I'm not sure how many of you caught Jaime's posts regarding using ArahWeave 
(http://www.arahne.si) for cloth similations.  No, it doesn't simulate 
dynamic cloth, but it similates creating the cloth/fabric itself, which can 
then be used as a texture for whatever purpose you want.  You can create 
some incredibly realistic materials with this.  And it's fun!

Here is a link to some of Jaime's experiments. 
http://www.ignorancia.org/en/index.php?page=Synthetic_fabrics

Recently, I decided to try to install ArahWeave, which only runs under 
Linux, on my Windows XP system, using a free VMWare image and the (free) 
VMWare.  While I had quite a few problems initially, it's actually very 
easy, if you grab the right Linux image.

First, you'll need the vmware player, available here: 
http://www.vmware.com/download/player.  So download and install that.

For any Windows user, the SuSE Linux distro with KDE desktop should be 
fairly familiar.  Honestly, I think even my Mom could use it these days. 
Here's a link to what I am using:  http://developer.kde.org/~binner/vmware. 
It's about 800MB, though, so be forewarned.  Download the zip file and unzip 
it to wherever you want.  Once it's unzipped, simply start the VMWare player 
and select your downloaded (and unzipped) vmware image file.  It should 
start booting Linux.

Once Linux has started up, you can use the web browser (Konqueror) to 
download and install ArahWeave.  Their website already has pretty good 
newbie Linux instructions on how to install ArahWeave, so I won't go into 
that.

Once ArahWeave is installed, follow the tutorial on their Web page, and you 
should get a general feeling of how to create a woven texture.  For me, it 
took a couple hours of messing around before I was able to do anything 
remotely useful, but soon, I got the gist of it.  Even so, I'm still largely 
lost in the software, but I can create nifty checker patterns.  Or, just use 
any of the many fine included fabrics, changing whatever colors here and 
there that you want to.

I'm still an extreme novice, but what I am already able to do is pretty 
cool.  I figured other Windows users could benefit from this post.

Good luck!

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