Apply different designs to 3D model of a Headscarf

June 28, 2022 12:08 PM

I have almost no experience in 3d modelling, but I would like to try some designs on a headscarf and see how the flow of the fabric affects the design. So, given I have/buy something like this, is it easy to try other patterns for the scarf? How did the 3D artist who made this go about it, did he start with a flat surface and then scrunched it up? So that you could easily switch out the pattern in the beginning and then reapply all the scrunching steps?
posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Best answer: Starting from a pattern and then 'scrunching up' may well be part of the process here, where the scrunching part involves running a cloth simulation, i.e. getting the computer to figure out how the material will naturally fall and drape/wrinkle according to the physics of fabric. For example, there is a commercial program called Marvellous Designer which is specialised for this. It's also possible to do some of the same kind of thing with general free 3d modelling software such as Blender but there may be quite a bit of a learning curve to setting it all up, especially if you would want something that accurately works like real clothing rather than just looking convincing.
posted by d11 at 12:29 PM on June 28, 2022

Response by poster: Yeah, I don't have much time for learning curve. Ideally I would buy a nice 3D model like the above where I can simpy plug in different patterns (as a jpg or vector graphic) and they appear on the cloth.
posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon at 12:43 PM on June 28, 2022

Response by poster: I would also be open to paying someone to do the initial setup, is this option feasible?
posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon at 12:55 PM on June 28, 2022

Best answer: You should be able to do what you want if you have a model like that, but you'll need to learn how to do it in whatever 3D software you have. That model is "pre-scrunched", so you'd just have to apply the texture to it.

Blender is free, and you'd just have to load in the model, and then create a texture to place on it, and then swap ut the different patterns. But, depending on how the model was constructed, your texture might need various adjustments to look real. You'll certainly need to scale it so the pattern fits, but there are all sorts of other adjustments that might need to be made. You could look up youtube videos of "UV texturing" in Blender to get an idea of what's involved.
posted by jonathanhughes at 1:27 PM on June 28, 2022

Best answer: Yes, I think it should work if you just want to apply a pattern image to it and see how it appears when folded into shape in 3d - it's always possible with turbosquid models that they might be built in a strange way, but from the texture image in the link it looks pretty simple and like you can swap out the pattern without making major adjustments. I see some stretching in the texture around the front of the head probably due to simplifications in how they modeled it, but just take it with a bit of a grain of salt and know that in real life the scarf would fold more naturally around that area and not actually distort the pattern.
You should be able to import the fbx or obj file into a program like Blender and apply a material and an image texture to it and get a decent preview of how it would appear - this tutorial I just looked up seems to cover it pretty quickly and easily, just ignore when he starts talking about unwrapping around 1:09 since your model should already be unwrapped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5YNJghc81U
Just make sure that the texture you're using has square dimensions or it may appear distorted when applied to the model - raster files like jpg, png or tif should all work, you may run into issues when using vector files.
posted by limnerent at 1:33 PM on June 28, 2022 [1 favorite]