Just one remark before:
If you model completely imaginary clothes, then some points of this text will not make sense for your work. Modelling a 3d version of real clothes normally demands a lot of additional work to find images in higher resolution from different perspectives and convenient textures and materials.
I will explain most of my steps by referencing the train-driver uniform I've made, but also some other clothes out of my collection.
Target and characteristics
The target was to create a train driver uniform of former Yugoslavia. So first I had to find pictures in the network, which was quite complicated ... in the end I found the uniform, when I looked for some events, like the opening of a track or a jubilee.
So here is a small example what the uniform looks like in reality:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Otvaranje_barske_pruge_28_maj_1976.jpg
Luckily I was able to find better pictures on the pages of the Union of Slovenian railways, celebrating 150 years of the opening of the track between Maribor and Celovec. (http://www.sindikat-szps.si)
What catches your eye, when you look at the uniform? For me it was:
- how the sleeves are fitted to the rest of the jacket
- the pockets
- the form of the collar
- the buttons
- the rank patches near the cuffs
- the creases of the pants
- the emblem fixed to the cap
But I also had two problems:
- I need a shirt under the jacket
- how does the rest of the pants look like?
So for the problems I had to find solutions first, otherwise I could not model the clothes. So I decided:
a) I will model a collar of a shirt, but no tie. The shirt will be part of the geometry.
b) Considering the pants, I will simply take pictures of pants of today. For the scenes I want to do, this is sufficient, because these parts are not visible and the MakeHuman Users at least should get an alternative version of pants.
Creating a mesh
Let's start with basics. I decided to take the base mesh with helpers for all clothes. I hoped it will work for male and female.
In most cases you should decide for one gender, because it makes things easier. For the pants the base mesh without helpers made better results than the one with helpers. But it is not a big problem to decide this later. If you think a mesh without helpers seems to work in a better way, simply throw away the helpers mesh and load the other mesh.
There are different methods to create the clothes:
- duplicate part of the helpers and remodel them as your clothes
- duplicate part of the human mesh and remodel it as your clothes
- make the human mesh a collision object, create something like a cape, place this object above the human mesh and use cloth simulation, then model the details
- create an own geometry without using parts of helpers or human mesh
The jacket and pants are modelled on the helpers mesh, the cap is an own geometry.
Next decide if the piece of clothing should be considered as symmetrical or asymmetrical. If it is fully asymmetrical, you must model the whole piece of cloth. But most clothes are symmetrical in a way. So it is sufficient to model one half and mirror it. Small differences, like a buckle of the belt of the pants or button facing I modeled after I applied the mirror. So I started with one half of the jacket.
Some tips about modelling:
- MakeHuman only works with quads. When you have to create cylinders, discs or button always take an even number of vertices.
- When using the mirror operator, apply the mirror operator after doing every detail which should be mirrored. Test result on a character in MakeHuman before applying the mirror! You even may do the unwrap and pin the UV-map before you apply the mirror, if the texture should be mirrored as well.
- For some clothes it could happen, that the max_pole value in the .mhclo-File must be set to a higher value (for the jacket it must be done manually). Other problem might be discs, consider the cap of the train driver, the 32 triangle segments will normally form 16 quads. So the middle vertex then has 16 poles. I changed it to 8 poles.
Using subdivision-surface algorithm will change your geometry. Things will become smaller and textures are changed in a way, which is different in MakeHuman and Blender. MakeHuman does also display the texture in another way:
Sometimes you do not want that subdivision surface will smooth the geometry. In this case you should create small extra faces. Example:
Clothes are not flat or thin like paper. There are two ways to create some volume. One way to do it os to model the geometry by creating seams, pockets, buttons, etc. The second way is to create an illusion by using a normal map. You can also combine these methods. Take the enhanced geometry for important parts and the normal map for the illusion of materials. For the jacket, the connection between sleeves and main part was remodelled.
Always create rims for the sleeves and other parts of the clothes. You can do it by using the solidify operator, but you may also create rims only by extruding faces to the inside. Be aware that sometimes inner faces will peek trough the outside, especially when you pose your character. Particularly skirts have this problem. If clothes should be worn directly on the skin (like lingerie), the rims may also disappear in the character.
After you are ready with all the components apply the mirror operator. Test if all necessary vertices are connected in the middle, otherwise connect these manually.
When you want to use cloth simulation in an animation, you must create the clothes so that all vertices are connected. I created a few assets which will not work, like most of the lingerie (see example, the seams and the bow are unconnected geometry). But also for the uniform it will not work, because all buttons will fall down to the floor.
Vertex-Groups
Normally the vertex-groups can be created by simply doing this with the function "create vertex groups" in make clothes. But sometimes this will create weird distortions to geometric objects, like buttons or buckles. For these parts you should use rigid groups (groups starting with a '*' like *cap). For the rigid group you have to assign exactly 3 vertices on the base mesh or the helpers to tell Makeclothes the size of the object. For the uniform rigid groups are used for the large buttons, the buckle of the pants, the signal and the cap (which was only made as one rigid group).
UV-Mapping
When you create accessoires like buttons, which should be used for a few times, create only one, make an UV-unwrap of this part of geometry and pin these vertices. In this case you only have to create one texture for all the buttons.
Depending on what you are modelling do the UV-unwrapping in different steps. E.g. if you do a regular structure like a belt loop do an unwrap before. Create enough seams, especially when you are modelling solid objects, like buckles. Create the seams in regions where they are hidden or where they appear in reality. This makes the texture work easier.
You also may sadjust faces in the UV map after you unwrap, with the standard tools e.g. type s x 0 to get a lines of vertices on the same x coordinate. There are also addons which help to do get better maps (like quad unwrap).
At the end, export the UV layout in Blender.