Any pointers on modelling a duvet/continental quilt??

[MarkC-UK]

This is soooo difficult. At work I use Inventor and model mechanical objects with ease. But, try as I might, I cannot create something soft & fluffy like a duvet.

I have searched but didn't find anything too helpful. The help files have some clothing tuts. but this again isn't much use. The closest I came was a tutorial on a covered 'wild west' wagon thing using something called 'Reactor'.

Is this the tool I need to create a realistic looking, plump, 12 tog beauty to throw over my bed and pillows??

Any light shed will be gratefully received.

PS Happy Easter (if you celebrate it;) )

[MarkC-UK]

bump. Can anyone help me with this? Come on, it must be a fairly common thing to model........

Thanks!

[MarkC-UK]

Come on - 50 people have looked at this. Surely someone has made a decent looking bedroom scene.............

[batteryoperatedlettuce]

There's quite a few ways to do this.

 

I'd say your first port of call should be some of the online resources, there's a lot of models out there already. Wouldn't hurt to stop by evermotion and consider buying a few.

 

As for making them you have a few options with 3d max.

 

-you can box model it, I got some ok results doing this.

 

-You can learn to use reactor. The max tutorials regarding the "cloth object" will help you do this.

 

-If you are using max 8 or up you can use the garment maker and set up a cloth simulation - you will need to read through the tutorials to get an idea of how to do this, as it can be quite tricky and very time consuming if you make mistakes.

 

When I make cloth for drapes or throws or duvets I always make them one sided and then curl the edges round a bit to simulate thickness, that saves on faces.

 

Both the reactor and the garment maker will allow you to set up simulations and litteraly drop or throw your fabric onto an object. Complex simulations can take almost as long to complete as a full rendering.

[MarkC-UK]

Cheers BOL, thanks for the reply. I'll have a go and see what I come up with!

[Guest nazcaLine]

i remember having seen tutorials to do clothing with editable poly only. it's very easy, in fact i never use reactor or cloth , i just model with polygon technique and just apply a meshsmooth. for example, make a pillow, or a blanket, and using the cut tool in polygon mode, make some cuts simulating the wrinkles, and then go to vertex mode and strat moving vertexes to simulate the unevenness.

then apply a meshsmooth.

disadvantage is it just works if you are a very experienced modeler. the advantage is you have total control of the output mesh, no guessing.

i can't post the tutorials i saw beacuse i just can't find them, he links are dead.

 

one very easy example to do is a curtain, which i always use:

draw a zigzag spline, all corner vertexes.

extrude to the desired height.

convert to editable poly. align th top vertexes to form a straight line with the make planar button. (to attach it to its support).

use ffd box modifier, deform it to look as it is tied to one side.

meshsmooth.

 

i hope you can find this useful.

 

Eduardo

[batteryoperatedlettuce]

Seconded - if you are dealing with complex cloth simulations which take a long time to solve it can almost be quicker to model it by hand if you're fairly competent. I've definitely done curtains like that before.

 

What ever method you use is going to take a little practice - my advice is to have a browse through each method until you find something, which suits you.

[MarkC-UK]

Thanks guys. In the end, I started my curtains by drawing plines on two separate, parallel planes in AutoCAD. Edit the plines and turn into smooth splines. Create a surface between the 2 lines with surftab1 variable set nice and high. This was exported into Max.

My duvet (ok more of a thin sheet!) was done using reactor. Wow - an amazing piece of software. I just adapted Ted Boardman's wild west covered wagon tut.

Not brilliant, but certainly fairly decent looking.

[batteryoperatedlettuce]

nurbs give you quite a decent result for that sort of thing too - read up on how to make a 1-rail sweep and 2-rail sweep using nurbs. Again, a bit tricky for beginners as the results can appear to be a bit unpredictable, but you can get reasonable results within a fairly short time once you get the hang of it.