Best method for creating Lace clothing

4leaf

For a high poly model in Maya, what is the best way to go about making intircate lace designs for women's clothing?

like this...



I made the base clothing and tried cutting it with Booleans... but that didn't work at all.

4leaf

I also tried splitting the mesh with projected curves. Nothing. It didn't work.

HAWK12HT

oO Sexy. Would love to see the final thing. Too bad I only do texture painting so cant help u on this one m8.

4leaf

Believe me! I wanna see the final thing too DX But thanks...

Butthair

You may just want to use an alpha of lace and generate some normals separately. It's pretty flat to where it would work on a plane for the lo poly.

Otherwise, I would go about making hi poly lace using a few lines creating the same direction of the large shapes created by the thread.

Vailias

Agreed: either alpha map it, or if you must have the detail in high poly use something like illustrator to create the flat lace shape.
Import the curves into maya and create one or more nurbs trim surfaces, then deform those surfaces with an FFD or other deformer to match to the body shape.

Mik2121

Uhm... create the lace details all on a straight line (ie, not curved like the dress). Then go to the dress itself, select all the edges on the outside where you want the laces to go, then make the selected edges a 'shape' and then go back to the lace and use path constraint.

4leaf

I'm definitely not a Maya Noob, but all three of these explanations slightly elluded my understanding in one form or another...

First of all I want the highpoly detail and would like to avoid using Alphas.

@Vailias: I actually wasn't aware you could import curves into maya and I'm not quite sure I understood your explanation. How can I translate nurbs curves into what is essentially a surface with complex holes?

Butthair

I don't know the exact steps of what Vailias is saying, but I do know the it can be done by creating the shapes in illustrator, then, pressing some buttons and hocus pocus, the vector shape is exported as a compatible file for maya to have imported in the scene. That's about it there.

I would strongly urge just making an alpha with a repeating lace texture, but, if you must do the hi poly, what I was saying was to create it through the use of spline objects. As Mik2121 explains, you could create the pattern first, then bend it to the places it needs to go.

Butthair

Found something that might explain the method to follow along a path.

http://vcell.ndsu.nodak.edu/~christjo/vcell/Tutorial/tutorial1.htm

4leaf

Thank you very much ...Butthair.. I Will give this a try! as far as the Alpha goes... I'm starting to consider trying it. However the main thing holding me back is the fact that I am going to take this into Zbrush for detailing as well as BPR rendering...

I am not sure if Zbrush will accept alpha textures and actually render them as transparent.

Do you happen to know?

Thanks!

4leaf

Never mind! I answered my own question.

(For anyone else with this problem)

It is possible in zbrush. All one has to do is go to the "Alpha" pallete on the left hand side, then click "Import texture" The texture file has to be a raster image in either PNG or PSD format. Zbrush takes the Alpha Data from the raster information and not the Alpha channel. Then there is a button on the bottom that says "Make texture" I clicked that and was easily able to apply my alpha as a texture.

Thanks guys!