Right on Gabe! Im so excited. Your textures always look so amazing I have my copy/paste file all ready.
Thanks. Jo

This is all cutting-edge work, but I still like the ship interiors the best.

Question about the captain's peacoat. This is a must-have fashion. Do you have any plans to sell it?

General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

Paumanok you must have read my mind :)

the captain's peacoat is exactly what we will make in the tutorial - at the end of which i will have it available for download

this will be followed by a tutorial using G2 clone cloth

gabe, thrilled to hear this. When you're tut-ing, would you please go over again the deal about G2 versus G3. I recall Reallusion saying that they didn't want people to think less of G2 just because G3 came out. I know G3 has fewer polygons and in some ways some improved shapes. Can you refresh us in your discussion?

General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

Gabe - Tried to Reply to your PM re: Tut but can't, 'cos :

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      REALLUSION FORUM ANNUAL PINHEAD COMMUNITY PROJECTS.

       New Pinhead Website & Project to be announced in September 2015

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ok folks we will start working on costumes using clone cloth. But first we'll cover some basics so we are on the same page. For my movie one of the key characters is a naval officer circa 1880's so i go over to google and get a rough idea what the costume might look like

G2 vs. G3
Now choosing between G2 and G3 - either one works great - in fact i have a lot of G2 characters already created but we will use G3 because it has lower polys - that means you can have a similar looking character as in G2 but with a smaller file size - so theoretically you can get more characters/props in a scene. The other thing is the UV mapping on G3 is much better so it is easier to place buttons and lines and not have them as distorted. For either G2 or G3 you typically work with a separate upper and lower texture maps

Now i've also worked with a 3rd party clonecloth system - specifically BigBoss - which makes texturing even easier because you can do both uppers and lowers on one map - that is one picture file

What We Need:
- For this tutorial we will use G3 Trey CloneCloth specifically the Trey Overcoat
- you will need a drawing or paint program that supports layers
- the ever useful google search engine for texture images and inspiration

What is a Texture Map?
For the purpose of this tutorial let's clarify this by saying it is a picture that we will apply to the clone cloth to color it, design it. iClone works with 6 texture maps - but for this basic tutorial we'll cover just diffuse and opacity - i'll do a more advanced tutorial later

Texture Template - G3 and G2 come with texture template - this is basically a jpg file with lines drawn corresponding to areas of the body. The lines help guide us on how to position our texture map

Diffuse Map - this is the actual texture/color/design that is going to be applied to the clonecloth
Opacity Map - this is a mask - basically iclone will use it as follows : all areas in white will be shown, all areas in black will be transparent

Texture map resolution
you need to have high resolution pictures as texture maps to make them look crisp in the character - go to PREFERENCES (the hammer icon on the top right of iclone) and under "MAX REAL_TIME MAP SIZE" - select 8192x8192

File Size
One of the things that causes iClone to slow down and sometimes crash is a heavily textured character - some times looking at the poly count does not give you the full story - it might look like its low poly but the file size is 50-60MB for just 1 character -

so how does the file size get too big? well if you have a high res diffuse map , bump map, opacity map etc.. that adds up to the file size

Animatechnica's solution - i use a hi res (I use the default texture map template size but save at 100% quality), high quality diffuse map but typically use a lower res, lower quality for the opacity, bump, specular glow and reflection maps - we'll cover this in a more advanced texturing session

this applies to props as well - so watch out for that

Types of Texturing
i consider three types of texturing
- the first one is what i call texture dumping - basically taking a picture of some fabric, and pasting it over the texture map template - this is the easiest way to customize your character but the results is less than savory
- the second method involves using a picture of clothing and stretching it, tweaking it to fit the texture map template - it works ok at times
- the third method is hand drawing the texture onto the template

AnimaTechnica's method is a hybrid of drawing and using pictures of materials/fabrics and applying those pictures to the shape i hand draw - this tutorial will cover this technique

My Drawing tool
The most important part of clonecloth texturing is our drawing or paint tool - many people use adobe photoshop, paint shop pro - i use RealDraw ($59 from MediaChance.com)
i like Real Draw because of these features

1 uses layers -lets you build the costume layer by layer
2 uses vector graphics - you can export what you draw in high res without losing quality
3 let's you apply a picture to a shape you just drew
4 let's you apply lighting to your drawing
5 easy to use drawing tools - basically connect the dots

so if your paint application supports the above, you should be ok - to me only feature #4 is optional - i must have the others

