sofa cushions & pillows, any tips for realistic wrinkles?

[wannabeArtist]

Hi,

I seem to have some trouble finding a decent work flow for this: How do you go about modelling the wrinkles you see on sofa cushions and pillows?

So far I have tried using a weight map with Push deformer, but with rather poor results. I could also paint the wrinkles in Photoshop and use that as displacement map, but are there any smarter, less tedious ways to do this?

Usually you find the cushions very smooth in the middle, but the edges (and seams) can be completely covered by tiny wrinkles and/or fewer larger ones.

Here are some examples I googled, of the kind of wrinkles I mean:
http://www.thechattanoogaauctionhouse.c ... aApr08.JPG

and here (in the back)

http://houseoffraser.scene7.com/is/imag ... 0_20080625

Thanks!

[Squizmek]

Check your links, they don't work.

I would model the wrinkles in ZBrush and then switch back to XSI, or if you have to do it in XSI, add cuts where you want the wrinkles and pull them in with proportional transform?

[wannabeArtist]

Thanks,

I was kind of hoping to do this in XSI, because I have no experience in ZBrush, nor the license yet. But it's starting to seem like the easiest way to do this.

I did try modelling the wrinkles with just edge loops and pushing in the appropriate polygons, but it does require quite a lot of manual labour and the geometry gets really dense.

Oh and I fixed the links in the first post - they should work now.

[wannabeArtist]

Another idea. Could this sort of thing be done using something like a Syflex cloth? I have no experience in Syflex, but I've seen some pretty impressive videos using it.

So would it work? For example, the pillow: A pouch object using the Syflex cloth, wrapped around a "stuffing" object? Add gravity to that and let the cloth object get a little wrinkly?

If you've got experience with Syflex, please tell me if that's a stupid/good idea, before I go studying it for days

[wannabeArtist]

And the monologue continues

I did manage to get the effect using Syflex! It's not quite perfect yet, but the random wrinkles across this mattress-like cushion are what I was looking for in the first place, so I'm happy Next challenge is to get those tiny wrinkles along the edges of the seam. The seam in the test picture is actually the outer edge and it's pinned to an invisible "filling", which in turn is getting bent by a deformer.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2ho90lg.jpg

[Hirazi Blue]

And the monologue continues

Yeah, I'd love to help, but my Syflex is a little rusty to say the least
And BTW: you seem to be getting along quite well without "us" constantly interfering...

[wannabeArtist]

Thanks! And Your interference is most welcome

The thing with Syflex seems to be (after my great studies of 2 nights) that there's quite minimal documentation available - and rather little talk about it around the forums. Also I'm a little confused with all the alternatives, like Softimage Cloth in XSI and nCloth in Maya (not that I would be using Maya anyway), I couldn't find much indication if one of them is over the others.

[Hirazi Blue]

Yes the lack of sufficient documentation and tutorials geared at the beginning Syflex user is the main reason I never got around using it.
There once was a "Syflex in Maya" tutorial on Digital Tutors, but their new licensing scheme would make me think twice before even considering it, it being for Maya for one thing, and I haven't got a clue as to the difference between Syflex in Maya and Syflex in Softimage.
One hears quite good things about "Clothilde", Maxon's solution for Cinema 4D, but that's just hearsay... ;)

[wannabeArtist]

I must confess, I actually use DT's training. I was happy enough with their training before the new system that I went for the membership.

I did look at the Syflex course too and for the most part it applies to XSI as well, but I guess there's some limitations (the same is true for a lot of mental ray lessons). Syflex does seem to be geared towards Maya quite a bit and I hear some features like wrinkle maps are missing from or not functional in XSI's implementation - at least not in my trusty old 7.01.

