Advice with clothing texture seams

DustyShinigami · Sep 2023

Hi

This is something I've been struggling to get right for a while now, so was wondering if anyone can offer advice on how they deal with this.

At the moment, I'm working on finishing off my high poly of Lara Croft. At the moment, I'm trying to work out what the best method is for getting a cotton pattern on the tank top. What I've been doing with things like belts/straps and other leather objects is unwrapping them in Maya and using the Surface/Noise generator in ZBrush, rather than using the default 3D projection. This has worked great so far, however with clothing, it's still an issue. 3D projection will just skew the pattern around the sides, but if I unwrap the mesh, where the seams are, the pattern always continues on a slant around the other side, like so:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/el/3ihzamzgct7w.png

This is the kind of cotton pattern I've trying to add with an alpha:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/2a/vcqlykaq6eg2.jpg

And the unwraps in Maya... I've made sure to add the cuts where seams would be on a real item of clothing - down the sides:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/7s/wn4gcebpph6o.png

But I'm not sure what the best thing to do would be to get them more neater/straight on the other UV island. And of course, I shouldn't retotate the UV islands to try and get them a bit more aligned as then the shells wouldn't be straight (horizontal or vertical).

At the moment, this is a problem for the high poly, but this is always an issue I run into as well when texturing clothing for the low poly. ^_^;

Does anyone have any tips, advice, or workarounds on how to tackle this?

Thanks

gnoop · Oct 2023

You just need to unwrap your UV in more rectangular style. Your mesh has enough tessellation ( edge loops) to deform UV properly and proportionally . If you do it with cloth simulation it usually always that way since you start with sort of rectangular pieces of cloth . For low poly you are free then to re-bake it to any UV you want.

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

gnoop said:

You just need to unwrap your UV in more rectangular style. Your mesh has enough tessellation ( edge loops) to deform UV properly and proportionally . If you do it with cloth simulation it usually always that way since you start with sort of rectangular pieces of cloth . For low poly you are free then to re-bake it to any UV you want.

So like in this example...?

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/fg/z2n8aowyo8ur.png

Although this same model doesn't have that for the shirt and that's come out fine from what I can see. Apart from a few edges that are completely straight...

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/z0/54hro73z9y3d.png

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

I'm also not sure how best to go about straightening shells like that. I mean, I'll use the Straighten UV tool, but I either get a yellow warning (in Maya) for some reason, the distortion is really bad doing it that I can't see how straightening it would help in the long run, or some curved edges just won't straighten properly. I just feel really unsure with the process. ^_^;

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

I mean... uhhhhhh

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/ca/6n1ob9d061x2.gif

Alex_J · Oct 2023

straighten the outer UV's as you did, and then invert select all the other UV's and use relax, you shouldnt need to manually adjust each edge like that.

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

Alex_J said:

straighten the outer UV's as you did, and then invert select all the other UV's and use relax, you shouldnt need to manually adjust each edge like that.

Okay, thanks for the advice. I'll give that a try.

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

Alex_J said:

straighten the outer UV's as you did, and then invert select all the other UV's and use relax, you shouldnt need to manually adjust each edge like that.

I just seem to keep getting those yellow warnings pop up for some reason. Even if I try deleting the History. :-\ Also, the way those edges go when straightening them look awful. :-/

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/je/89jvux78i98u.gif

Alex_J · Oct 2023

you can click the warning to open it up and read the full description. but it doesn't appear to cause any issue so I think you can safely ignore it. yellow means a warning which isn't going to necessarily stop you from working or cause a serious issue. red indicates an error which usually means something you have to care about or points to why something is not working as expected.

You can copy and paste the warning into google though and probably find out what it is talking about. Chatgpt is pretty good at reading that sort of thing to and converting to plain language.

Not sure what you mean about the edges looking awful? It's a gif not a video so I cannot easily skip ahead to the result but what I see looks like a normal straightened UV island. You should not be moving edges at all, just UV's, to be clear.

by the way a faster way to straighten them is to select the UV's and then use scale tool so you can just move them all at once and not have to fix the outliers.

