Texturing in Mari

Medieval clothes are way more crafty than what we are used to in modern days. the dyeing techniques and materials lead up to imperfections than can be visually interesting and exploitable. While working on this part I tried to keep this in mind and replicate that feel of imperfection.

I decided to use mari for all the fabric work, the software allows me to generate 16K maps so i could get very crisp details with very close shots on the kilt.

The trick here is to make your different layers of variations readable at different distances, I used the Ortho Panel for more global picture and the UV Panel to have a close look.

The channel setup is pretty straightforward, I only need a diffuse and a bump Map.

For the diffuse :

I started with a procedural color layer to set a base color.  in the case of the kilt I prepared a simple tiled pattern that I color corrected a little bit with and HSV in it’s adjustment stack

I added a secondary level of variation with a cloud procedural node in overlay mode. This layer is mainly visible with a little bit of distance

I added a tertiary level of variation with a different method but the idea is the same. I used an HSV adjustment layer to increase the values a little bit, and i used a procedural cloud as a mask to apply it with variations. This layer is mainly visible when you are pretty close to the model

I added a final color correct to get closer to the feel i was looking for

Once i was happy with my color variations I added a Tiled layer with a seamless XYZ fabric bump texture in multiply mode

For the Bump :

I simply copied the Tiled layer with a seamless XYZ fabric bump, check how the bump map reacts by zooming in into your model

The other fabric assets are copies of what I did on the kilt with different color and scale values.

Shaders setup

I have two types of shaders to setup, one for the objects textured in substance and one for the clothes textured in mari.

For the objects textured from Painter I refered myself in Allegorithmic’s online documentation

First set the correct color spaces for the maps, sometimes i prefer to turn off the texture filters to keep all the details .

• Diffuse sRGB
• Reflection sRGB
• Glossiness RAW
• IOR RAW
• Normal RAW

All my shaders for assets textured in substance painter are set like this

For the cloths textured in mari

Clothes tend to reveal a strong highlight at their edges, so i “faked” those directly in the diffuse slot using a vray falloff node ( I made this decision only because of the context, it probably wouldn’t work in a different lighting context), the “blend colors” node allows me to control how bright the highlights can be.

Fray And Fur

Hand crafted and used clothes look messier than usual , a lot of fibers break from the pattern, some frays grow bigger and bigger into tears with time, applying this principle correctly can be a challenge whatever the method you use, but a good result can really add value to your work.

For this part used Xgen grooming tools for the Fray/tears on the kilt and vray fur for the rest

I generated Splines on few face loops around the edges and brushed them to have the desired shape, with a few modifiers I got the desired look

With vray fur I used fairly similar settings across the clothes, the quantity of fur is based on mesh density so the fur distribution/density is the only dramatic change from one object to another

Rendering the Final Shot

When starting the rendering phase, I like to imagine myself doing a photoshoot session. I turn around the model, I try out different angles or different light conditions, changing the lens settings, I start noticing interesting aspects of the subject i didn’t see before and would eventually like to bring more focus on them.

For the final shot quality the settings are the same than previously, the only difference between the lookdev scene and the final shot scene is the Depth of Field and I changed the adaptive threshold to 0.003, I placed cameras around the model to find good compositions highlighting my detail work. I use a distance tool to estimate my focus distance with ease.

We are done ! I hope you enjoyed scrolling through those lines and learned useful stuff from it. If you have any questions or inquiries i will happily answer you either through my artstation contact form https://www.artstation.com/richardtrouve or by email : trouve.richard@gmail.com

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3