HR MINIPACK

DOCUMENTATION

HYPER-REALISTIC FABRIC MATERIALS
Version 1.0

For BLENDER 3.0 and up

USING Eevee or Cycles RENDERING ENGINE

Introduction

First of all, we would like to thank you for being interested in this package of our hyper-realistic textile materials specially made for Blender software, compatible from version 3.0 and up.
Without going into any particular premise, we want to explain to you right away in the simplest and most practical way in what contexts it is applicable, and how to use these materials that are also customizable in many features.

Main Features

The series of HR MINIPACK packages each contain 42 textile meterials of a specific type (pattern) of fabric with color variations, and also some special pattern modifications in some elements.
The contained textile materials are made with DFT 2.0 technology, developed by Designs For textiles, which adds hyper realism even in the micro details of the simulated fabric.

By hyper realism even in the micro details, we mean that the realism of the fabric also appears in large zoom, being able to see even in macroscopic form the realistic weave of each individual thread that makes up the fabric.
All the textile materials in this collection are on the design and feature side, recreated with the same techniques that are used to create real fabrics, and therefore are NOT mere scans, as is the case in all other textile collections around.
From this it follows that much more customization is possible in each of the textile materials, compared to the technique of scans from real fabrics.

The materials have been optimized for use with the Eevee and Cycles rendering engines, although Eevee has some realism limitations that do not allow it to achieve the results achievable with Cycles, and in particular the use of the Displacement Map is only functional in Cycles.

Installation

The first thing to do after downloading/purchasing the package, which is in a single compressed ZIP-type file, will be to decompress it into any folder on the computer. Assuming that by now anyone who knows how to use a computer is able to unzip a ZIP file, we will not explain this step probably already known.
After decompressing the file into a folder of your choice, we will see this structure and this set of files:

The first two files, those named: blender_assets_cat, are system files automatically created by blender that contain the list of materials for Blender’s “Asset Browser”.

IMPORTANT: These two files should NOT be deleted or even moved, otherwise blender will no longer find the list and display it. In case you want to move the package to another folder, these files must also be moved to the same folder.
The second file (example name: HR-Fabric- Materials PRO42 – DT-00068.Blend) is a blender project file that contains all the materials in the package.

At this point to use the package simply upload the file.blend either by double-clicking on the file, or by uploading it from Blender using the standard project file upload procedure.

PLEASE NOTE: The package also includes a custom panel to easily manage some of the customizations available for materials.
The panel is called: DFT Panel V1.0 (version number may change depending on any updates).

After loading the project if in blender the option: Auto Run Python Scripts is already active in the preferences, the panel will be automatically activated in the side bar of the 3Dviewport window, otherwise the warning message will appear as in the following picture.

There is NO need to worry about this alert, as it only warns that a script in the project is asking to be executed. Our script is safe and only serves to activate our panels for convenient management of material customizations.

So at this point we need to click on the button : “Allow Execution and everything will be ready to be utilzized.
Now a screen similar to the following one should appear.

APPLYING MATERIALS TO ANY MESH

Each fabric/material is very easily applicable on any type of mesh, whether with very simple shapes or complex figures.
Logically since the materials represent real fabrics, the best effect, as per the examples in the other scenes as well, will be on meshes properly created to represent textiles, with folds and other features of real use of textile materials.

For application, the quickest and most immediate procedure is via drag and drop. Take with the mouse from the asset list at the bottom any material, and bring it into the views window above the desired mesh, release the left mouse button, and immediately you will have the chosen textile material covering the entire surface of your mesh, or the part of the mesh you have previously selected.

MATERIAL CUSTOMIZATION

Before dealing with the various types of customizations, a brief premise about the real creation of textiles, which is often never explained in 3D by anyone, also because unfortunately often textile materials in the 3D world are simply adapted scans of any real fabric but not customizable, except in colors in global form, by classic post production methods or through complicated processing even manually with software such as Substance 3D painter and similar.
In our case, however, we also allow you to have fun customizing various features of each material, as happens in reality when they sell created real fabrics.

