Marvelous designer Costume Design and simulation

Making real characters clothes is a very challenging work in CG animation, which is a very important step in the process of character development. It can reflect characters in the story of character, in the technology developed today, make a virtual clothes easy. We can use the right tools to play the imagination in a short time to create real clothes.

When it comes to this, you will think of marvelous designer (MD), an excellent costume design and simulation software. It is based on the real world clothing sewing style generation clothes, software interface design is very friendly, very easy to get started.

Whether you're a character artist, a VFX artist, a character TD or a conceptual design artist, MD is your best design tool that allows you to create very real, natural clothing creases and detail folds. It not only allows you to build your own library, mix and match clothes, but most importantly save you a lot of time.

If you have a well-developed production process, MD is a very powerful piece of software. In this tutorial outfit, I will take you step to achieve the implementation of the garment process.

1. Design appearance

You don't have to be a very professional fashion designer to use MD, but at least you need to know a little basic design, The most important thing is to know how to read and understand the sewing drawings. Go to the library and pick up some sewing books and learn a little bit about the basics of sewing. Then draw a sketch of the clothes on the paper that will help you understand the sewing style and unfold the inspiration. Here are three important things to do: Create the main pattern of the costume, sew the seams and stitch the patterns together, and finally other details such as pockets, zippers, buttons and so on.

2, decomposition clothing

MD can create a clothing library, and each created costume can be edited and matched to other characters. If you are dealing with very complex clothing designs, you should deal with each garment individually, then merge them into one file, and then use the MD layer system to simulate them. This method allows you to focus on designing a piece of clothing every time, not distracted by other clothes in the scene, which makes MD's simulation work more efficient and avoids any crossover.

3, stroke design

Use the Rectangle tool in the 2D view to draw a pattern, sketch a design, add a fabric from the Object Browser, and then paste the design image from the property editor as a texture. Apply the fabric to the drawing and use the Edit Texture tool to fit the design in the pattern. Add other fabrics, change the color, alter the opacity to about 50, and then start drawing on the design drawing.


4. Cartography

began to use the Polygon tool to draw a design pattern, in the absence of a closed pattern, there is only one point on each sharp angle, as far as possible to maintain the simplicity of the pattern, the fewer points the better. This process needs to align some points vertically or horizontally, select the points, and right-click to select Align. Use the Edit Curve Point tool to bend all edges until the pattern is aligned. The first half of the pattern on the line, the remaining half with symmetric paste function to copy the paste is good.



5. Sewing

The alignment pattern is easy to understand, and this step is in fact the same as the work of our actual costume designer. There are two sewing types in MD: Segment sewing allows you to stitch from one Segment line to another, while free sewing allows you to freely stitch any part of the drawing with the other. You can hold down the SHIFT key to stitch a line segment with n number of segments, and if necessary, flip the stitch with the Edit sewing tool.


6, Alignment point

Arrangement points a blue dot on avatar body, you can open it from the side icon of the 3D view. These points are useful for aligning the pattern to avatar and can help you reset the pattern. Using arrangement Points with Avatar in MD is the default setting, but if you want to use your own role, you have to create your own arrangement Points, load your character, and then use Avatar Editor modifies the local bounding volumes and arrangement Points.


7. Arrangement pattern

Open the arrangement Points, then use the Select/move tool in the 3D view to select the pattern, or you can use the transform pattern tool in the 2D view to place the pattern on the corresponding alignment point. This place should be moved carefully to make the pattern as close as possible to the Avatar body, to prevent the fall of the simulation. You can use the arrangement offset in the property editor to make the pattern package master avatar. If there is no alignment point, it can only be controlled manually.


8. Simulation

Be sure to save it before you simulate it. Double-click on the avatar to set the skin Offset in the property editor to make the clothing as small as possible, or 1.00mm or smaller. Click Simulate (SPACEBAR) and the clothes begin to fall and cover the Avatar body. In the simulation, you can drag the pattern in the 3D view to adjust the crease, or change the part of the clothes, pick out the effect you want.


9. Measurement

The measurement work can make it better suited to the character's body when you edit the dress pattern. There are two main measuring tools in MD: one is circumference measurement and the other is length measurement. Use basic cm tools to measure your waist, hips, thighs, knees, calf, ankle, chest, elbow and wrist. Use the Height measurement tool to measure the height of the chest, gluteal, neck, waist, and leg. Then use the Surface Tape measurement tool to get the length of your pants and T-shirts.