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

Alex_J said:

you can click the warning to open it up and read the full description. but it doesn't appear to cause any issue so I think you can safely ignore it. yellow means a warning which isn't going to necessarily stop you from working or cause a serious issue. red indicates an error which usually means something you have to care about or points to why something is not working as expected.
You can copy and paste the warning into google though and probably find out what it is talking about. Chatgpt is pretty good at reading that sort of thing to and converting to plain language.

Not sure what you mean about the edges looking awful? It's a gif not a video so I cannot easily skip ahead to the result but what I see looks like a normal straightened UV island. You should not be moving edges at all, just UV's, to be clear.

by the way a faster way to straighten them is to select the UV's and then use scale tool so you can just move them all at once and not have to fix the outliers.

This is the warning. At least on my laptop. I think the number was different on my PC:

// Warning: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2023/scripts/others/texShellArrayContains.mel line 56: Converting string "" to an int value of 1168.

Another one says 97 at the end.

This is how they're looking at the moment:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/pe/hvub0qrmxx8b.png

And then after relaxing the centre vertices:

The distortion map always makes me paranoid though. The checker maps usually show issues, so isn't that going to be a problem when texturing...? Or adding surface details in ZBrush?

Alex_J said:

by the way a faster way to straighten them is to select the UV's and then use scale tool so you can just move them all at once and not have to fix the outliers.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Do you mean to select an edge and scale it down so it's straight?

Alex_J · Oct 2023

Don't take my word for anything, for all you know I am chat gpt or a really smart baboon.

You should now make a temporary material and apply some tileable fabric material and see if the UV's are good or not. You can export it so that you can take a look in whatever renderer you'll use as well. Don't look at things from 2 millimeters away, just view it the same way it will be displayed whether its for use in a game, film, portfolio, whatever. This way you only address the problems which are going to matter for your situation and don't waste time perfecting things nobody would ever notice.

You can go ahead and test out those next steps too. Just make a new folder called TEMP or something like that and save your files there so you don't stink up your main work area while you perform these experiments. Try out some texturing and sculpting and baking and see how these UV's do. Just do a quick approximation of what you plan to do for the final thing. If it looks good, awesome! If there is too much distortion, then you can try out another way to unwrap and see if it solves the problem.

re: last question - yes you can just select a row of uv's and then use the scale tool to align them all straight. just another way to accomplish same thing but it's a bit faster sometimes and less fussy.

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

Alex_J said:

Don't take my word for anything, for all you know I am chat gpt or a really smart baboon.

You should now make a temporary material and apply some tileable fabric material and see if the UV's are good or not. You can export it so that you can take a look in whatever renderer you'll use as well. Don't look at things from 2 millimeters away, just view it the same way it will be displayed whether its for use in a game, film, portfolio, whatever. This way you only address the problems which are going to matter for your situation and don't waste time perfecting things nobody would ever notice.

re: last question - yes you can just select a row of uv's and then use the scale tool to align them all straight. just another way to accomplish same thing but it's a bit faster sometimes and less fussy.

Okay lol. Well, when the alpha texture is applied in ZBrush, the seam is looking a lot better now down the side. There is still some noticeable distortion present though. So I may tweak it a bit further.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/ub/8fsbopl6dxsm.png

And as to the last thing - Ahhh, yes, I know what you mean now. The Alignment tool.

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

Okay, thanks for the advice provided. I've done a bit of experimenting and decided to just straighten the sides and bottom, which is where the distortion happens the most. The rest is unfolded as normal and by unfolding the centre vertices. That's done a much better job at keeping it all clean and the distortion reduced.

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

Definitely looking WAY better now. And what bit of distortion is there is minuscule at best.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/zj/zat3p5gza083.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/v9/5eirm7q2spyw.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/1f/us597zv6ic6u.png

Neox · Oct 2023

for things like that, it just makes sense, that you plan your meshes with sewing patterns in mind. but that being said, yes, cloth also stretches in reality, if not it would need to be more lose or be highly uncomfortable

gnoop · Oct 2023

I use "live" unwrap mode and "pinned" vertexes in Blender. P to pin, alt P to un-pin . That way you can edit not only a selected loop of UV but rather all others like stretching a pelt . It requires a bit of miss and hit , pin , align ,unpin etc but works better than just standard proportional editing . I think Maya should have something like that too. It works like "puppet wrap" in photoshop.

