bone structure so with the same bone (say Left forearm) you drive the deformation of Vicky as well as the sleeve of her jacket, etc.

Any mesh also can get deformed by magnets and morphs. The magnet will push and pull to the vertexes (points) of the 3D mesh, and morphs are just (partial) alternative meshes. When you have a "0" and a "1" alternative, for each relevant vertex of a mesh, you can take middle positions as well with a simple dial. This way, you can make expressions to faces.

To some extent, the various ways can be combined: the morph amount is driven by the bone position. This way, one can make muscles buldge while arms are bending.

A third way is simulation. used for hair and cloth, but not necesserily for clothing or other body portions. the hair-sim is also fun for grass, streaks and strings, while the cloth-sim is great for curtains, flags, drapery, and covers over statues and cars in exhibitions. The sims not only react to reposing and morphing an underlying figure, but they also respond to gravity and wind, or natural forces alike (think: long hair of a mermaid swimming against the stream). Grass and flags in the wind, that simple.

Sims are designed to make complex deforms simple for you. Just put an oldtimer car in your scene, hold the hires square primitive as a sheet some feet above it, and just drop (drape) the sheet in the cloth sim. It takes a complex form, and in the case you use poser to generate the examples for your oil painting (the origin of Poser!), it tells you the way the cloth textures have to look like, folds included. Then image Vicky comes along, and put one foot on a corner of the sheet. Then the car slowly drives away, underneath it, while Vicky manages to keep standing up. Can you tell me how the cloth will deform over time? Poser does. And it does different for silk and thick plastic.

Now imagine Vicky to do a ballet piece, but not in tutu but in a long evening gown. In real life, the gown will have so much weight and such an air resistance that it will resist too strong movements, too strong pose-changes in too few animation frames.  Ever tried those strong moves in your just washed jeans? Some clothes will make some poses impossible. The sim will teach you all that. The parameters help you to tell latex form jeans from lace from studded leather. It makes a difference.

Hence, we're talking cloth room. not clothes room. Mind the difference. And please do mind that we're talking about a great feature in a $200 piece of software. We're not into $4000 SoftImage or alike. That's a completely different world, in a different solar system. Cloth sim in Poser is quite good actually, but limited and not perfect. Like the rest of it as well.

So, questions please. Fire at will. Or ignore me, whatever suits you best.

- - - - - 

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though