Tips for modelling a fabric surface

Does anyone know of any good tutorials for modelling fablic like surfaces, i have been solid modelling for many years but when it comes to meshes or surfaces i feel a little out of my comfort zone, i could create a fabric like surface using lofts of splines or by pressing and pulling nurbs but seems too much like hard work.

Is there a better method that i should be exploring?

Thanks in advance.

Is the question about a specific quality to the fabric, such as a quilted surface, or is it more general behavior, such as vertical folds pleats of an open curtain?

Sorry if i'm being vauge.

Im wanting to model a duvet and pillows to make a realistic looking bed, i'm pretty good modelling a single surface to represent something like curtains but a duvet has other challenges. like making the thickness and overhang as realistic as possible.

Here's an image of what i'm able to create using lofts and surfacepatches, really slow process and the result is not great.

And below is an example of the kind of effect im looking to try create

Have you tried manipulating the Control Vertices of a Nurbs surface?

Duvet.dwg

Hi Seant, thanks for the tip and model.

I did have a try but was unsure how to go about adding a thickness to it or how to add the tight ripples in the texture. I guess creating a thickness isn't essential as you will never see it but i would love to learn how to apply the ripples. Is it a case of adding more CVs and press/pull them to create the effect?

Using the model you uploaded i increased the number of verticies and managed to get a ripple effect on the end of the duvet. I can see this been very difficult to get the ripples looking as fluid as in the example above.

Some combination of Displacement-, Normal-, and BumpMapping are typically applied to the surface to allow for more realistic renders.

I don't do much rendering these days, but here is an example of displacement mapping.

That's exactly what I'm looking for, I'll do some exploring.

Really appreciate your help here guys.

Does Autocad allow the use of Normal and Displacement maps now? I'm using 2014 but I don't see where you plug those maps in?

Actually, I don't know what AutoCAD's Mental Ray based render supports. With the exception of the ScanLine/RayTrace render of old, I haven't done any photorealistic rendering in AutoCAD.

My comment was more general as it relates to most renderers. Details can be added to geometry at rendertime using some of those techniques mentioned. I used a plugin to displace the nurbs surface - an unnecessarily heavy handed process if images are the ultimate goal.

Yeah, Autocad's mental ray functionality is very limited. You can plug in bump maps and opacity maps but that's about it.

Fazbear, do you have access to any other 3D programs? Even Blender would work.

Take a look at a program called Marvelous Designer. You can create clothing for characters or you can drape cloth over objects and have it deform very easily and naturally over the surface of the object. You can't export the cloth mesh out directly to Autocad but you could export an .obj file to Blender and then export an .fbx file or a .3ds file and import that into Autocad. Might be worth a try?

I haven't ever come across displacement in AutoCAD and after searching the web i don't think its an available feature , ill have a try with standard bump maps to see if i can get something close.

Thanks again.