Painting jeans?

Tom Ellis

Hey all.

Despite what the thread title may lead you to believe, I don't want to paint any of my jeans, but I would like to know if there's any proven ways to do so digitally.

I'm working on a character who is wearing jeans and I've always wondered how people manage such awesome looking results.

Examples of what I mean:





(Image courtesy of Sam Chester)

They look so damn good, there's many other examples too.

I just wondered if there's some sort of 'known approach' to it. I know Mashru Mishu painted his by hand using a custom denim texture, but I'm guessing you could use a denim photosource too. It's the seams / highlights that get me, the kind of fading along the seam folds.

Cheers

Frump

MM wrote:

First thing I did was create two simple thread patters. I use the offset filter in Photoshop to make sure these patterns are tillable. Pattern A and B are for the threads. C is created using the noise filter and vertical motion blur. D is another layer of just noise and E is the scaled version of D. F is a layer with random black and white dots. A and B is passed through a distort-glass filter just to give it that random weaving effect. Then C, D and E is multiplied on top and F is overlaid and the base color is multiplied on top of all of that.

From this article, which is a tutorial/walkthrough of how that first model was created.

Tom Ellis

Thanks Frump, yeah I'd seen that article.

As I said though, getting the denim fabric base isn't a prob, there's multiple ways to do it in PS or just photosource a nice denim.

It's the seams and edging fades that I was thinking about. Do artists usually photosource them somehow or is there a technique to painting them. They look so real!

Eric Chadwick

Good reference is key. Then just painting from there.

Here's an example I did. Not photoreal, but the texture might give you some ideas.
http://ericchadwick.com/img/cowgirl.html

FAT_CAP

If I remember rightly I just used a denim pattern as an overlay on a denium blue background layer as a starter. I had my high poly sculpt/ crazybump passes to use as a mask to pick out the creases in a worn denim colour and all the stitches and seams were modelled in ZBrush and the thread painted in Photoshop. Then various overlays to break up the uniformity and get some nice colour and tonal variation going on and I was done.

The seams and worn edges were created pretty easily as I had my high poly and crazybump passes to again use as masks to use in Photoshop to pick out areas which would be more worn.

If you are having trouble creating the jeans from scratch then projecting photographs of jeans onto your model in ZBrush/ DeepPaint etc is a perfectly good way to start and get an idea of how these things look/ work in 3D/2D. The only thing is to make sure your highpoly creases match up to the lighting information in your photographs/ photo source if you go this way.

Hope this helps

Tom Ellis

Woah just caught this thread again after missing the subscription mail I got for it.

Thanks so much to all of you for the replies.

Your example is great cheers Eric, and thanks Sam, hearing it from the man himself was a great help!

I'll probably drop some progress shots in my P&P thread when I get onto it and hopefully it'll be a worthy example of what I've learned from your info!