Modeling Cloth Curtains Using Patches in 3dsmax - Back

The purpose of this tutorial is to show you how to make cloth curtains from patches. For truly real cloth models (especially for animating) I strongly suggest a plugin like ClothReyes. It's less time consuming for you (even though it takes forever to calculate a scene!!!) and the results are fantastic! But for us poor folk, we'll use patches. This is another tutorial by request. On with the show!

First of all you want to make a Line in the Top Viewport.

  1. Click the Create tab and choose 2D Shapes then click Line.
  2. In the Top Viewport make a line with 10 vertices (or how ever many you want, just remember the number.)
  3. Once finished making the line click the Modify tab and w/ the line selected click the Sub-Object button.
  4. Select Vertices from the drop down menu next to Sub-Object.
  5. Select all the vertices of the line. Right click one of them and choose Smooth. This should smooth out the line and you should have something like this:

  1. Now go back to the Modify tab and click the Extrude button. Extrude as much as you feel necessary (I chose the Amount of 150.)
  2. In the Output section under Parameters choose Patch. And keep the segments at a value of 1.

You should have something like this:

  1. At this point go to the Material Editor and apply any color to it but make sure you click the 2-Sided option under Basic Parameters.

  1. Go back to the Modify tab. With the patch selected click the Edit Patch button. At this point you may want to uncheck the Lattice box under the Display section. Sometimes it gets in the way.
  2. Click Sub-Object and choose Vertices.

Now we are going to straighten out the bottom Vertices a little bit. Curtains seem to be less wrinkled at the bottom and more at the top. There are a few ways to do this here's how I did it.

  1. Click the Move transform button. Click the Y-axis Restraint . In the Perspective view click one of the bottom vertices and move it slightly towards the center. Do this to all of the bottom vertices. DO NOT make them perfectly aligned. The bottom of the curtain still needs to have a slight wrinkle to it. It should look something like this:

And from the top:

Now this maybe good enough for some, but I'd like to give my curtains some style! We are now going to move the vertices on the top and bottom to be at opposite angles.

  1. Click the Move transform button and the X-axis Restraint. Move the vertices up and down to look somewhat like this:

They don't have to be perfect or straight on with the top/bottom vertices. In fact it's better if they don't.

  1. Play around with it a bit to get the effect you want. Maybe move the vertices a little closer together, kinda like this:

  1. In the Left Viewport make another line with the same amount of vertices as you made the first line with. Follow steps 1-9 to make another patch. But this time, in Step 7 change the Segments to a value of 2.

  1. In the Left Viewport, lineup the new patch with the first curtain.

We are now going to attach the second patch to the first to make them one patch so our curtain isn't segmented into two parts. Makes sense!

  1. With the new patch selected, go to the Modify tab. Click the Attach button under the section Edit Object and select the other patch.

Now the patches are one! (We will still refer to them as the first and second patch though.)

  1. Click the Edit Stack button next to the Sub-Object button.
  2. Click Collapse All. Click Yes on the window that pops up. The click OK.
  3. Click the Edit Patch button under the Modify tab.
  4. Click the Sub-Object button. Select Vertices. In the Front Viewport Move the right hand vertices close to the top vertices of the first patch.
  5. Select one of the vertices from each patch like so:

  1. Click the Weld button under Sub-Object. The two vertices should have become one. If they didn't, increase the Weld Threshold and try again. They may not be close enough.

Continue Steps 21-22 until all of the right hand vertices of second patch are welded to the top vertices of the first patch.

  1. Now one the left hand side of the second patch, form the vertices into an angle like we did with the first patch in Step 12 & 13. Or like so:

  1. Now click the Move transform button and the Y-axis Restraint and horizontally align the left-hand vertices with the top row of vertices. Like so:

  1. Click the X-axis Restraint and select the middle set of vertices. (These ones: )

  1. Move them to the right quite a bit.
  2. Click the X-axis Restraint and start moving these vertices one at a time downward and slightly to the left.
  3. This is the tricky part. You will need to Move the side handles of each vertex and "point" it towards it's left and right counterpart (vertex). Like this:

Once you have done them all (with a bit of tweaking) you should have something like this:

Now to put a texture on our curtain.

  1. Deactivate the Sub-Object button and click the UVW Map button.
  2. Select Planar, and change the Alignment to X. Then click the Fit button.

With the material I chose changing the U, V and W Tile to a value of 5 was necessary.

There is only one good texture in Max for this project. "Southwest Pattern." You may want to make your own. (I strongly suggest making your own textures! At WHATEVER COST!)

  1. Go to the Material Editor and choose a sphere. Click the Standard button.
  2. Click the Mtl Library radio button and scroll down to find "Southwest Pattern." Click OK and then hit the Apply Material button to apply the texture.

I spent a little while longer tweaking my curtain and combined it with Tutorial 4 for this pretty picture:

This tutorial is Copyright © 2006 Jeremy LaDuke. All rights reserved.

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