Guild of Writers

I've been trying to find a way to make the tapestries in Tsoidahl Prad more realistic (rather than just a perfectly smooth plane.) And after a bit of searching, I learned how to make cloth simulations. But I don't really get it... I learned how to pin the cloth with Weight Paint mode so it can hang like a tapestry, but when it's done baking, it goes back to being a normal plane!

Isn't there a way to KEEP it in it's cloth form? Or is that only visible in renders and such? I feel like there's some really simple solution, like pushing some button...

Okay, you found out that you have to bake it. That's good, and a first step.
But baking a cloth simulation is not like baking a lightmap. Baking a cloth sim does not freeze the cloth at the last state in the simulation timeline. Instead, baking creates a complete animation curve for each vertex in the subdivided / subsurf'd cloth mesh to play the cloth movement later fast. To get the cloth freezed at the state you like, you have to choose a frame in the timeline where your cloth looks good, and then apply all modifiers at that frame. This clears the cloth simulation and applies the result to the mesh itself, so it gets deformed.

I don't know if this will also work with Blender, but in Max you can "skin" the cloth to a few bones (9-12) and let the cloth simulation run on the bones. This way you can export the animated cloth to uru. (For example a cloth in the wind)

Chrstopher

Thanks guys. I applied the modifier and it was perfect. Just a tip though, in case anyone else tries this in the future: BE SURE TO DELETE THE VERTEX GROUP BEFORE EXPORTING. It's under editing (F9) and Links and Materials. I didn't think that was necessary, but when I exported it I got an error, and figured out that was the problem.