rendering fabrics, soft materials

[dzcreate]

hello all...

below is a random example of something similar i am modeling / rendering.

my first questions is, to render materials like that, would you start by creating your own textures? is this pretty easy to do with such a texture?

secondly, i only know rhino, but i was told something like 3dsmax may be better to model since its more loose / free flow. thoughts?

thanks in advance!

[dalomar_cg]

Re: rendering fabrics, soft materials

I'll answer the second question first...Rhino is fine. In fact, IMHO, Rhino is much better than Max at freeform objects. I think there are only two reasons to move out of Rhino; Animation and complex texture mapping. I think you're fine on both here.

As for the materials, I'd try and keep it as simple as possible. The red cloth looks like it would be simplest, so I'd work on that first Just try some very glossy (~.5-.6) materials to see if you can get the color and sheen right. Then move on to the black cloth add a bump map if it looks like it needs it (for the black cloth it looks like it will).

With the stitching is much better to model it than try and map it. You'd have to do some complicated mapping and quite a bit of ps work to get it looking good. Modeling is 100 times easier and looks so much more realistic.

[dzcreate]

Re: rendering fabrics, soft materials

thanks dalomar!

1. what is mapping? (sorry)

2. really, rhino better for freeform / organic shapes? is this standalone or with tsplines or something. because rhino you can't push and pull on surfaces without tsplines. wouldn't that be easier

3. and modelling zippers that curve around in all directions ??? any thoughts on how to attack that?

thanks!

[sjirka]

Re: rendering fabrics, soft materials

2. really, rhino better for freeform / organic shapes? is this standalone or with tsplines or something. because rhino you can't push and pull on surfaces without tsplines. wouldn't that be easier

3. and modelling zippers that curve around in all directions ??? any thoughts on how to attack that?

2. You can push'n'pull on surface however it might not be as simple as in t-splines. Just rebuild the surface (adjust degree and UV pointcount) and move control points to get some pretty wrinkles.

3. I'd use sweep2 with edge curves and different cross section curves to make the fabric part of zippers and than perhaps array command to copy teeth along the edge curves of zippers.