Clothing and its normlas for production

goekbenjamin

I am making cloth in marvelous designer, after that i am exporting it:
Here I am already uncertain, should i export it with thicknes or without?

Are there some disadvantages for the animation when i use thickness?
When i dont use thickness i get something like this:

at the neck there is a "hole" because of the normals looking away from the cam, so do i have to use thickness (or extrude it in maya)?
I mean i would have the same problem with the arms too, when the cam would face inside it a hole is seen again because of the normals.

What am i supposed to do or what should i watch to make the live of an animator (and also for me) less painful?

throttlekitty

This is another "it depends" scenario and depends on the game/platform/restrictions. Generally you don't want thickness across the whole model ever.

a) The body and the clothing are thought of as a single mesh, so the neck of the shirt merges in with the body - or at least have the same topology here.

b) The neck and loose sleeves have thickness leading down to a point where the polygons won't be visible.

c) The holes are simply capped. This is kind of an old school approach and usually looks bad (except for very tight crevices), but it's the easiest to deal with.

All three work in games where characters can change clothing at any time. If I was using A and a skin tight shirt like this, I might snap the uppermost vertices of the neck to the character body, and make sure that the surrounding geometry floats above a little bit to avoid poke-through or z-fighting.

goekbenjamin

Thanks alot! okay sounds good, so generally speaking: No thickness at all

I have to ask:
How to deal with say a hanging scarf? there you can see on the end both sides, one with the normals, and the other side with non-normals.

How can we deal with this?  

throttlekitty

Most engines offer a two-sided shading mode, so you could model it single sided and be fine; best to try it out yourself. Especially since such a scarf would tend to fold and twist as it drapes, so there's no single angle that it just 'disappears'. If you're doing something more photoreal/cinematic, actual thickness may be appropriate depending on the cloth.

Alex_J

Check out this video tutorial : https://lesterbanks.com/2016/11/marvelous-designer-uvs-maya/

Not a direct answer to your questions, but it will give you a good understanding of the general topic. Also a pretty useful technique in some circumstances.

goekbenjamin

BIGTIMEMASTER said:

Check out this video tutorial : https://lesterbanks.com/2016/11/marvelous-designer-uvs-maya/

Not a direct answer to your questions, but it will give you a good understanding of the general topic. Also a pretty useful technique in some circumstances.

Hey alex, thanks for the link, i already know this video,
but its nice to see that others also see this video as useful!

What i wonder about is, when he zremeshed the flattend clothes, how comes the shape of the clothes stays like it is?
When i try it, it completely destroyes my form, it may be a little offtopic but
its like he uses a option for zremesh like "remesh it but keep the borders like it is" ^^

Alex_J

Sounds like an issue with your settings in zRemesher. 

I don't remember all the options off the top of my head, but I know I usually just have default settings and use the "half" option and just keep going down until I get what I need. You may simply be trying to divide it too greatly, but you might also try the "freeze borders" options. 

However, if you are going pretty low poly, I think its easier to just do it manually in Maya (or whatever 3d app). First I create the absolute minimum number of polygons with quad draw, and then add a 'smooth mesh' once or twice if necessary.