How best to create baggy sleeves?

Development Character & Animation
1

Sorry Mod dude, I know this isn’t UE4 specific but I can’t find better help anywhere on the internet (and I’m working on a UE4 indie project),

This has had me stumped for a couple of weeks now, and I can’t figure it out. I want my female lead to have baggy sleeves like in this concept art:

fml1.jpg
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Seems pretty simple, but when I come to modeling in Max I get to where I am now and I flummoxed:

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How would a pro tackle this?

2

First, stuff like this is one of the reasons most character artists model in a relaxed T-pose. The pose is going to be closer to what your character will be posed like ~95% of the time in game. Rigging and animation is going to have to solve what happens when the character brings their arms up.

Generally, if you want fantastic looking clothes and to use tools and workflows professional studios use, Marvelous Designer is the simple and main option. It’s expensive, but there’s a free trial.

A lot of people do get by with just zbrush and cloth sims in 3d applications, but it may be more work and effort for worse results. Really depends on your needs and game,

You’ll just want to try to model the shape as realistically as possible and try to make it work.

3

Thanks Zac (again!), I looked into Mavelous D, and it does look very good (easy to use with excellent results), however after watching their tuts and browsing their forum I have a couple of questions:

  1. Have they made Unreal integration easier? -I think I’m right in saying that MD clothing uses “Alembic files”, and the only threads I can find here are about bad integration with the Unreal engine (but they are all from 2014/15).
  2. MD clothing does look awesome but is it suitable for general in-game use without too much of a performance hit? (will it push ‘minimum system requirements’ up significantly?).

-I’m working on a Spring 2018 release and am following the advice ‘to make your graphics slightly better than the current norm’ (so am assuming most users will have something like the GTX 1070). However I’m also keenly aware that in many parts of the world (particularly South America) they are lagging behind us from a hardware standpoint (I read recently that the average South American rig only has 2GB of ram). Would I be ruling myself out from the ‘low-end’ market by using MD?

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The way that you use Marvelous Designer is that you set up your clothing in MD and then simulate it to get the folds and all that looking realistic, then you export to your 3D program and retpologize the mesh and bake the wrinkle details to a normal map.

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Thanks darth, I might give this workflow a go and see if its worth the hassle (and expense). I guess my best bet is to remodel in a relaxed position and then play about with APEX to see if I can maintain the fold I’m after. So on reflection this is more of an animation issue…

6

For setting up in-game simulation that’s a different matter

7

Yep, thats what I’m struggling with (sorry, probably could’ve explain better). The modelling itself isn’t a problem -its knowing what to model (and how to animate it). I can’t model that baggy sleeve as it is in that concept art because the arm has to be in a lowered position. Even in a relaxed T-pose the sleeve hangs open under the arm, and I need the sleeve opening to assume a ‘tear-drop’ shape when in the arms down position (I’m guessing the answer may have something to do with vertex weights -but that’s probably what APEX is for?).

Unless someone has direct experience with this and can spare the time to explain, I’ll just play about with MD, Max and APEX and see what I can come up with.