re cloth techniques for games

Ruz · Mar 2020

so do most people uses marvelous designer now for all cloth stuff or is it still relevent to

do hand sculpted stuff in zbrush ?

The latter seems to take forever/tweaking, mucking about and its hard to actually gauge how it will look after it is baked down.

Because as we all know everything looks nice in zbrush then instantly terrible in all other situations

Alex_J · Mar 2020

I'm not a pro but I've heard a few character artist say nobody sculpts clothes anymore.

I used to not like Marvelous Designer because it was really tedious, but in MD8 you can build your clothes in DCC and then extract MD patterns from UV shells. No more arrangement points and all that. Plus with 3d sewing, the whole package is really pretty quick and intuitive. I'm enjoying it a lot now. Still can be a pain at times, but there's just no way you could sculpt realistic folds in the same amount of time or with as much flexibility.

zachagreg · Mar 2020

I do detailing in Zbrush for damage and frayed/ tattered cloth but even that now can be done in Painter so for the most part MD8 and not Zbrush. For when I don't feel like paying for MD8 because the cloth is not that important as an element or that intricately folded I use blender.

Though Zbrush is good for this workflow. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nQz0y9

Ruz · Mar 2020

good comments guys, thnks.

MD8 sounds cool.( have not used MD for years)

Blender seems to do nice cloth sims and someone made a cool MD style system also( garment based)

will do some more research

pior · Mar 2020

"but I've heard a few character artist say nobody sculpts clothes anymore."

Well ... here are 672 character outfits of one of the most popular game on the planet, none of which using any cloth sim :
https://skin-tracker.com/fortnite/skins?rarity=1&slot=Outfit&sort=3&limit=1

Ruz · Mar 2020

well I did mean really realistic cloth, not stylised. I do like that style though

i wanted to do a kind of semi stylised style, but with enough detail to keep the OCD at bay

Alex_J · Mar 2020

Update: I've heard some other character artist say the opposite of what others said

The guys I heard that from where all doing realistic games mostly, so ya know.

pior · Mar 2020

Ofcourse ofcourse

It's just always interesting to compare "tech dreams" ("all clothing assets are totally made in MD !" ) with the reality of production. It's actually a pretty tricky balance to strike, as even on the most stylized projects there are always "tech enthousiasts" who will be tempted to push for new tech even though it can sometimes be straight up detrimental (for instance trying to shoehorn MD into assets like these FN skins would without a doubt lead to an inferior result ... and taking longer). And I do believe that this can apply to even realistic visuals too.

Now back to practical stuff : Blender indeed has some rudimentary but reliable cloth sim that can be leveraged. It has fewer levels of abstraction than MD in the sense that it isn't using any real world sewing analogies like darts, seams, and so on but rather operates at the regular vertex/polygon level - which I feel is a good thing as it keeps things barebones and straightforward. One interesting path would be to convert polygon panels to triangle-based tesselation before running the sim : https://blender-addons.org/boundary-aligned-remesh/

JoseConseco · Mar 2020

For simple cloth I developed Garment Tool, it is not as fast or pack with features as MD obviously, buy you can get the basic cloth done with realistic wrinkles, then detail if ZBrush and you are done:

thomasp · Mar 2020

Personally on a realism project I'd prefer to go with scans and only use clothsim to fill in the blanks. I believe that will lead to more realistic looking assets done in less time. Getting folds out of clothsim is not the issue. Making a multi-layered piece of outfit according to reference and getting it to fit the character in a way tailored clothing fits and not just hang downwards can be tricky.

And yeah on every project you have these people who will commit fully to the newest technique or the most recent version of some software. Sometimes that even works out! On the other hand the struggle can also be entertaining to watch.

Neox · Mar 2020

yeah on our end, for realistic clothing its usually either scan based. Or marvelous, with a pass of zbrush on top for the detailling, memoryfolds and such.

Ultra fine details like seams get mostly placed with floaters a second UV set and shaders or in substance painter, rarely in zbrush anymore.

thomasp said:

and getting it to fit the character in a way tailored clothing fits and not just hang downwards can be tricky.

yeah well, you definitely need to tailor the clothes in clothsim and the artists need to understand sewing patterns and their influence on folds better these days. just some pattern with sim on top will usually not look great

JoseConseco · Mar 2020

If you are making game placed in year 2020 then scan may be way to go. But for futuristic or old clothes (like WW1 or 2) scan is usually no go.

Neox · Mar 2020

JoseConseco said:

If you are making game placed in year 2020 then scan may be way to go. But for futuristic or old clothes (like WW1 or 2) scan is usually no go.

yeah sure, anything that can be scanned will be. anything that can be simulated will be. the need for somebody to sculpt realistic clothing from scratch is getting lower and lower.

But you can certainly scan historical clothes, there are tons of suppliers worldwide for historical costumes - for movie productions for instance.

stuff that doesnt exist will obviously not be scanned, but likely be simulated.

Ruz · Mar 2020

I guess for me and the stuff I am doing it's a compromise. not going for photoreaistic, but not totally stylised either, so some kind of simulation as a base is a must ( not really using scans)

I am looking forward to the blender cloth brush being included in the main build, looks awesome for local detail

Jose , that plugin looks awesome also, nice results

I am not a huge fan of MD though, too much faffing around for my liking and is quite pricey

I still like to do the cloth mainly by hand though, gives me a lot more control over the look

My current technique is a lot quicker than say 6 or 7 years ago

I can do a pair of trousers in a day maybe( less) not sure how long the pipeline with MD is

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/cb/0tjwwg6sa8kl.jpg

thomasp · Mar 2020

The cloth brush is a bit of a strange affair IMO. I too was initially floored but I am having a hard time so far to put it to any actual use. Doesn't work well for me on a character mesh so far and performance is a major problem if to be used on a sculpt. Best use case I could come up with so far would be to bake displacements to be used later when sculpting folds but MD does that better.

radiancef0rge · Mar 2020

scan everything

Ruz · Mar 2020

that's a shame thomasp, thought that might be good for finer wrinkles

JoseConseco · Mar 2020

The problem with cloth brushes is, AFAIK they do not provide colision with body, so they may be good for detailing, or loose cloth. But for more realistic cloth it should interact with body in concave places. in Zbrush I used to:
- create layer
- project cloth on body,
- store morph,
then use that morph for sculpting those concave places where cloth should touch the body to fake the collisions.

marks · Mar 2020

radiancef0rge said:

scan everything

Multiple times. For blendshapes.

thomasp · Mar 2020

Re: cloth brush - might just be my ineptitude. Check it out for yourself - it's in the current 2.83 'experimental' builds.

Ruz · Mar 2020

yeah will have a look today sometimes. Its early days yet I am sure they will imrpove it.

collisions would be a must Jose, if it to be used for anything better than bedsheets

jeez my monitor text is so small, it;s almost nano scale, hence my typos. might have to start wearing the old reading glasses

re cloth techniques for games

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