Designing a Shirt, Part 3

Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials > Hair and Cloth Tutorials > Cloth > Designing a Shirt >

Now that you've had a taste of adding detail to a garment, it's time to look at some of the more advanced attributes within Cloth. In this tutorial, you'll add a collar and cuffs to a simple shirt design, and change their seams to create creases within the garment.

Add a collar:

Load tutorial_4.max from your \tutorials\cloth folder.
This scene contains a character and the shirt from the previous lesson. This shirt has some additions to it as shown in the following illustration. Two extra pieces have been added for the collar, and one extra piece per arm for a cuff. The cuff is a bit narrower than the sleeve.

Shirt layout with collar and cuffs added to the basic pattern
Select the shirt in the Top viewport, and on the Modify panel, turn on the Garment Maker modifier so the panels move into place.
The shirt is set up as in the previous lesson, with most of the seams created for the arms, back and front of the shirt. You'll adjust the curve of the cuffs and the collar, and apply seams to them.
Go to the Panels sub-object level of Garment Maker, and select one of the cuffs. In the Deformation group on the Panels rollout, choose Curved, and set the curve to –5.0 around the Y-axis.
Now that the cuff is curved around the arm, you can add its seams.
Go to the Seams sub-object level of Garment Maker, and create a seam between the sleeve and the cuff. Then create the seams for under the sleeve and under the cuff. Create your seams in this order, or you might get topology dependency errors.

Seams for the underarm and cuff

Now that you have made the seams for the cuff, you will edit the seam, attaching it to the sleeve to get a cuff-like result. Where the cuff meets the sleeve, there should be a clear crease and a bunching of the sleeve.
At the Seams sub-object level, select the seam that joins the cuff and the sleeve. (In other words, click the green sewing springs that connect the cuff and the sleeve.) On the Seams rollout, set Crease Angle to 90.0 and Crease Strength to 100.0.
This will make the seam try to maintain an angle of 90 degrees.
Complete steps 3 to 5 for the other side of the body.
Now you'll take a look at the collar. It is best to make the seams for the collar first, and then change its curve afterward.
At the Seams sub-object level, create a seam between the back of the shirt and the bottom of the closest collar piece (the curved segment at the back of the shirt).

Seam from the back of the shirt to the bottom of the collar
Next, create a seam between the tops of the two collar pieces. If necessary, click the Reverse Seam button to straighten out the seam.
Next you'll bend the collar panels and move them into place.
At the Panels sub-object level, select the base of the collar and apply a curvature of –3.0 around the X-axis. Select the other piece of the collar and apply a curvature of –2.0 around the X-axis.
Select each of the collar places and move them into place around the neck and above the shoulders, as shown below.

Collar bent and positioned

Next, you'll edit the seam of the collar as you did the cuffs. This will let the folded part of the collar stand out a bit.
At the Seams sub-object level, select the seam between the top of the two collar pieces. Set Crease Angle to –75.0 and Crease Strength to 25.0.
Now you are ready to add the Cloth modifier and run a simulation.
Apply the Cloth modifier to the shirt.
On the Object Properties dialog, set the shirt to be cloth, and choose the Cotton preset from the drop-down list.
Add the Jester to the simulation, and make the Jester a collision object. Close the Object Properties dialog by clicking OK.
On the Simulation Parameters rollout, turn off Gravity. Make sure Use Sewing Springs is turned on. Then on the Object rollout, in the Simulation group, click Simulate Local to bring the panels together.
Stop the simulation and then, on the Simulation Parameters rollout, turn off Use Sewing Springs.
Turning off Use Sewing Springs tells Cloth to compute the seam angles and strength for the cuffs and collar.
Turn Gravity back on, and then Simulate Local again with Use Sewing Springs off to further refine the garment's position and fit.
If you don't get the right result the first time, you might want to turn Use Sewing Springs back on and Reset State. This will allow you to perform the local simulation again.

Simulated shirt with collar and cuffs

This lesson has provided you with additional ways to control how your fabric behaves and is joined together. In the next lesson you'll look at how you can further refine the look and behavior of your clothing by assigning different cloth properties to the panels of garments.

Apply various cloth settings to different parts of the shirt:

In the previous section you looked at different controls that help define how your fabric behaves. In this section, you'll apply different cloth settings to various parts of the shirt to create a more convincing look.

The concepts that will be covered in this section are as follows:

Assigning separate Cloth properties for panels
Assigning different materials for panels
Assigning separate Cloth properties with a material
Load tutorial_5.max from your \tutorials\cloth folder.
This scene contains a character and the shirt from the previous lesson. You'll add some different properties to the cloth panels themselves.
Select the shirt and then, on the Cloth modifier Object rollout, click Object Properties to open the Object Properties dialog. Highlight the Shirt entry in the left column, and then turn on Use Panel Properties. Click OK to exit the dialog.
This will let you set the cloth properties for the entire shirt on a panel-by-panel basis.
Go to the Panel sub-object level of the Cloth modifier (not the Garment Maker modifier!) and select one of the cuffs. It will turn red to indicate that it's selected.
You can change all of the parameters for how the fabric reacts here on the Panel rollout.
From the drop-down list in the Presets group, choose Generic Heavy.
This sets the cuff to deform like a heavy or stiff piece of fabric.
Select the different panels of the collar and the other cuff and set them to the Generic Heavy preset.
Important
Be sure to choose the preset even if it is already displayed in the list.
Select each of the other shirt panels, and set the preset to Cotton.
This will make most of the shirt behave like cotton except for the collar and cuffs, which will be heavier and less flexible, as if they were starched.

Now it's time to rerun the simulation.
Exit the Panel sub-object level and go to the Simulation Parameters rollout of the Cloth modifier. Turn on Use Sewing Springs, then go to the Object rollout. In the Selected Object Manip group, click Reset State.
This resets the state of the shirt so you can run the local simulation again.
Run the local simulation again, first with Use Sewing Springs on for a bit, and then run the local simulation with Use Sewing Springs turned off. You might also use Simulate Local (Damped), which adds a heavy damping to the fabric as it simulates.
If you are not satisfied with the results, click Erase Simulation and then rerun the simulation until you like the positioning and drape of the shirt.

Fine-tune the fabric settings:

Now that you have different fabric properties for the cuffs and the collar, you'll set up some different materials and densities. If you take a look at the end of the cuff, you will see it seems a bit low-poly and chunky.

Slightly chunky-looking cuff

Select the shirt (if it isn’t selected already), and then go down the modifier stack to the Garment Maker modifier. Click Yes to dismiss the warning that appears.
Go to the Panels sub-object level and select one of the cuffs. On the Panels rollout, change Density to 3.0 and set the Mat ID to 2.
Repeat the previous step for the other cuff as well.
Changing the material ID lets you apply a different material to the cuffs only.
Select each panel of the collar and change its Density to 2.0 and its Mat ID to 2.
Go back to the Cloth modifier, click Reset State, then run the local simulation again to fit the shirt to the torso once more.
Open the Material Editor. Create a Multi/Sub-Object material with two sub-material slots. Change the two sub-materials to any colors you like, apply the material to the shirt, and then render.

Smooth cuffs with separate materials applied