My precious coat

After the gloomy last week's post I'm happy to say that this one will be slightly more cheerful. I haven't dug myself completely out of the creative hole, but things have started moving... somewhere. Let's hope this somewhere is better than the last one.

Final-final render, Blender 2.79 + Krita background

First off, I'm planning to take part in SculptJanuary, which will happen in the coming, er, January. So I joined the Facebook group and sneaked around a bit. Which was when I found out about 3December. It's not exactly a competition (even though there is a raffle with prizes at the end). For three weeks, a new topic is announced daily and your task is simple: to make a related 3D model and upload it to Sketchfab (it's a Sketchfab event, did I mention that?).

The only problem was that when I discovered the event, it was already in full swing. I initially thought I would go for all 21 topics, but the very first one turned out to be a time sink. The way I saw it, I had a choice: either do all of the assignments quickly (and necessarily opt for a low-poly style) or choose one or two and do a realistic take on them. You've probably guessed by now that I went for the second option.

The exact same image, but with Blender background

And I really got into it—mainly because I decided to model my own coat, the only item of clothing I own that is custom made (try and find a bright green female winter cloak, I dare you). I wanted to do this properly, so I spent most of the first day just measuring and drawing things. Not very well, apparently, because when I made the rough outline, the carefully measured lengths didn't add up. So I did what any sane person would do; I improvised. (But for most part the coat has realistic proportions, I swear.)

In the modelling phase, I tried to keep the major parts separate for as long as possible, which turned out to be a mixed blessing. Yes, I could isolate whatever I needed without hassle, but I also had to sew things back together, eventually. Let's just say there was a pile of torn-off sleeves and collars lying around by the time I was somewhat satisfied with the result.

I tried to keep the geometry clean, but I wasn't sure how to do the collar, so that one is a bit of a mess. But the most difficult task was to add thickness to the cloth without creating intersecting geometry. For example, the collar doesn't rest on the shoulders as it should, which makes the coat look like it's made of much tougher fabric. But there was nothing for it: it was either this, or a potentially horrible normal map. And I needed that one for all the wrinkles and seams.

This one was done in Blender 2.8 (Eevee), so the lighting is interesting, but not as accurate

Which takes me neatly to the sculpting phase. There was no way I could get away with DynTopo, so I brushed up on my MultiRes sculpting. I only needed to go to resolution 4, so the viewport didn't get too laggy. I sculpted all the seams by hand, even though I knew I would reinforce them with the texture. I just thought it would be a good idea to have some sort of guidance for later.

And then I added the details: the buttons, the sleeve... ornaments, and the belt. The buttons only have one hole (my collar tweaking didn't line up with the buttons, so unbuttoning the coat was the only way I could resolve it), and the belt was a nightmare. I had the right technique, I think, but it was still painful to arrange. The curve would twist when I grabbed a segment, but only sometimes, to keep me on my toes, I guess. So whenever I thought I was finished, and I only wanted to adjust this small little protrusion here, the whole thing would disentangle and I could start again. 2 hours well spent. (And the right side is still rubbish; it wouldn't hang like this under normal circumstances).

Rendered in Iray, so HDR only (the others had 3-point lighting)

But then it was just the texturing left. I'm quite pleased that I figured out how to make the stitches—I just used an alpha brush. And with straight-line snapping it was done fairly quickly. What I'm less pleased about is the size of the stitches. I just couldn't go any lower without making them all blurry. A 4K texture set might have done the trick, but this way it can be a fashion statement. Maybe. I don't really know the first thing about fashion.

Anyway, I added a bit of dirt and roughness variation, and shipped it pronto to Sketchfab. And re-uploaded it at least five times, because Sketchfab. There are just too many things that I need to remember to fish out in the menus and I never do that on my first try. Or second. I just hope that people who are following me are not getting any annoying notifications. That would make me even more nervous.

And there you have it. If you like the coat, you can inspect it on Sketchfab (it shows the wireframe mode, along many others) and you can also download it for free. There are a few mistakes I noticed when I uploaded it, but they are mostly on the inside, so I'm not going to fix them right now. Unless you want to use the coat in your project and it would really help you—in which case, just contact me here, or wherever you think I might be lurking at that moment, and I'll do my best to improve it. But in the meantime, have a good week and I'll see you next time!