Now to Create the Captain

A) Click on AVATAR then to G3 CLONE CLOTH V1 and load the overcoat character



B) First thing we'll work on is the upper body. But first we need to load the Texture Map template to help guide us



c) In the Material library, look for the template map - HINT -i use View thumbnails on explorer to make it easier to identify



D) now you can see what the template looks like



E) by clicking LAUNCH your draw/paint program launches and opens the texture map template
at the same time it creates a file in your iClone Temp directory called UPPER_0_DIFFUSE.jpg



notice how the coat is laid out, the front and back of the coat, the collar separated and sleeves separate - the picture you see is RealDraw - the tools should be similar to your paint program
Notice also that the front has different colored lines on the edges (purple on the left side, green on the right, the same colors are seen on the back map - these colors tell you where the front and back maps meet

AnimaTechnica's Texturing process is summed up as : Draw shape, adjust position, apply texture

F) The first thing i do is draw some colored boxes on the template, export it to the iClone Temp directory and overwrite the UPPER_0_Diffuse file. Go back to iClone and click on UPDATE.
you should see the colored boxes applied to your avatar - Why did i do this? This helps help determine how the cloth mapping works whether a line going from front to back stays in a straight line or curves. In this case i use the red box to help me place a belt if i need it, the blue box to help guide me where i should put the coat flap - since this is a double breasted coat, the flap is not in the center



G) Now back in the Draw - i start using the line tool to create a shape, pick a color that differentiates it from the others - move the layers (using your draw program) front and back as needed so the guide shapes are still visible. I use the BLUE box to position the purple shape appropriately. At this point we are just using plain colors, we'll add textures later

H) Now go back to the draw program and draw the shape of the left side of the coat - just follow the contour of the template map- Add an outline as well - export again overwriting the UPPER_0_Diffuse file and click update in iclone



Now our coat is taking shape- at this point i want to see how this might look with the right texture - so off to images.google.com, do a search for wool fabric - picked a picture of a fabric i liked and saved it and imported it to my draw program

I) Now real draw allows me to take that picture and apply it to the shape i just drew -for the pocket, i adjusted the colors so it is a little darker



J) Apply the same texture to the left side of the coat


K) Now to decorate to coat further, we'll add buttons - this is where it gets a little tricky - because certain areas of the body is not flat, the texture map does not always follow a straight lin - so in this case even if we drew a perfectly round circle, iclone does not show it as such - so this part requires trial and error to reshape resize the circle so it looks somewhat round in the avatar


L) now that e are somewhat done with the front, time to work on the back - follow the process i outlined : Draw SHAPE, Position, Apply Texture



After UPDATING iclone, inspect the side seams where the front and back textures are supposed to connect, make sure they are lined up -if not adjust the back texture length and update iclone to check - repeat as necessary.

M) Now we'll work on the right arm sleeve - same process -Draw shape, adjust position as needed, apply the texture - i also added three gold lines - notice how the gold lines look metallic - that's the real draw lighting feature in action



Repeat what you just did for the left arm sleeve

N) Don't forget to click update in iclone to see what it looks like


O) at this point you can decorate the front coat a little bit - a little tip i use dingbat fonts, use real draw to give them a bevel and make them look metallic and add to the texture map we are creating



P) now lets work on the inner clothing - i draw a rectangle box again just to see where i will put my shirt collar



Q) again for the shirt material, do a search in google - i found this lacy one a while back - draw the shape, using the red box to guide you (or modify the red box to the shape of the collar) and then apply material



R) Do the same for the rest of the shirt and the inner sleeve - add buttons if you want, adjust color if you want



S) Now let's add some effects on the back - completely optional but can help enhance the texture

T) now we've finshed the diffuse mapping, we need to work on opacity to remove areas of the coat we dont want - in this case the bottom of overcoat -optional we can trim the inner sleeves



U) so Opacity map is basically a black and white picture where the black areas are transparent and the white areas shows the diffuse map


V) use your draw or paint program to select the shapes we've just created, turn them all white, and make the background black - in my case what i do is add a layer of pure white, move it just above the original layer (which should contain the texture map template) so in essence you have your texture map with a white background - export this as a jpg, and use your paint program to convert to black and white mask



W) Apply the opacity map as described