You have to know that in the real fabric world there are various types of textile techniques to creae the fabrics that you will then have on your clothes, or in your home and for everything else.
Without going into all the different techniques that exist now, we will mention two of the most widely used (not the only ones).
As you may know, fabrics have to be made by special machinery called looms. There are two main types of looms that differ in the type of technique used for weaving, those called heald looms and Jacquard looms.
The fundamental difference between the two methods is that the second one, the Jacquard, which is the one we also use for the simulation of these materials, is the one that allows us to create very varied and even large designs, thanks to a combination of weave and threads with changes in the colors of the various yarns.
Another method is to print the design on a smooth fabric of a neutral color, (usually light or dark), and this methodology does not allow for great visual quality effects, and also the patterns on the fabric have a fairly flat effect.

Only with the Jacquard method can the best effects also be recreated of high visual quality, as well as artistic quality.

Our materials therefore are the recreation, even in customizations, of the Jacquard method, the absolute highest quality weaving method still in existence today.
Generally, Jacquard fabrics in reality are also those of the highest value and cost.

Having said that we now move on to explain to you what kinds of customizations you can have with our materials, and how they work.

COLORS

Each material is composed of various colors that can be changed independently, and this is one of the first innovative features of our materials.

Typically, as we have already mentioned, the textile materials found for any kind of 3D application are created from scanning a real fabric, and then repurposed often manually with the various programs to make the textures, also spending a lot of time on this step.
With our materials, on the other hand, it is very easy to change the colors of each design and background as it happens in reality in the Jacquard technique, and all this in a very fast and intuitive way.
Before the practical explanation, we warn you that each material has a different number of colors depending on the type of pattern with which it is made, but the customization procedure is always the same for each color.

To customize the colors, you must have logically selected the mesh to which we have applied the material, as per the example below, and the mesh is selected when highlighted generally with the orange color outline.

Since DFT version 2.0 for color editing there is a convenient panel in the 3Dviewport window, in the side bar on the right side of the screen.

We now understand the structure of the DFT Panel for real-time modification and customization of wire colors independently.
The structure of the panel is simple and straightforward, and is divided into 3 parts oer each yarn color:

1) Yarn COLOR (to change via color wheel the color type)
2) Hue/saturation – Yarn (to change the color via the parameters of Hue, Saturation, Value, Fac)
3) Bright/Contrast – Yarn (to change the color via the parameters of Brightness and Contrast)

YARN COLOR:

Thanks to the “Yarn Color” property, you can easily change the color of each yarn independently in real time, using Blender’s classic color wheel. Using the color wheel is exactly the same as the one used in the shader editor.
To make the color wheel appear, simply click on the horizontal color bar.

HUE/SATURATION – YARN

Thanks to the “Hue/Saturation – Yarn” property, you can easily change the color of each yarn in real time by changing the 4 types of parameters available.
The Color Hue, for tone changes.
The Saturation to make the yarn more or less saturated in relation to the color chosen with the color wheel. If the value is set to zero, we will see the thread become grayscale, if you increase the value to a maximum of 2, you will have the color very intense.
Value manage the overall brightness of the wire color. decreasing/increasing the values makes the image darker/lighter.
Fac value is used to define how much the action of the previous 3 parameters affects the original color of the color wheel. With value 0 there is no influence, with value 1, we have the maximum influence.

BRIGHT/CONTRAST – YARN

Thanks to “Bright/Contrast – Yarn” it is possible to change two parameters such as brightness and contrast.
With Brightness as it is easy to understand, you can increase or decrease this property of the relative color of the yarn. More increase the value of Brightness, the closer each color gets to white; more you decrease the value, the closer each color gets to black.
With Contrast, you increase or decrease the relative color property of the yarn. Higher contrast allows for improved color evidence, lower contrast reduces the “presence” of the color making it less intense.


