Texturing - Folds

Memory

I have been a lurker for about 4 years but you know that old story...I can model pretty well and have been a lead for my high-poly stuff, but my passion is game art, and I need improvement with my textures.

I've searched the forum, wiki, and google images with safesearch off, and I'm still having trouble finding a technique that works for me, for painting cloth/clothing on my lo-res characters. Good wrinkles, and nice folds are what I'm after, I just can't seem to get it right!



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Any tips would be great, maybe you could share your method?

-Memory

cryrid

The key is going to be plenty of reference to see how cloth/fabric folds, especially when worn in this case. It doesn't always just fall straight down like that, it will bunch on itself, forming all sorts of 'X'x, 'Y's and 'Z's.

http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/search/label/folds

Also theres the issue that the character will be moving, which in reality would cause the folds to change and the underlying body does. I think some games might now be blending between normal maps to accommodate this, but otherwise you'll just have to pick your folds wisely. I'd look into other models, especially ones from games with similar clothing to see what kind of folds they opted to have.

Dylan Brady

Also, you seem to be doing a sort of AO thing on your painting.
Im pretty sure that if your going to paint cloth folds you'll have to chose a strong light source to get it to look right.

iconoplast

Do some research on drawing clothing, especially line drawing -- that's where you'll find the most information about how cloth folds happen and how to represent them realistically. Once you've got that, applying the theory to a mesh would be much easier.

Memory

Thanks for the info guys, I appreciate it. Now I'm off to work on this...

-Memory