How do I add stitching to clothes?
tdrd
Posts: 0
I would like to enquire how I can put stitching on my materials.
I have modelled my article of clothing in Hexagon but there's nobody answering any of my questions over there (maybe something to do with Hurricane Sansy over the pond) so can anyone over here advise me on a good way of adding stitches, pleats and pockets onto clothing.
I've created jeans (not very good first time) but am now advancing a little with another attempt.
I'd like to make the pockets a little more realistic than using extruding inwards because this was not very good.
Can anyone please advise me on what to do.
Is there any easy free software to enable me to do this or can I do it with what I already have?
Thanks for any tips.
Terry
Comments
Do you want to have the actual geometry in your garment or do you want to do it with a texture?
If you want to do the texture, I recommend this product:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/stitch-witch-1
The lace function allows you to take a bit of texture (like a single stitch) and repeat it along a curve to create your seams.
I'm not sure what you mean by having the actual geometry in the garment.
I would like to be able to edit the material whilst it's on the model manekin if thats what you mean.
I think stitch witch is a bit too pricey for me at the moment - I lost my job earlier in the year and it's just a hobby I have to help fill in time between job searches to prevent me going mad.
How you add detail to clothing, depends on a number of factors.
If you not need the clothing to animate, you can get away with adding details with color maps and maybe displacement plus bump.
Over time, I have built a library of stitching, buttons and lace by photographing articles or parts of clothing and reworking them in GIMP. There are also many free resources on the web, like http://www.cgtextures.com/ where you can obtain similar things.
If features of clothing need to animate, or emulate their real world function, you will need that geometry incorporated in the design.
I know that some people say "adding geometry", but you basically endup building a model with those features.
You can also use deformers and morphs to add some details. But your model would have to have enough faces to support the new details.
There are also specialized modeling programs for doing just clothing, but you have indicated that you do not have a large budget to work with,
As an afterthought, I am adding this picture.
The first is wireframe showing detail for seams and folds
Second is render without texture.
Last is render with diffuse, displacement and bump maps added
Stitches are really too small for adding in geometry unless you have a model that was so detailed it would take forever to load and use up vast amounts of memory. It's usually added using bump maps. As stitches are very small and low if you use displacement it would have to be a very small amount.
To make stitches in any paint program. Draw short lines like stitches in a mid to dark grey on a transparant background. Blur very slightly. Then add a few pixels in a lighter grey at an angle to make it look like thread. If you have anything that will bend an image around a curve, you can save the stitches as .png images to re-use.
Colour the grey to match whatever you need; for instance blue jeans often have white or golden coloured thread. Increase the contrast a bit to get the bump map. Here are three sets of stitches as .png images; two straight and even like machine stitches and one a bit wavy and uneven for hand sewing - well my hand sewing anyway.
Here is a tutorial by Sveva that I found: I hope it helps some :-)
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/sv-stitching-made-easy/94363
I don't know much about Hexagon as I'm a Wings3d / Blender guy. But in those I would use "inset" in Polygon mode. Inset faces will creat an edge-ring around a selected set of faces. The edge-ring can then be selected and given a new material, UV-mapped to a different map, even subdivided and extruded for geometrical representation. In Wings3D the edge-ring can be "tweaked" (relaxed) to add a rounded look, very similar to Zbrush Group-loops. Dig in your Hexagon help guide. There should be something similar to Inset .... Wings3d is very old and has had it forever ......