The 3rd Age

Formationmod

Formationmod

In this modification hord size and formation has been changed

Button for The 3rd AgeButton for The Dwarf HoldsButton for The Elven AllianceButton for Helm's Deep Last HopeButton for GothmogtheOrcButton for BFME+Button for The Four AgesButton for HDR HeadquartersButton for Middle Earth CenterButton for Project Perfect Mod

Become an affiliate!

   

Quick Lists

Top Rated Popular New Updated Last Comments Users

Register and log in to move these advertisements down

Thick-grain Cloth Tutorial

Tutorial for Battle for Middle-earth BFME, Battle for Middle-earth II BFME 2, Battle for Middle-earth II: Rise of the Witch-king ROTWK

Avatar of Nertea

Nertea

Category: Graphics
Level: Intermediate
Created: Monday June 11, 2007 - 0:32
Updated: Monday June 11, 2007 - 0:40
Views: 6540
Summary: Some tips on drawing thick grain cloth

Rating

Staff says

4.5

Members say

4.3

Average

4.4/5.0

5 votes

Page 1 2 3
This tutorial talks of coarse-grained fabrics. These are suitable for lower class people - again for example, Rohan peasants. They'll also do well for warmish winter cloaks. I use a variation on the techniques outlined here for nearly every type of cloth that I make except for fine banners. The methods might not apply to elvish fabrics, because they are so much more elegant and refined. Of course, I could simply argue that I've never actually drawn elf clothes before.... anyways.

We're going to be working with the same Peasant texture from the first cloth tutorial-really continuing from where we left off. First, We can look at the parts of the skin that are constructed of cloth. Following the original layout, we have a 'skirt', the cloak, shirtsleeves and possibly the legs. Just to be safe, we'll do all three.

Skirt


First, open the document that was crated in the Leather tutorial. You're going to want to make sure the other layers don't get in the way, so select the shirt, strap, buckle, belt and belt engravings layers. Group them via the layer menu (or press Ctrl-V). Name this group 'vest'.Create a new layer, name it 'skirt' or similar. In the layer panel, move it to below the 'vest' group. This way it'll say below the vest, and you can draw over the vest without any worries.

On this layer, draw over the old, ugly bit of cloth on the texture. Rohirric clothes are a series of greys, greens and browns, so we'll use a greenish tinged medium brown. Brush should be of varying sizes so that you can best accomplish this.

User image


Once this is done, we can proceed to basic highlights and shadows, as usual. Shadow right below the intersection with belt and vest - I suggest a burn brush set on midtones at ~25%, using 0% hardness. This area should be exaggerated, as it defines where the vest ends and emphasizes the belt. You also want to use a burn brush to create a crease where the two sides of the skirt would intersect- in this case at the left edge of the skin. Use a stronger, ~80% hardness brush here. You'll want to make the gap a little larger at the bottom, tapering to near nothing at the belt. the centre of this crease should be almost, if not totally, black.

User image


That's the general shadowing. Now, we must apply the general highlighting. This should be done with a dodge brush, a largish one with low hardness. Dodge lightly in the centres, the increase the exposure as you work outwards towards the edges. Again, this accentuates them greatly. Working in downward strokes will also help add to the effect, because cloth generally folds vertically if hanging like this.

User image


Now that the initial highlighting is done, we can apply the cloth texture. Go to filters -> Texture -> Texturizer. This basic filter applies a patterned texture to your selection- it is sometimes fine to use - other times it just looks odd. Folds in this bit of cloth are mostly minor, so it works here. Set the Scaling to 50%, Relief to 1, and play around with the light direction. For this, I'm going to use Top, but you can simulate other cloth styles by using different directions.
Select OK. Do also note that the highlighting messed up the colour, so adjust with the Hue/Saturation controls, back to a browner colour.

User image


Now that the texture is applied, we can add better highlights. First, using the dodge brush of size 5, go around the edges of the skirt again.

User image


This adds a stiff edge to the cloth bit. Now take a dodge brush on highlights, size 13-19, hardness 0, an exposure of around 25% and begin drawing the highlights of fold lines into the cloth. These should be vertical - and are a completely subjective process. Do it until you're happy with it . Some tips - follow gravity, coordinate with 'bumps' on the bottom of the cloth bit, place the strongest highlights near the edges. folds can be more compressed near areas of compression - ie. around the belt.
Correspondingly, use a burn brush on midtones set to roughly the same settings - perhaps a bit smaller - to darken areas around the fold lines you've created. this is just the inverse of the above step. After finishing, you may need to touch some areas up with the desaturate tool, the dodging and burning may have increased the saturation somewhat.

User image


There! now, aside from some grunge addition, which will be done at the end, this stage is done. If you like, you can play around with additional dodging, the saturation, etc, but I like what I got here.

Go to top

 

"One site to rule them all, one site to find them,
one site to host them all, and on the network bind them."

 
4:44:50