Ruffles

[Spinell]

Hi everyone, it's been a while sinc you've seen my face. XD

I need your help to learn how to make ruffles in blender (2.6) for female clothing. I do victorian female pieces and a lot of the shirts of that time have ruffles on the chest. Now, I actually did a dress with chest ruffles made out of flexi prims. The result was a bit of a disaster when I sold it, as everone had problems fitting the ruffles. Ever sicne then, I scratched the "flexy ruffles" option and looked into makng sculpty/mesh ruffles instead, in the hope that it would work better,

I'm planning on using the strandard 5 size models I got from the marketplace to fit various sizes of the ruffle mesh into different avatars, so that should take care of that problem, for now at least (until I get to testing).

I came here for help on how to model the ruffles. I have not been able to find on single tutorial of anything related to ruffles or similar details (perhaps I'm just choosing the wrong keywords?) but I also noticed that almost all mesh items sold in the markelace are trendy, modern clothing. Hum...

 

The most I managed to find were tutorials about the cloth simulator, all of which are way too basic and simple to go into fine details such as making flowy ruffles. No luck finding particularmodeling videos that helped either.

So I'm turning to you guys. I need ideas and your precious advice.

For inspiration, my ultimate, top goal is to make something like this one day:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2550/4046700127_7b55946b5b_o.jpg

[Casper Priestman]

Without cracking open Blender which I rarely use....my first thought is to take a nurbs curve and make it wavy....then copy the curve....and smooth or bend the copy to taste. The idea is that with smoothing you'll still have the same amount of undulations. Now loft the two curves...and you have ruffles.

[Spinell]

I haven't tries your curve method yet, but I actually managed to find a great way to do ruffles. I had a bolt of inspiration and remembewred that ruffles look a lot like waves! So I researched it and found out about the wave modifier.

So here's what I did: made a plane, subdivide a few times, applied the wave modifier so I got several waves passing through. applied it and then went to edit mode. I started grabbing every other vertex on the top of the place and assigned it to a vertex group. Added basic and first key shape and then used proportional editing to scale/pinch the plane in the top middle. Back into object mode, went to physics and applied a cloth modifier (with self colision). let it play and go back to the vertez groups and gently move the slide of the value of the shape keys.

And I ended up with these lovely, relistic ruffles:

 

What do you think?

If anyone else is interested in this, I can do a picture tutorial. ^.^

[Stari Adder]

oh wow the tut would be much appreciated!

looks wonderful1!

[Spinell]

Haven't checked this in a while:

I'll be happy to make a quick tutorial.

Give me a day or two.

[Spinell]

I'd like to start by saying that I'm NOT a master of Mesh making and I won't be giving detailed explanations of why I do certain steps and what those steps influence exactly, because most of the time I don't know specifics: I do things like this because they work like this. And that's enought for me!

Onto the tutorial!

Step 1:

-Add a plane and subdivide it a few times

Step 2:

 

-Press 5 on the numpad to go into ortographic view (for convenience) and press either 1 or 3 on the numpad (however you like it) to go into a horizontal view.

-Go into your modifiers tab and add a wave modifier. Uncheck either the X or Y checkbox to get the wave to spread from one side of the plane tot he next instead from middle outwards. Also, set the shading to smooth (on the left toolbox).

Step 3:

 

-On the bottom of the screen, press the "play" button to start simulating the wave. You can decrease the speed of the simulation to help you view your wave correctly.

-A few details I'd like to talk about:

*You can freely move the green stopper of the timeline with your mouse anyway you like, to better view your wave

*I have also pointed out the values on the sliders to the right that I used to create the wave you see in the picture. You can use these as a general guideline if you need to.

*The wave modifier simulates ONE wave ad multiplies it acording to the sliders. You can clearly see where that one wave starts and finishes. I have positioned the timeline stopper in a point where you can see that the wave is starting to form anew on the left of the plane.

*It's very useful to identify this because you can easily multiply this place several time to create a very wide arrange of ruffles that repeat perfectly. For this reason, I'll actually select the edge loop containng the vertices of the left end of the plane and delete them.

