Probably one of the most commom design elements I come across, a trim on the edges of armor plates, leather straps and even fabric ( examples on picture bellow).
I’ve been trying different methods, trying to search an efficient and accurate way to do this, but so far I spend a lot of time fiddling with it, having a hard time controlling the shapes, only to achieve results that don’t look very good.
How do you guys approach this?
Hi @banthar,
The image here shows many different situations that you might use a variety of different approaches for.
A simple raised extrusion can simply be modeled in with ZModeler if you have good topology. If you don’t have good topology you can use ZRemesher to simplify and clean it up first.
If you have well defined polygroups , Panel Loops can be used to create overlapping plate effects.
You will need to know what type of detail you want to create. If you simply want to displace detail from the target surface, for instance like that stitching along the sides of the leather strap, then a repeating alpha type stroke may be sufficient. The StitchBasic brush is an example of this.
If you need to create a more complicated fringe with real geometry, an IMM brush in Curve Mode will probably be needed. The coiled rope fringe in the image would be an example of this usage case. In order to create clean results when doing this, you will need to be able to draw a curve that accurately conforms to the edge you want to draw the stroke along. The Stroke> Curve Functions> Frame Mesh feature provides a variety of options for creating active curves along topological features.
