How can I make a simple tileable texture to follow the edges / shape of the 3D model?

zandhor

Hi all!

I'm trying to improve and ease the way I create the textures for my 3D models and as a point of reference, I'm looking to achieve this level of realism:


The issue I'm facing right now is that I can't find a way to tile a texture to follow the UV island's shape.

For the last few days, I was and am still working on low poly models so that every change that comes to my mind to get the desired results won't make me spend more time than needed to make those edits.

I tried to:

• Shape the UVs differently, but I got stretched textures or wobbly-looking lines resulting in not much success, as seen below:

• 
• Use nanomesh and then to reproject the details, but the nanomesh would either shrink or expand near the neck area:
• 
• Make a pattern brush inside of Illustrator which turned out good at first glance, but looking closely, the texture (4K) would get very pixelated once the path line gets curved. I also made an image-traced vector of that image which resulted in a crispier path line, but the program would crash due to many paths being created at the same time (Left - The image I want to use; Middle - The image used as a pattern brush; Right - The image image-traced and then the resulted vector used as a pattern brush):
• 
• Use the Warp tool from Photoshop, which helped me to some degree, but the final texture would get squeezed around the shoulder area and stretched just under the chest -- it didn't look natural.

I hope I made my request clear enough and I'd love to get some suggestions from you on how I should approach this. If you have any other ideas, the model/polycount/topology and the UV can be changed without a problem, meaning there are no constraints about any of those.

Thank you very much!

sprunghunt

for maximum realism in zbrush I'd use micropoly and use a better base mesh with more even polygons. Something to note is that the weave on the actual sweater is stretching and compressing depending on where it runs over parts of the body. 
https://youtu.be/OiFI2is-yqE

SnowInChina

https://polycount.com/discussion/226220/tutorial-model-pattern-on-any-surface-blender-textools#latest

gnoop

I usually do it while retoping in Blender  with  having "live unwrap" option on.   You make a polygonal stripe by extruding  an edge step by step  and Blednder  recreate  same stripe in UV space  so you can  make this  ploygon stripes  follow  knitting direction in 3d and make it straight in UV side.  Then  another parallel stripe  after some space in between   etc

It's not 100% automatic and sometimes goes wrong on UV half  so you  need to check and straighten  UV  regularly   but generally it works.

ps, in fact I think the technique should work in any package ,  You do retopo stripes first  with some space in between , Unwrap the stripes to  be  straight in UV,    Then bridge the gaps  . Usually it does same in UV side too.