10, try to wear clothes

You have to make sure the clothes fit in the character, not too tight, not too big. Open the strain map to solve the local problem, check where it is very tight, and then edit the area in the 2D view to make it a little larger, and then under the new simulation overhaul. If the clothes are too large, just resize and cut off the excess fabric. Keep the pattern clean as much as possible and help you to add it later. If the strain map is a yellow/green color, the proof is appropriate.


11. Design Fabric

Before entering the details, you have to design your fabric, MD has a lot of good presets, you can start with them. Click Simulate and then adjust the fabric in real time, starting like shirts and trousers can be made with cotton, bags, belts and hats for what to use with skins, and then adjust the physical properties. Sometimes a piece of clothing needs a variety of different fabrics.



12. Internal Line

Use the internal lines as a guide for the starting stage of the clothing design, marking the waist, knees, elbows and sharing patterns. You can then use them to fold the clothes and add details such as holes and elastic bands. For folding use internal polygon/line to draw a line, then adjust fold strength and fold Angle from the property editor. If you need a rolled-up suriko, such as cuffs and collars, select internal line and then use the Fold arrangement tool and manually change the Suriko angle. When working with the aggregation effect, open the elastic and adjust the values of intensity and ratio.



13. Pocket Details

The body that makes the clothes pocket wants to use internal lines or internal rectangle tool. Select the tool and right-click, select Copy as pattern and paste it around the garment. Use the free sewing tool to sew the pocket on the internal line, in most cases you only need to sew three sides, and leave the top as the opening. Right-click the superimpose on the pocket pattern in the 3D view and start the simulation. If you want to have some wrinkles in your pocket, just turn the pocket pattern slightly larger.


14. Caves and Provincial Road

(The provincial Dow will fold the allowance between the material and the body surface and sew it to deal with it to make the surface state of the clothes or eliminate the floating allowance of the clothes and increase the three-dimensional sense of the garment.) Make a hole in the dress or use a internal lines to draw a closed shape on the garment. You can use internal circle and then edit, right-click on internal lines and select Convert to Hole. You can use a hole to create a provincial pattern, which is usually a very tight pattern, and there is no adjustable outer edge line at all. In MD There is a separate tool for creating a provincial channel, which is created exactly like a hole.



15. Package

Create a package and give it a hard cloth fabric. I usually use S_leather_belt to pin it in space to prevent it from moving during the simulation. Add and sew edges, bottoms and front, reserving top for openings. Change the folding angle from 180 to 90 or 270, depending on the normal direction of the cloth. You should put some fabric in the bag so that it looks like it's filled with something, then add the pocket and some extra detail, and finally add the top cover.


16, set the posture of avatar

Use the MD built-in node system to adjust posture. Create a new scene without clothes, switch to X-ray mode, we can see the nodes, and then use the Move Rotation tool to adjust them to get the posture you want. Here you need to switch the local or world gizmo to better rotate the axis. File>save As>pose to save the pose in the library. Load the clothes into the current scene, then drag the pose to the current role in the library and make sure the particle is 20 from the facility.



17. Deformation target

If you use your own character, you want to import a posture of the variable body applied to the character. From File>import >obj, select the Morph file and select Load as Morph target. If the pose is particularly complex, set your morphing frame count higher, about 250 frames. In some cases you need to avoid the intersection of intermediate frames, load the first intermediate frame, let MD do the dress simulation, then load the next one, and so on.


18. Mix and match clothes

Start a new file and load it into your avatar,file>add>garment. Add all your clothes to the scene and set the particle distance for each thing to 20. Select all the clothes and right-click to select Deactivate. Start with the bottom of the garment, activate it and then simulate. After you finish the simulation, right-click on the clothes. Then go to the next piece of clothing, activate and set it on a layer of 1, then simulate, then freeze. Repeat the process until all the clothes have been processed. Thaw all objects and then re-simulate. Now increase the density of the particles from 20 to 4, increasing the quality of the clothes and simulating again and again.


19. Export

You should ask yourself if you exported the model mesh, is it triangular or four-sided? Is it an object or multiple objects? Is it a whole or a split? Thin or thick? Normally, if you want to carve the exported model, it's best to turn it into four sides, and if you want to import it into other software for simulation, it's best to keep the triangle. Here, I take him into a four-sided mesh, in the export options I choose multiple Objects,unweld,thin and unified UV.

20. Add Fine in ZB

This step is MD extra. At some point you need to deal with the details of the clothes, put your clothes on one piece of the export in obj format and then load into the ZBrush inside, flip the normal to select both sides. Make sure Polygroup uses Uvs and then add thickness from Geometry palette using the Panel option, set Polish to 0,bevel to 0,elevation to 100. Then use standard brush to modify the folds, and then use Micromesh and noisemaker to add some other details.

Marvelous designer Costume Design and simulation