Step 4:

 

-When you are absolutely happy with the way your wave looks, apply the modifer. The plane should now look like something in the picture.

Step 5:

Now we're going to "pich" the top of the plane to create a fan-like ruffle:

-Rotate your plane into a vertical stance.

-Go into edit mode and locate the vertical top of the plane. Select every other vertice like the picture shows. Make sure that the last vertice that you select (which should have a white dot instead of yelow) is in the spot where you want to center your "pinch". I chose the middle, but you try one of the end of the plane, for example.

Step 6:

 

-Go into the vertex groups tab (looks like a triangle) and add a new group by clicking the + button. Name it and then hit the button "assign". Make sure you assign!

Step 7:

-Go into Object Mode and, still in the vertex groups tab, go the shape keys section and click the + button two times. You should now have a Basis and Key 1.

Step 8:

 

-Go back into Edit Mode and, with the vertexes still selected the way you want them, we're going to do the "pinching": Enable proportional editing by pressing the letter O and then press S to go tino scaling mode. Before moving the cursor, press X (or Y, depending) to fix the scaling. Also before movingt he cursor, increse or decrease the radius of the proportional editing (the white circle) to encompass more or less of the plane, to your liking.

-Move the cursor to "pinch" the plane in the middle. It should look something like this:

Something's still not quite right with this though: it lacks some realism, some fabric uneveness and the waves seemed somewhat cut by the pinching. Let's fix that!

 

Step 9:

 

-If you go back into Object mode, you'll notice that the pinching is gone. Don't worry, it's till there, you can't just see it yet. Go into the phisics tab which is at the far end of the tabs. Add a cloth modifier and check the checkbox that says "pinning". In the box below, click it and select the group of vertices we used to pinch. Go a little lower and find the clocth colision section and check the checkbox that says "self colision", and make the quality 2.

Step 10:

Now comes the fun part, however I realised something: my computer doesn't have any problems simulation cloth in blender, but I know some computers are actually very slow. For this reason, I've decided to put 2 ways of doing this step, one for fast PCs and one for PCs who have trouble handling cloth simulation.

Option 1 (fast PC):

-Go back into the vertex groups tab. You'll see a slider below the shape keys we added called "value", which should be at 0.

-Go to the timeline at the bottom of the screen and press "play" to start simulating the cloth.

-Now here's the trick: as the cloth simulation is running, slide the slider bar of the "value" from left to right, and you will see the pinching effect we did. The cloth simulation with simulate the effect of fabric pinching in real time. You can slide the bar slowly or quickly for different effects.

Option 2 (slow PC):

-Instead of sliding the "value" bar while the cloth simulation is going (which might make your PC  go crazy and even crash blender because it can't simulate the cloth changes), here's what you can do: before pressing "play", go to the vertext tab and slide the "value" vbar all the way to the right so you can see the pinching already in place. Only then do you press "play"; the effect will be slightly different 

-Do not forget to go back into the physics tab and press "current cash to bake". Now you can safely move the timeline bar along the simulation until you find the way you want your fuffles to look. When you're satisfied with your ruffles, apply the cloth modifer back in the modifier tab.

That's it! Here are some final tips and tricks I'd like to share:

-To make your ruffles look better:

*Add more sigdivision to the plane at the start of the process: the ruffles look better if the wave looks better and the added subdivision helps create smoother, more defined waves.

*Also, if you want to copy multiple planes and stitch them togetehr to make a longer set of ruffles, or if you want to use and array modoifier, I suggest doing it after applying the wave modifer, in other words, before doing cloth simulations.

MODIFIERS

Below are some modifier suggestions to make your ruffles look better after the process:

                     

-Smooth modifier: Helps soften out some of the ugly, twitchy creases from the cloth modifiers, in case you're going for a more smooth, silky look for your ruffles.

-Subdivision surface: Helps your ruffles pop out and defines the curves a bit more.

-Solidify: Essencial to make your ruffles look like fabric. Also, you can increase the thickness to make your ruffles look "puffy".

Note: They don't have to be in that order.

Nothing more to add! Hope this is somewhat useful.

EXTRA: forgot to add, but I took most of the basic ideas about cloth pinning from this video: