I am not sure what to think about the new cloth feature. For me it does not feel very comfortable to use. Maybe I am just too stupid, but I do not even understand the compass metaphor.

For me the old Cloth Room was very intuitive. I only had to tell Poser what the fabric was, what the body was, and start the simulation. Even with the default settings the clothing usually draped well. Even clothes loaded from object files or exported from DAZ draped nicely unless the polygon count was too high.

With the new Poser Cloth system I have to draw weights. First I have to learn what that even means. Without reading the manual or asking ChatGPT I would assume it means the part that is affected by gravity and moves downward. And what does “constrain” mean? I only know this because I have used Poser for a very long time. A constraint is the part that keeps the fabric stiff like an object so it does not move.

So with the new Poser Cloth system I have to draw all of this onto my clothing. Ok, I understand that part. But now I have a question from a simple adult user who grew up with the old Cloth Room, where an object simply wrapped around a figure like clothing does in the real world. Why can Poser Cloth not just do this automatically?

I think simple clothing like a dress or a shirt might work fine with the new system. But let us take Tipol as an example. For example the Molly Chubb Dress. How exactly am I supposed to draw the weights and constraints for something like that?

Richard, I really appreciate your effort and your knowledge in explaining how to set up the new Poser Cloth system. But how would you draw this dress? The full outfit? I would be happy to gift it to you if you do not already have it.

Because if even Tipol struggles to show us her well draped dress, how can normal users figure out how to draw the weights and constraints correctly?

Let us imagine this is not an old dress. Let us pretend it is a completely new item that just came fresh from Tipol’s imagination. She already knows how the dress should fall and how it is supposed to look. If she does not have Poser 13, she cannot show us simple users how it should look. Without that reference, how are we supposed to imagine where we need to draw all the lines to achieve the correct result?

Yes, we can be creative. But honestly, most of the dresses I bought from Tipol were not for creative draping. I bought them because they already looked beautiful, and because I knew that every single piece from Tipol drapes well and produces results like the promo images.

Yes, I understand why this change was made for Poser 14. And by the way, thank you very much for explaining the reasons behind it. This is exactly how I imagine good communication, so thank you for that.

You asked what kind of change I would have liked to see in Poser 14. For me personally, it would be great if Blender material tutorials could be used in Poser, or even better if the materials themselves could be used with some level of compatibility. From what I have read, it seems that you have already made progress in that direction with the new material room, although I have not tested it yet.

I never had any problems with the old Cloth Room. It always worked perfectly as long as the polygon count was not too high. But if you asked me what a replacement for it should look like, I would honestly say to look at dForce in DAZ and simply copy that idea. I do not know anything about the programming behind it, but in DAZ you put the clothing on the figure, press simulate, and it fits. It is that simple.

For me, every version of Poser has always been great. The only thing I ever really wished for was more compatibility with DAZ. It would be wonderful if DUF files, whether props or figures, could simply be imported and used without needing a script.

Another really great feature for Poser 14 would have been something that could make old scripts usable again. I do not even know if something like that could be done automatically, but a tool or script that helps restore compatibility would be amazing.

In general I always like to be surprised by new software versions. I originally did not want to switch to Poser 13 either, because I thought I would have to redo many materials. But it rendered so incredibly fast in SuperFly that the upgrade was absolutely worth it.

What would make Poser 14 worth upgrading to for me? I am not really sure. Maybe more compatibility with materials. Right now, since the Cloth Room is missing, Poser 14 is just decoration on my hard drive. Poser 13 is perfect for me and already offers everything I need.

But the point about creativity is true. With this system I can play with the clothing much more, and that is probably the reason why I would use Poser 14. It is fun to experiment with the sliders and see what happens.

However, to really understand Poser Cloth I think a person needs a good imagination and the ability to picture physically how fabric behaves. And that is exactly the point that will make it difficult for many users to draw constraints and weights on a piece of clothing.

It would be nice if the cloth simply started by falling naturally downward and wrapping around the body underneath. No exaggerated gravity, no extreme stretch settings, just a natural drape around the figure without passing through the body.

For those of us who are not native English speakers it might also help if some of the parameter names were changed. Personally I do not find some of the terms very easy to understand, and the German translation is not very self explanatory either.

But as I said before, I already struggle to understand the compass metaphor.