Basics of HD Clothing Creation

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Basics of HD Clothing Creation

Meshing simple Panels to effective realistic clothing
(C) Malard 2009

Once you have acquired the knack to create and export meshes perfectly, this is the tutorial for you as I will explain the secret that most pro developers wont even do, the creation of clothing.

Create a Spline shape

Select your top view ready for creating, now go to the create tab and select the shapes tab (has a triangle circle and box in it). There you will see a number of Spline types, we want the line type so select it and then click hold the snap button (has a magnet as an icon and a 3 in it) and change it to 2.5. Its located on the topmost bar of the screen. Go to your top view and draw out a symmetrical shape of the type of clothing you roughly want. Lets draw out a bustier shape. (easiest as its only four possible sides per Panel)

Basically copy my shape. Notice its fits in four major squares, the base shape should not be bigger, and, as a matter of fact I recommend the size of the shape to be as I've drawn it or smaller, as you will have problems in the long run if you used bigger. Once you have drawn the shape, you need to copy it exactly. Select the shape and press ctrl-v and then select copy and press ok. Now you have two of the same shape, best if we moved it now hehe. Whilst keeping the shape selected select the move button and then right click on the snap tool with the 2.5 in it and de-select pivot. This will stop the second shape snapping to the first. Now move the shape, notice it is snapping to the grid, its useful to have your shapes organized into an order where you can easily select and de-select. I recommend moving this to the right give you more view space of your avatar reference.

Preparing the two shapes

Select a shape and go to its modifier list entry properties list and search for a small button with attach on it. Press the button and select the other shape. Now they are classed as a single shape. Also, once that is done, we will need to break the shape, Don't worry it wont change the shape in any way it will just break at each vertex. Select the shape and click the "vertex" selection

in the shapes modifier sub list and then select the whole shape once more, the vertices should show up in red. Now where you pressed the attach button, just to the right of that is the break button, press that. Now your vertices should have white squares around them. Your shape is now broke and ready for the next process:

Readying the shapes for sewing

With the shapes selected go to the modifier list and select "Garment maker". The shapes should then have polygons inside them. Sometimes Garment maker wont like them and say there are more than two vertices meeting at a point, this WILL happen if you imported the spine from Photoshop or Illustrator. This is because the first possible reason is that the Splines are standing up straight (90 degrees). A simple solution is to flatten them and then re-break them. Another reason possible for the error message to show is there are literally more than two vertices meeting at a point.

First off, however high defined you want your mesh to be, in the modifiers properties list the first thing in the list is density, lower the number in the box and you'll lower the poly count in the shapes.

WARNING: DO NOT PUT IN A VALUE OF 0.1 OR ABOVE! YOU WILL LOCK 3DSMAX!

lower poly count = lower poly count in long run but lower quality.

Then, you'll need to align the shapes, this is one thing that Garment maker does good is accurately align the shapes or should I say panels as they have polygons in side them. With the garment maker modifier, select in grey not yellow, and at the bottom of the list of properties, click the button with "none" in it and select the torso of the avatar reference. Now click the button beneath the selection button you just clicked, it should say "mark points on figure". This mode will help you set parameters for alignment.

As you can see we have a crude body shape in the top left hand corner of every view, we need to be in the front view port to have best alignment, where ever the red star is, select that equivalent area on the avatar body. The bottom most star is at the bottom of the torso, NOT the groin. The stars go round in a loop so once you have selected all of the places it will go to a star you already defined so de-select the "mark points on figure" button once you think you've defined all of them. Now the position points are placed, go to the panels sub selection in the Garment maker modifiers sub list. In its properties list of this sub selection, go down to the bottom and you will find a list of buttons which say the relative snap-able positions. Select your right side panel from the top view port and select the Front centre button, this will move your panel into the centre of the avatar and at the front (sort of <- I explain this a little further on). Then select the other panel and select back centre. Now your panels are aligned. In reference to the "sort of" I said earlier almost always the front panel cross collides through the naughty bits so you'll need to manually move all the Panels forward of the avatar until there is no cross colliding.

De-select the shape until there is nothing selected or nothing in the modifier list and then in your preferred side view move the mesh forward of the avatar a little bit until there is no cross collision. It may also pay to move the mesh down a little as different positions result in different shapes of cloths. Reselect the shape as we need to do more to it. What we need to do now is to create seams which help sew each of the panels together. Select the seams section in the garment maker modifiers sub list, go to the perspective view port and then select the two edges which are parallel to each other and would run under the arm. Do this for the other side as we see bellow:

The green highlighted button is the Seam reverse. Sometimes when seaming two edges the seam lines can cross each other, this can easily be straightened with this button.

Once that is done your ready to start sewing! (This is the fun and satisfying part or a total ass up)

Sewing and cloth morphing

With no other modifiers active, go to the modifier list and click on "Cloth", this is what morphs the panel meshes into the clothing. First off we need to set the panels to act like clothing. So, in the cloth properties, go down the list until you find a button that says "Object properties", click on that and then select the 'gonna be cloth object' in question, it could have a name or something like line01 if you didn't change it. Now click on the cloth selector to the right and go to the drop down list and select Cotton. Once you have selected that go to the bottom of the settings and tick "use edge springs" and "keep shape".

Now we need to take into account the main features of the body otherwise the mesh will just crimple into the body and it'll just be a big mess so, still in the object properties dialog, click "add objects" and add the following:

• female.leftleg

• female.rightleg

• female.nakedtop

• female.nakedpelvis

these are the main body meshes.

With these in the object properties dialog and selected, go to the bottom right and select "collision object"

recommended settings are:

Depth:	5	Tells cloth how dense the collision object is compared to the panel density.
Offset:	5	The point where the mesh will try not to go inwards to the body otherwise you'll get cross collision.
Dynamic fric (friction)	0 and 5 to 10	This is the friction number which adjusts the friction depending on what is simulated to make contact with the colliding object.
Static fric	0 and 5 to 10	The amount of friction that the colliding object possesses.

Now were ready to do the fun part and watch the mesh form together. It is important that you must switch off gravity other wise your mesh will fall before it even has a chance to mould. (The gravity button is in the "Simulation Parameters" section of the cloth modifier) After deactivating gravity, click "simulate local" and watch it go!

You'll notice at first it will look really weird and the mesh is cross colliding with itself but don't worry, if you have got your shape right then the mesh will form nicely. After a couple of minutes it will have calmed down and it will have formed a clothing shape or bustier. You will notice that the seams have joined up but there may be a small gap. This gap can be removed by clicking on the cloth modifier and then click on seams subsection. Then select the whole mesh and your seams will be highlighted red if you can see them. Now press "simulate local" and the seems should close up and sometimes the clothing will stretch and create a nice crinkle effect between the naughty bits, now you should have a nice bustier shaped top.

Finalizing

Now's the time to get your mesh into nice 3d product. Select "shell" in the modifier list and set the outer amount to about 2.5.

Your done! Bask in its glamour and beauty. All you need to do now is to physique it.