Customizations for advanced users

By advanced users we mean all Blender users who have already had at least some approach to using the shader editor nodes, and who consequently have at least a basic knowledge of that editor.

AO MAP (Ambient occlusion)

Now we move on to the customization of AO MAP.
But first, for those who are not yet familiar with what AO MAP is, let’s give a brief explanation of it.

The AO map, has an important role in making any kind of material realistic, and basically it is that map that allows us to let our rendering software understand, how our materials will react in the areas of the mesh that have micro shadows, in our specific case, where the fabric will have its shadow areas.
So changing the AO MAP values, which are already optimized for the material anyway, can serve to change the way our material reacts with the shadows caused by the various possible folds in a fabric.
Remember that these folds are part of the mesh, and not part of the material.

To change the AO MAP simply vary the value of the node that handles this map, as in the image below:

In our node graph we find under the various color nodes, these two nodes (as per the image above), the first one is the AO Map and the second one is the range of change of the map, and how it affects the material.
Below is a short video demonstrating what happens when we change the range values of the AO Map.

Again, it is advisable to experiment a little to best understand how to change the range parameter of the AO Map.

Roughness MAP

The roughness map, is another important map for changing the appearance of a textile material.
It is very useful as it allows you to decide how much a fabric has a more or less matte or shiny appearance.

Normally Jacquard type fabrics, depending on the type of yarn used can be opaque or slightly shiny.
Usually when they are more opaque it is because they are made from yarns such as cotton, wool, and other similar ones.
When they are more shiny, we are dealing with fabrics made from silk yarns, or synthetic type yarns.
These are not absolute rules, because the luster and opacity of a real fabric may depend on various other factors, but in principle you can follow the indication we have recommended.
From what we have said, it is important to manage the level of opacity or gloss well to best simulate different yarns.

Having said that we now move on to the simple procedure of customizing the roughness Map:

Important to remember that we have already set for each material the correct value of roughenss map to best simulate the real fabric from which we started to create the material, but logically you can change the moodiness or opacity effect (within certain limits depending on the nature of the fabric), to have different effects.
In this case we have the only modifiable parameter that determines its intensity, which is the node highlighted in red in the image above.
The modification values are in a range between 0 and 1.

Below is a video in which we change the intensity of the roughness map in real time and see the results.

Normal MAP

The Normal Map is another very important map that can be customized.

The normal map is used to allow you to better simulate the micro-relief effects specific to each material.
Each material depending on the type of design logically will have a different normal map.
With the normal map you are able to give more realistic interweaving movements between the various threads that create the fabric, increasing the realism of the material.

The node group that handles the normal map is as follows:


Although it is always possible to vary other parameters of the various nodes of this scheme for the use of the normal map, we recommend, however, to modify only the values of the node highlighted in red as in the image above, since for a management of the modification of the appearance of the normal map, the best results are obtained by modifying the values of that node.

As in all of our material maps, even in this case the values we chose, even for the normal map, are already optimized for maximum rendering and realism, in relation to the real source fabric.
However as already mentioned also in this case it is possible to customize the final effect by changing the value of the mix node.

The range of value allowed by the node is between 0 and 1.

Below is a video where you can see an example of real-time modification of the normal map.

Displacement MAP

In our textile materials we also wanted to add a displacement map to increase the realism of the material even more.

Normally the most common use of a displacement map in 3D objects is to allow a more detailed three-dimensionality to a 3D object, using fewer triangles in the mesh and consequently keeping the 3D object lighter and faster to render.

In our case, the use was not really for this reason, but to give the possibility to simulate, in case there were, those greater depth effects of the fabric surface.
Using the Displacement map is very useful to have a more “wrinkled” or “crinkly” fabric appearance to better simulate certain types of fabric aspects brought about by the use of coarser yarns in reality.

Important to remember that in Blender the displacement map works in this mode only with the Cycles rendering engine and NOT with Eevee (at least until version 3.1).

