Please could I have some advice on how to improve these cloth textures?
I’ve recently been trying to create suitable materials for a character’s clothes: I’d like to make them as realistic as possible. Textures and materials have never been my strong suit, so I’m also trying to improve my skills and knowledge about them.
I’ve made these textures as good as I can, but they still seem very ugly and unrealistic to me - advice, please?
(Also, I haven’t yet added any detail to the clothes - I wanted to get the materials right first.)
Textures and purposes:
Dark leather (boots, gloves) - I’m trying to get the effect of a thick layer of soft leather, for warm and comfortable-looking boots and gloves.
Tan leather (leggings) - A variation of the dark leather that I wanted to look a little softer and more flexible: it’s also a thinner material.
Thick wool texture (tunic) - a material knitted with thick, rather scratchy wool.
Thinner wool texture (shirt) - a variation of the thick wool texture for thinner, softer wool.
The textures should all be in the attached blend file, too.
Your blender file does not show you model. Although difficult to see from your images I think you need to look at mimising distortion in your UV map. The dress looks like it has some. The texture appears bigger in some parts and very small in other parts. If you are using seamless textures then this needs to be consistant.
The textures are suitable for clothing. Im not sure they look entirely woolen but will be fine to make clothing from. You can look at seamless texture making software to get more knowledge here, or download any you can find from the internet.
Clothing will never look right until you detail the clothing. This is so important when making clothing. Sculpt creases and folds into clothes. Additionally look over the internet for different type of creasing/folding. There is more to this than you think.
When you have it made with good UV create a texture map from the seamless textures. Embed some depth information into your texture map. (depth from normal map, desaturated is the easiest way). The reason for this is that when you add detail to your clothes and apply a fabric seamless texture it will be difficult to see the detail. (Other ways exist but this is a typical method). You may also know how to scuplt and create clothing but I would advise you test textures on clothing that is already made. It will help you a lot when experimenting with textures and materials because you will see the end result.
Material properties. This will help you more so with leather etc. cotton and wool and similar fabrics are easier to recreate and I think you know this. A better setup for leather in the materials will help your boots more so than the texture, although the two are still important as they work together.
Look for tuts of making and texturing clothing if any of the above is confusing. I know there are plenty of tuts on this subject.
Thank-you: that is very helpful!
Looking over the tunic again, I realise that you are right - the texture is distorted, and I’ll work on sorting that out.
The reason that I did not include the clothing mesh in the blend file was that, although I plan to use these textures on that clothing mesh, I also wanted to use them as ‘reference textures’ for other clothing, in order to have some sort of basic formula that I knew would work to follow and experiment with when creating similar cloth-like materials: before looking at wrinkles and folds, hems and fastenings and seams, I wanted to try to make a realistic texture that I could then apply those things to. Thinking about it again, not first completing the outfit with wrinkles and small details was a mistake. What you are saying makes more sense to me - I should first make the outfit mesh as detailed and realistic as possible in order to see how realistic the material will look finally, and I can then take from that the knowledge of the proper settings to use for other outfits, too.
That said, I’m not particularly good at sculpting folds in clothing yet, either - I’ll be working on that!
I’ve had problems with several video tutorials in the past - my computer sometimes stops loading longer videos part-way through, so I see the beginning but not the end, and searches seem to turn up very few written tutorials on fabric textures in Blender - the ones I have found seem to deal more with the soft body simulation part of it rather than first creating a material with a realistic appearance. If you know of any good tutorials, please could you tell me the links?
Thank-you again for your help!
Because sculting involves the same techniques from program to program then you can search for zbrush and mudbox tuts as well as blender tuts.
This one should get you started as it covers a bit of extra detail on something that is quite simple in this case, just note the standard brush in zbrush relates to the draw brush in blender. Using the smooth brush also helps when doing creases.
You will probably over do it to begin with but it just takes practice and then you will get the hang of it. Creases are easier than a lot of things.
