How To Create WWII-Inspired Trousers With Marvelous Designer & ZBrush

Introduction

Hi, I'm Manish Nautiyal, a Senior/Lead Character Artist specializing in character creation for video games. I began my career in 2014 as an intern at an amazing outsourcing game studio in India, Little Red Zombies, where, with the guidance of my mentors and friends, I was able to quickly develop my skills as an artist and lead and mentor teams on numerous high-profile AAA projects myself.

I'm currently working as a freelancer and contractor for clients worldwide, and I also mentor aspiring artists, offering guidance for their portfolios. Over my 10 years of career, I had the opportunity to work on a number of amazing AAA titles like Ghost of Tsushima, Alan Wake 2, Diablo II: Resurrected, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Back 4 Blood, Remnant II, and Pax Dei to name a few.

Inspiration & References

I originally started this project as a quick clothing study to work on between my professional assignments. I was specifically inspired by vintage World War II-era military attire, as I personally find the style from that period visually striking and appealing.

My main reference came from Pinterest, though I could only find a single angle of the outfit. To overcome this, I used reverse image search to find similar trousers on online retail sites, which helped me gather additional reference images for the pattern and construction details.

I also included close-up references for finer details. While many of these may not be necessary for the final piece, they're helpful for understanding the garment's construction. I also like to save the URLs in my reference pack so I can easily find similar items if needed for future projects.

About Marvelous Designer

Marvelous Designer has been a major help for character artists. Previously, creating every fold and wrinkle in clothing required manual sculpting in software like ZBrush or Mudbox, which was very time-consuming. However, with Marvelous Designer becoming mainstream and continuously adding new features, the process of character creation has become significantly faster, especially when it comes to clothing and outfit details.

With Marvelous Designer, artists can quickly experiment with different clothing styles, materials, and fittings, making it easier to test ideas and iterate designs. Changes to patterns or materials can be previewed immediately, allowing for fast adjustments.

The Marvelous Designer Workflow

When working with a concept that requires strict adherence, I follow a specific workflow: first, I create a blockout mesh in ZBrush to capture the concept's proportions, shape, and silhouette. I then use this blockout as a guide for creating clothing in Marvelous Designer.

However, for this project, I skipped the blockout stage, as it was intended to be a short and quick project. Next, I brought the mesh into ZBrush for further detailing and to create the final high-poly model. Then, I moved to Maya for low-poly creation and UV unwrapping, followed by texturing in Substance 3D Painter. Finally, I used Marmoset Toolbag for rendering.

While Marvelous Designer offers a variety of fabric presets, I prefer starting with the default and adjusting parameters to suit my needs. Marvelous Designer provides a wide range of customizable settings, like bending weft and warp, stiffness, and buckling, which give artists the control needed to simulate fabric precisely.

Once I was happy with the results in Marvelous Designer, I prepared it for sculpting by taking it through the process of remeshing and unwrapping it in Maya and ZBrush.

Topology

So, as I said, before we start working on the garment in ZBrush, we need to prepare the mesh for sculpting, as the mesh generated by Marvelous Designer is not really optimized for sculpting. While Marvelous Designer offers some options for creating quad-based meshes, in my experience, these can be problematic around the borders of diagonal or curved patterns.

I like to work on a mesh with clean topology for better control while sculpting. To achieve this, first, I take the flattened pattern to ZBrush and apply ZRemesh to quadify the topology. I then, take this quad mesh to Maya to bring back the UVs and wrap it over the simulated mesh using the Transfer attribute by UVs option.

Finishing Touches In ZBrush

I started with adding thickness to the mesh with the help of Panel Loops function in ZBrush. 

Next, I began sculpting and adjusting folds to better match the reference or to refine areas I was not satisfied with. I also kept tweaking the overall silhouette and proportions as needed. Once I was happy with the overall secondary forms, I started adding tertiary details. In this case, the smaller folds or memory folds.

For this project, I aimed to give the garment a slightly more worn look than the reference for added interest. It's important, however, to add these details intentionally rather than with random strokes so they convey the natural movement that creates these memory folds.

I didn't spend much time on the belt; it was a quick 30-40-minute process of poly-modeling and sculpting.

Texturing & Rendering

I textured the asset in Substance 3D Painter. Here again, I deviated a little from the main reference to make it look more interesting. Once happy with the textures, I then took it to Marmoset Toolbag for final presentation and rendering.

I love how quick and intuitive it is to play with shaders and lighting setup in Marmoset Toolbag to showcase your artwork. For my renders, I used a pretty basic 3-point light setup with raytracing enabled.

Conclusion

It's hard to calculate the exact time spent on this project, as I worked on it in my free time outside of professional hours. However, I'd estimate around 24 hours total, from gathering references to the final presentation. I truly enjoy every artistic aspect of the production process – whether it's sculpting, texturing, or rendering.

While learning garment creation in Marvelous Designer is highly beneficial, I encourage beginners and aspiring character artists to also practice manually sculpting outfits and clothing. Understanding different types of folds and how they form is essential. Although Marvelous Designer helps us simulate garments, a solid foundation in clothing and drapery fundamentals is crucial.

For beginners, there are plenty of free tutorials for Marvelous Designer on YouTube, including many from its official channel that cover different tools and functions. However, as with any art form, progress ultimately comes down to personal observation and practice. So, it's important to keep practicing and aim to push yourself a bit further with each project.

Manish Nautiyal, Senior Character Artist

Interview conducted by Amber Rutherford