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

gnoop said:

I use "live" unwrap mode and "pinned" vertexes in Blender. P to pin, alt P to un-pin . That way you can edit not only a selected loop of UV but rather all others like stretching a pelt . It requires a bit of miss and hit , pin , align ,unpin etc but works better than just standard proportional editing . I think Maya should have something like that too. It works like "puppet wrap" in photoshop.

I don't think I've had a tone of luck with pinning when unwrapping. I don't suppose you know if any video examples of this...?

pior · Oct 2023

The somewhat hilarious plot twist is that a real tank top with brushed fabric would *not* have the fabric pattern lined up along the seams. The pattern meeting at an angle is necessary to give the garment its body fitting shape without stretching.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/in/zqu7ky024nsm.png

So : research the topic first, as not doing it could (did) lead you to make incorrect assumptions

And indeed, following a pattern design from a real garment would have solved the issue by itself. An automatic "pelt-style" unwrap gives something quite close to a real sewing pattern.

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

pior said:

The somewhat hilarious plot twist is that a real tank top with brushed fabric would *not* have the fabric pattern lined up along the seams. The pattern meeting at an angle is necessary to give the garment its body fitting shape without stretching.

So : research the topic first, as not doing it could (did) lead you to make incorrect assumptions And indeed, following a pattern design from a real garment would have solved the issue by itself.

This is true, however, even in that image, the pattern on both sides of the seam are still fairly straight. Not perfectly obviously. Whereas whenever I come to texture stuff like this, or use an alpha, one side is badly mis-aligned at an angle that it looks bad. Usually either just at the top or the bottom, like in the first image I shared.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/uq/dbjjzp03t0i1.png

The pattern on the back side is always slanted at an angle, which makes it do that. And the trouble with Surface/Noise generator in ZBrush, the Offset and Rotation options don't work for Alphas. I swear they did. But every time I've tried it, it only works for the NoisePlug. If I could mask the back part based on the unwraps/Polygroups, I could better control and re-align the pattern on the other side with a simple rotation.

pior · Oct 2023

Oh I am sure that this Zbrush feature has limitations - but there's no reason to be limited by it, since you can do all these projections in a regular 3d app with full control anyways.

The extreme angle you are getting is because the unwrap is trying to stick to the surface variations of the model, whereas such an extremely tight tanktop would be made in stretched fabric, like a swimsuit ; and the actual sewing pattern of it would be less extreme than what the automatic pelt unwrap generates.
So overall it's bound to always feel "impossible" : the garment is either very stretched and made of swimsuit material, or it is not so stretched and more loosely worn, made of a patterned brushed cotton.

pior · Oct 2023

Female stretchy swimsuit :

Female tank top without much stretch :

Michael Knubben · Oct 2023

DustyShinigami said:

gnoop said:

I use "live" unwrap mode and "pinned" vertexes in Blender. P to pin, alt P to un-pin . That way you can edit not only a selected loop of UV but rather all others like stretching a pelt . It requires a bit of miss and hit , pin , align ,unpin etc but works better than just standard proportional editing . I think Maya should have something like that too. It works like "puppet wrap" in photoshop.

I don't think I've had a tone of luck with pinning when unwrapping. I don't suppose you know if any video examples of this...?

You need to enable Live Unwrap for pins to have an effect. Take a look at the manual, it's quite a nice feature that I use often!

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

Michael Knubben said:

DustyShinigami said:

gnoop said:

I use "live" unwrap mode and "pinned" vertexes in Blender. P to pin, alt P to un-pin . That way you can edit not only a selected loop of UV but rather all others like stretching a pelt . It requires a bit of miss and hit , pin , align ,unpin etc but works better than just standard proportional editing . I think Maya should have something like that too. It works like "puppet wrap" in photoshop.

