Still struggling with ZBrush cloth

MainManiac

Ive taken photos of myself with a normal T shirt on with my arm in every general position (T, raised, tucked, and relaxed). This has helped with placing my general folds in correct places but im having brush problems.

To start folds i usually operate on level 4 subdivision, so generally low poly. I use the flatten brush with a brush mod of 33 to rough in the general forms of each fold. I then go up one subdivision and bring out the inner valleys more with the brush set on zsub. I then go up one more subdivision to get a reasonable non-distorting smooth to bring out each fold more. The results in some place are good and decent, and in others it can get lumpy.

Heres an example of a quick run through on a shirt:


Dont mind the middle of stomach folds, they're there incase its difficult to see the folds in the armpit for CC and not there for accuracy.

I understand cloth is a very tricky thing, but sometimes it seems im having more problems than others :shifty:

Thanks.

ceebee

The armpits are a good start. Use clay/standard + inflate to get good creasing in tight areas. Also, symmetry makes folds look a little unrealistic so try working without it for each area. Use larger brushes for more subtle folds, they don't exactly have to be so crisp, otherwise it ends up looking like something other than cotton. The only place where there should be somewhat tighter folds will be the pits. Also, It's also hard to judge if your shirt is just sitting on top or if you plan to have it tucked in. Once you have pants/belt/whatever you can decide whether to fold it over that to make it more realistic.

Ruz

I find the lighting in zbrush can be confusing when doing folds, so I often look at the cloth with the model upside down. you would be surprised how tame the creases look then.
I then sculpt the same crease again, painting on the other side of the crease so it is properly 3 dimensional
standard/inflate with shift smooth works great for me

Raider

I like to start a lower sub-d, work in the folds, especially the bigger folds.. then mostly just refine with standard / inflate / pinch and smoothing. But i tend to find.. lower sub-d gives me a much better start on the larger folds but step up a few to start on the smaller folds or else it's hard to find the form for them.

Mostly though i reckon it's reference, doing folds from my head always end up looking dodge, getting a good ref makes it heaps better.

Also +1 to the lighting, i throw on dif mat caps and light sources to see how it looks while i'm working on it.

MainManiac

It could quite possibly be that the scale of the folds in the armpit are to small for the 4th subdivision, and maybe i could try sculpting them in the 5th for better and smoother results.

Ill also try switching matcaps, i usually do that often but never tried flipping the model.