How to approach complex objects that would work best with "photo sampling" (if I'm using the right term)

[Nightingalia]

Say I want to make something like this dress below. Most clothing creators I've seen would make the mesh using MD to Zbrush to Substance painter, but seeing their results it seems to work best on things with busy patterns to distract from the unrealistic shading, or simple forms so that shading realistically would be easier.

However for something with complex folds and ruffles like this, how would you approach it? Sculpt out every single fold and texture using SP, or use a photo to texture?

Edited June 19 by Nightingalia

[Salt Peppermint]

details like this need a high poly and a low poly model. the program you use is personal preference for that really. personally I would indeed make the base in Marvelous, touch up details and add wrinkles and creases in zbrush, then retopo it an make a nice low poly model that is ready to upload for SL. the low poly model will barely have any folds at all, only the biggest base ones, so it's not fully flat. then the texture is baked in Substance painter where the program takes all the detailed info from the high poly and bakes it onto the low poly model. this way you will get the most realistic look of it. of course you can try to paint in folds in Photoshop manually, it's a different workflow, and imho just takes longer and the result is not as nice, but will also depend on personal skills. 

the only thing you def want to avoid, is uploading a model where every fold is actually modeled in. that's great for baking texture maps but a no no for upload in game

as far for the shading, I model on Maitreya Petite to avoid harsh shadings of bigger busts and then adjust to other sizes later

[Codex Alpha]

Not sure why you're being laughed at OP, but most creators will want to do most of that design by simulating cloth in Marvelous Designer.

You may be referring to "cloth simulation"

Making the computer do the work for you is the first step. It looks like a complicated piece, but the methods used to get ruffles, elasticity, bunching and MOST of the wrinkle effects can be done in Marvelous Designer itself.  I'm not much of an authority on Marvelous Designer probably having about 300+ hours into it, but there are many workflows and there are tons of affordable courses to teach you how to do it.

My basic workflow would be to create the pattern and effects I need in MD, run a sim to get the folds and such, export a HI poly version (and a Lower Poly version - made with a sim with lower resolution), then add more details as needed (I use Blender), then take the low poly and hi into Substance Painter and texture it there.

Wrinkles, creases and other effects can be added at any stage, but generally letting the computer and cloth simulations to do the work for you is best.

Edited Friday at 01:06 AM by Codex Alpha

[Nightingalia]

On 6/23/2022 at 6:05 PM, Codex Alpha said:

Not sure why you're being laughed at OP, but most creators will want to do most of that design by simulating cloth in Marvelous Designer.

Thanks, I guess it's my ignorance that people find laughable XD but it's ok. I didn't pay enough attention in 3D modeling class to remember a lot of the terminologies.
 

On 6/22/2022 at 11:47 PM, Salt Peppermint said:

the only thing you def want to avoid, is uploading a model where every fold is actually modeled in. that's great for baking texture maps but a no no for upload in game

as far for the shading, I model on Maitreya Petite to avoid harsh shadings of bigger busts and then adjust to other sizes later

Thank you both for your advice!