I don't think I've had a tone of luck with pinning when unwrapping. I don't suppose you know if any video examples of this...?

You need to enable Live Unwrap for pins to have an effect. Take a look at the manual, it's quite a nice feature that I use often!

Is Live Unwrap a feature in all 3D modelling software or is that something in Max/Blender? I'm not sure I've seen it in Maya.

gnoop · Oct 2023

I don't think I've had a tone of luck with pinning when unwrapping. I don't suppose you know if any video examples of this...?

I meant pins In Blender . I don't know if MAya has something similar. Last time I used Maya was 20 years ago. It was just my guess Maya perhaps has it. At least I think Roadkill plugin for Maya should do it since it's based on Blender UV code.

But I have no idea if it still works in Maya.

Alex_J · Oct 2023

maya has some sort of pinning in the uv toolkit but i never use it. usually just straighten some UV's and then invert select (shift drag) and relax the others is fine for clothing IME. i like to always try and use the same small set of core tools it seems to save mental bandwidth and make work go quicker. cause every little different tool has it's own quirks and hotkeys, but in the end all you are doing 90% of time is moving something on screen one place to another. just my preference of course

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

gnoop said:

I don't think I've had a tone of luck with pinning when unwrapping. I don't suppose you know if any video examples of this...?
I meant pins In Blender . I don't know if MAya has something similar. Last time I used Maya was 20 years ago. It was just my guess it still perhaps has. At least I think Roadkill plugin for Maya should do it since it's based on Blender UV code.
But I have no idea if it still works in Maya

Okay, thanks. I'll look into that plugin.

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

Alex_J said:

maya has some sort of pinning in the uv toolkit but i never use it. usually just straighten some UV's and then invert select (shift drag) and relax the others is fine for clothing IME. i like to always try and use the same small set of core tools it seems to save mental bandwidth and make work go quicker. cause every little different tool has it's own quirks and hotkeys, but in the end all you are doing 90% of time is moving something on screen one place to another. just my preference of course

Yeah, same. Maya's UV unwrapping just feels so optimised and problem free. 3ds Max has tested my patience with messing up other UV shells. I'm in Maya's UV Editor now, and though it has Pinning tools, there's certainly no Live Unwrap. I never usually both with them anyway, because as you say, the straighten tools do a pretty good job.

gnoop · Oct 2023

If you want to try pins + live unwrap mode in Blender make sure you marked seams first or did UV>seams from islands . Pin a few points with P , check in "live unwrap" in UV menu , then grab a pinned point and try to move it . After that it's pretty much self explaining . It's not designed to exactly straighten islands but rather sort of proportional editing, bending islands for better conform with each other to save UV space etc. Needs enough tessellation inside islands to work ok. In a word same as puppet wrap in Photoshop. I bet Adobe just borrowed the idea from Blender.

You still could use it for straighten thing . Select a loop , pin it, then right click and select straighten , repeat it for opposite side loop , sometimes it's enough , sometimes you can use relax brush after that .

As I recall it worked same way in Road kill plugin .

Also you can make one quad of an island perfectly square with align X and Y of its edges . Then hit L . Then do Unwrap>follow active quad and it turns selected island into perfectly straight thing but few parts where stretching is too strong will be detached . Some add-ons could do it with a single click .

DustyShinigami · Oct 2023

gnoop said:

If you want to try pins + live unwrap mode in Blender make sure you marked seams first or did UV>seams from islands . Pin a few points with P , check in "live unwrap" in UV menu , then grab a pinned point and try to move it . After that it's pretty much self explaining . It's not designed to exactly straighten islands but rather sort of proportional editing, bending islands for better conform with each other to save UV space etc. Needs enough tessellation inside islands to work ok. In a word same as puppet wrap in Photoshop. I bet Adobe just borrowed the idea from Blender.

As I recall it worked same way in Road kill plugin

I need to re-learn Blender, but I'll certainly look at experimenting with it. And eventually try that plugin for Maya.

Advice with clothing texture seams

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