New Jacket (need zippers, pockets, belt, etc.)
Tramp Graphics
Posts: 2,412
OK I'm working on a jacket for one of my characters. It's based upon the standard motorcycle jacket, with some "military" modifications, namely two external breast "flap covered" pockets instead of the single zippered pocket on the right breast. I still need zippers for the main closure and the side pockets though. So the first question is this: How do I make a zipper? Second question: How do I make the "internal" pockets?
Here's what the jacket is supposed to look like when finished: http://tramp-graphics.deviantart.com/art/Night-Warrior-cover-88476235
Here's what I have so far:
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The only way I've found to make a jacket zipper work is to create two narrow planes that stick out of the inner lapel/hem area and transmap them with a zipper texture that has a strong bump map. It takes some trial and error to line them up so the teeth appear to more or less interlock, but it can be done.
Wow, I'm amazed because that's how I was going to suggest making it before I read your post! I'm only amazed because I'm a noob!
Well, I've got the external pockets done, as well as the strips that will "become" the main Zipper. Still not sure how that'll work out.
Anywhat, take a look:
Just try and UV map them as flat and straight-sided as possible, then all you really have to do is scale and paste and transmap your zipper resource.
Google's your friend.
http://www.empressmills.co.uk/acatalog/Extra_Long_Metal_Teeth_Zip_Fasteners.html amongst many others. :)
Sites like the above should be used only for visual inspiration if you're creating from scratch, not as direct photo sources. Usually you won't get caught, but it's still a bad idea. I got my main zipper/fly resource from just photographing clothes that I had. CGTExtures.com and Morguefile.com are both licensed for commercial reuse, and doing a search for zipper on morguefile gets some okay results.
If you're going to be texturing clothes in the long term, getting a scanner or an okay digital camera is a very good idea. I've used a lot of scanned fabrics.
Sites like the above should be used only for visual inspiration if you're creating from scratch, not as direct photo sources. Usually you won't get caught, but it's still a bad idea. I got my main zipper/fly resource from just photographing clothes that I had. CGTExtures.com and Morguefile.com are both licensed for commercial reuse, and doing a search for zipper on morguefile gets some okay results.
If you're going to be texturing clothes in the long term, getting a scanner or an okay digital camera is a very good idea. I've used a lot of scanned fabrics.I've got a 12" x 17" flatbed scanner. Had it for almost nine to ten years, as well as an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier. My original thought was to manually make a full zipper in 3D.
I checked out the two sites, and CGTextures doesn't have anything, from the search I did, and there's something wrong with the image links regardless, No pictures are showing at all there, just the little blue "?" boxes signifying broken links.
As for texturing clothes in the long run; for the most part, I use shaders.
Oh good heavens, really? Well, I guess if each tooth is a four-vert cube that might not be prohibitive in terms of poly count, but I would expect smoothing and autoconform to freak out over calculating each of them on a figure in a scene. It would look great but it might be unriggable.
I don't have that problem at CGTextures (I can see the pics fine) but I didn't find zippers there, just at Morguefile. I offered it as a good general cloth resource.
Speaking of the strips, should they overlap one another or butt up against one another?
You could model a zipper and use the render as your texture map - then it would be entirely your own original creation:)
Oh totally. That's going to be more work, but it'd certainly give you a good future resource and possibly a very clean transmap if you render to .png.
They need to overlap enough that it looks like the zipper teeth overlap when transmapped. If they were to be a subjective half-inch wide, you would want there to be a quarter-inch overlap or even a little more usually. Then you offset the texture on one side a little from the other so there don't appear to be gaps visually when they're "zipped."
Yes, but it would almost be infinitely reusable...
The difference is ?
Sorry, I assumed you would be after a reference for modelling, although the metal tang is hanging the wrong way for horizontal openings. My bad.
Well, I tried actually modelling a 3D zipper, and it turned out alright as long as each half remained perfectly straight. The moment I tried to conform the halves of the zipper to their respective parts of the jacket, major distortion, particularly on the half connected to the left lapel (see attached pic). What can I do to stop that kind of distortion?
Take a close look at a zip - it is made of individual teeth which are clamped onto a strip of cloth.
There are many ways to make this - what I did was to make a tiny elongated cube, extrude a part of the front piece and scaled the face to make it taper. Made a long line and tessellated it to get sufficient points on which to replicate the tooth. Made a curve - for this part you can extract a curve from the jacket to get it to match exactly - and bent the line.
Then copied on a support to get the teeth distributed on the curved line Offset the same line and used ruled surface to make the cloth strip.:)
Well, I've gotten about 2/3 of the zipper with teeth. This is a very tedious process, let me tell you. 8-/
Here's the progress so far.
Any particular part you have problems with that I could maybe help out on?
What I did took possibly ten minutes.
I can't see clearly from your pic, but can imagine that if the zip extends all the way up the open collar it will have to twist at some point to get behind, which could present a technical problem - I'll have to give that a test:)
Edit: Just tried this on a curve extracted from a twisted cylinder - the copy on support does follow the twist, although the transition is abrupt in places - a little tweaking on the rotation fixes it in no time.:)
No technical problems so far, though I'm not really sure how you did yours. I'm manually aligning each tooth. I made one tooth, UV mapped and set the Material zone (for the shaders), placed it on the one edge and copied it, rotated the copy 180°, and aligned it, then selected both, copied and pasted again, aligned the copies until I had ten pairs, selected those twenty, copied and pasted, positioned, them as close as possible as a group then individually, and repeated. Once I got to the point where the zipper splits, I continued aligning them in pairs to make sure everything was spaced, before deleting the "extras". Like I said, very time consuming. I'm not sure exactly how many hundred teeth there are, but I'm sure it's well over two to three hundred easily, if not two to three hundred pairs.
And yes, the teeth will go all the way up the open collar. I haven't gotten that far yet though.
Sorry, I thought you were doing it as explained in my post above:)
Yes, your way would be very long and tedious!
Like I said, I really have no clue what you meant in your first post. particularly, "Copy on Support"? Never heard of that. Is that anything like the "Step and Repeat" function in Adobe Illustrator and InDesign? What's "Ruled Surface" too?
I figure I've got another 300 or so teeth to place. By the time all is said and done, there'll probably be somewhere around 1200+ individual teeth on this zipper.
My apologies - difficult to assess the knowledge level of someone when giving advice. Don't want to go insulting folks by assuming they are beginners:)
Copy on support is a function under the utilities tab - fourth from the left. You have two items - the item you want to copy and the support. Could be a curve or a mesh. You select the item you want to copy, click on "copy on support" and click on the support item. If the support item is a curve, it will make as many copies as there are verts and place one on each vert. If the support item is a mesh, it will make a copy and place one on each poly. You set the orientation and some other properties in the properties panel. If you have "Clone" on, you can make changes to the original and the copies will follow suit.
I don't know Illustrator or inDesign, but what you are describing seems to be more in line with the "Multiple copies" function in Hex - that is the icon next to copy on support. You set how many copies, the distance apart and rotation.
Ruled surface is a function under the surface modelling tab - third from left. It connects two or more curves to form a mesh. The condition is that the curves must have an equal number of verts. You select the function, then click on the curves in succession to join them.
Ah. That would have been nice to know before I started manually copying and placing these things. It's a bit too late to start all over now. Definitely something to keep in mind next time though.
Which is why Hex has a manual -pages 201 and 154:)
Believe me, it will profit you to scrap what you have already done and start over - try it in a duplicate file if you don't want to entirely scrap it.
Have you given thought as to what you are going to do with it when it's done? That is, if you are going to actually use the zip mesh and not a render of it as a transmap.
If you keep all the teeth as separate items, it means you would have to texture/colour each one separately, which will make for a massive file. If you weld them as one item, you can texture once, but you will loose the UV mapping.
Then there is the question of the individual teeth deforming along with the movement of the clothing - which you will obviously not want to happen. There is a function in Studio - probably also Poser - to rigidify things like buttons. I'm not sure how that works, or if it will work on a zip. You may want to do some investigating of that before going to a lot of possibly wasted work.
Actually, they all share the same material zone, so they'll all get the same shader. And, besides, the UV map for them has them stacked, so they'd share the same texture map anyway. That's why I made the UV map and material zone first before making the copies. As for deformation, given their minute size and sheer number, I doubt that will be an issue. Any "Deformation" should spread out evenly and thus be minimized for each individual tooth.
I see you have thought it through - good luck with the project:)
Most definitely. I typically don't use the stock textures on a lot of my characters' costumes anyway, often times replacing them entirely with Shaders (Ashley's outfits being a prime example), And for the few outfits I've made myself, Once again, shaders work for me, particularly the Ultimate Shader Pack (for their different color chrome shaders). The zipper teeth are going to be done up using either the "Polished Gold" or Polished Brass shaders from that set. So I needed the teeth anyway. Here's the latest update.
Update time again:
The jacket is done and ready for UV mapping and material zoning. Take a look:
I finally have the UV mapping done. This was definitely no picnic to UV map with all of the pieces it's made up of. Next step, adding material zones.
Wel, I've got the Material zones set, Object file saved, and the final outfit rigged in Daz, and, while the zipper worked out fine (no problems from the 1200 + teeth), the shoulders are going screwy when posed, even though the weigh maps are where they technically "should" be (the left and right collar bones). The first image shows how the jacket and armor should look when in a standing pose with the arms down at the sides. The second shows how it's actually looking on a Genesis figure with the arms down at the sides. The pectoral armor, shoulder straps and epaulettes, (and shoulder seam on the jacket), should all be up on the top and inside of the shoulder and collar, not stretched down onto the upper arm. The deltoid armor should be up on the deltoids, not down on the biceps and triceps. What can I do to fix this?