#clothing render

I don't think I've ever given a proper tut before, but lemme go ahead n give it a try

DISCLAIMER: a lot of this requires cloth studies, which I have some experience in. I recommend finding images of cloth/ drapery and trying to study that.

Step 1: Basic shapes. It's always good to start out with basic shape language when it comes to clothing; how baggy is a certain clothing item? Does it poof out? does it have ruffles? Get ur basic shapes down!!

Step 2: Basic shadows/values. Now that you know what shape and possible texture ur characters clothes are, start mapping out some values. This is pretty simple- what clothing pieces are white? Which ones are black? Where is the light source? I guarantee this step can work in any environment with any light source. If you get this step down correctly it can determine how well a piece can turn out, but its also far from refined, so just try your best to get out a basic idea of what you want, and def play around w it!

Step 3: Refinement! In this step, youre going to start adding more values. Your darkest darks, highlights, and also more clothing folds.

My method for clothing folds relies on the shape underneath the clothing. Baggier clothes have looser, bigger and more frequent folds, and tighter clothes have smaller and more infrequent folds.

Folds occur where there is a curve or dramatic change in shape language underneath. For example, at the armpits there will be folds where the arm folds, and also at the elbow. At curvier parts of a body, like at the chest, the folds will be tighter around the contour and looser following through, creating a drapery effect

There's a shit ton of more indepth tuts that you can look up, but i see it as crucial to know when clothes fold vs when clothes drape.

When it comes to shading, It's important to learn something called edge control. This essentially means knowing where to keep shadows sharp, vs where to keep them soft.

It gets very in depth but in the most BASIC of terms, the closest something is to the light source, the sharper the shadow appears, vs the farther something is the softer it appears.

Step 5 is just more refinement. It depends on how detailed you want your piece to be, what texture you want certain clothing items to have, and what patterns too. Take your time and the more you spend on it the better it'll turn out!!! As you can see, I sometimes first render with black and white before color. I recommend doing this when you are rendering as it can help get down values quickly.