[Squizmek]

I can see from your pictures that syflex works quite well for making wrinkles. The big problem with simulation is the artistic control. It can get very time consuming to tweak the simulation parameters over and over and running the simulation again.
I have heard maya's ncloth is the best, followed by syflex. xsi-cloth is not so good, don't use it

[wannabeArtist]

I can see from your pictures that syflex works quite well for making wrinkles. The big problem with simulation is the artistic control. It can get very time consuming to tweak the simulation parameters over and over and running the simulation again.

Right, I actually planned to tweak the result rather than try to perfect it with simulation. In the test I posted, I'm pretty happy with what comes out-of-the-box, but I might as well freeze that and tweak the result mesh some more if necessary.
I'm not much of an artist, so I actually like to have a starting point with these irregular shapes

I'm optimistic that this will look nice on the actual model (a sort of chair) as well, but I'll see about that over the weekend. It's a bit more complex shape than the test "box" and I don't want the wrinkles just anywhere. The only way I found to get the wrinkles is to "whack" the surface a little to make the cloth move. For the test a simple bend deformer worked and I hope it will work for the chair as well.

I have heard maya's ncloth is the best, followed by syflex. xsi-cloth is not so good, don't use it

Ok, that's good to keep in mind. I guess an additional benefit of syflex is that it works on several packages. That way, if I would ever be forced to work on Maya for instance, at least most of the controls would be the same.

[dance]

I agree with Squizmek using Zbrush 3.5r3 you can apply the wrinkles by using texture alpha map and paint it on your mesh.

It is a little bit more to learn but it is well worth it if you are wanting a high poly model to look more natural.

[wannabeArtist]

Thanks for the tip!

I'm actually studying Zbrush currently because I thought I should read a book before I buy, so I'm reading it now and watching some videos too. Alphas and Stencils really seem handy for this kind of job.

This is how far I got wihtout ZBrush - or rather the latest iteration. The material still needs some tweaking and it could definitely use some more irregular wrinkles - I guess ZBrush would be ideal for those tiny wrinkles on the sides near the seam.

http://i47.tinypic.com/2v3om4z.jpg

[craft]

hi!

I think the best approach lies in the middle: larger scale wrinkles are better modelled specially in an animated mesh such as human clothes, which isn't the case; smaller scale stuff like the wrinkles you're looking for are better to be texture driven, so you don't end up with a chaotic mesh.

case you're not wiling to buy zbrush, here're two tips:

- there are more high frequency modeling packages besides ZBrush that are not as expensive. some are cool (more intuitive), some pretty much suck feature-wise, but it's always a matter of what your needs are and how much you want to pay for it.

- regardless the package, what they all do is creating a displacement or normalmap texture from a very high density mesh, for you to apply to your basemesh inside xsi. You can however create that texture yourself with an image processing software such as photoshop or gimp as you'd create any other texture. Not so advisable but it's cheaper. You can google for some sample wrinkle textures (displacement, or normal map) to help you out; or model some 3d sample wrinkles over a flat surface and extract the maps with the Ultimaper inside XSI. it's easy to use.

[wannabeArtist]

Thanks for the reply,

I've been looking for a cheaper alternative and briefly checked out packages like 3D-Coat, which seemed nice and would probably be way more cost efficient.
However, I think I have already almost decided to go ZBrush way, to be completely honest
Of course it's a very versatile tool and I wouldn't buy it just for this, rather it's a very interesting package all together and I'd like to learn to use it, even if just for a hobby.

I did take my shot with Photoshop a while ago, but I'm afraid I'm not skilled enough to create proper bump maps by just painting them. I mean, the process is simple of course, but to really make them look good on the model is another story. Actually I've been trying to figure out some sort of workflow for "generating" bump maps from photographs (high pass filters and what-not) but it seems to be almost like alchemy, unless the photo is very carefully taken

[dance]

No doubt you can model anything in SI but the level of subd you are wanting it is best to use Zbrush just for faster results without alot of effort.

You should try this addon as well GEM. Is is a Fractal Terrain Generator for XSI the addon has an option for importing images called "Image Clips".