The nodes regarding the displacement map, unlike the other nodes so far examined that had a vertical arrangement in the graph, are placed on the right side of the graph as per the image below:

For the customization of this feature and property it is possible to change the values to modify the intensity of the result.
Regarding this specific map, it is recommended to use, for customization, the modification of only one paramenter of the node and precisely the one defined: SCAL

We also recommend to use values ranging between 0 and 0.150, as higher values generally start to distort the appearance of the fabric a bit too much making it lose its realism.

In any case for use of even any “fancy” you can also try higher values, remembering that however the appearance of the mesh will start to become very different from the original and moving away from a fabric effect.

Below is a video where we demonstrate the effectiveness of using the displacement map, and how interesting and relistic the resulting effect is.

With the displacement map customization we have concluded the type of customizations concerning the visual effect of the fabric for the realism of the physical features.

Now we move on to another type of customization that is very useful for modifying within certain limits the pattern and other features of texture position and repetition on the mesh surface.

Texture POSITION (pattern)

Thanks to the dedicated Texture position nodes, you can change the starting point of the texture applied on the mesh.

This is very useful when you want to adjust the position of the material very precisely with respect to the shape of the mesh.
Just as an illustrative example, let’s imagine that you are using a material with a floral effect and you want to position the start of one of the flowers at the left edge of a pillow.
Thanks to the modification of this parameter it is possible to do this.
The nodes involved in changing the position are located to the left of the graph as is visible in the image below:

Specifically, to modify a location position, we must modify one of the 3 values of X, Y or Z, of the area highlighted in red as we can see in the image above.

Attention: the modification of the Z value works only if a modification of the rotation value (i.e. higher or lower than zero) of at least one of the X,Y, Z values is active.

Below is a short video demonstration of how the texture can be moved.

Texture ROTATION (pattern)

Now let’s move on to see how the already intuitive Texture Rotation works.

By editing this paramenter in its X, Y or Z values, it is possible to rotate, relative to the default value, the texture of the material.
Again, like the texture LOCATION, the customization of the rotation can be used to deliberately place the design with a different rotation on the mesh.

It should be noted that the rotation in X and Y also allows a deformation of the design to realize in a few seconds different design effects, even very different ones.
The greater the value of the rotation, the greater the deformation.

Rotation in Z rotates on the texture axis without deformation. Therefore, to rotate the texture correctly you only need to use the Z value modification.

Below highlighted in red you will find where the values to modify in the node for rotation customization are.

To see the use of Texture ROTATION in real time, here is a short video

Texture SCALING (pattern)

The last group of useful paramenters for customizing this type of material characteristics, is texture SCALING, which in this case, as it is intuitively understandable, is used to change the size of the textile material design on a mesh.

Changing this value is very useful in all those cases where one wants to have a larger or smaller effect of the pattern, either for choices of one’s own taste, or for greater realism on meshes of “non” standard size, regarding the 3D environment one is building.

Normally the materials have all been created with dimensions as close as possible to that of the actual source fabric.

Highlighted below in red is the area in which to change the values to change the texture scale size:

We want to point out that in this case we will have changes in the appearance of the texture scale only by changing the values of X and Y, the Z paramenter has no influence.

Also it is very important, if you want to maintain a perfect proprotion between the dimensions in X and Y that the values of X and Y that you will change must be reasoned in proportion, because as you can see for example in the image above, you find in X a value of 0.025 and in Y of 0.500.
This makes that if to increase or decrease in perfect scale the sides in X and Y, the two values must be changed in perfect proportion.

Let’s take an example:

If we decide to start from the value of Y and increase it from 0.5 to 1, we know that we have doubled its value mathematically.
Therefore the value of X will also be the same to be doubled and therefore in this exact case we will also have to double 0.025, which will become:

0,025*2 = 0,05

Now by changing the two values with X = 1 and Y = 0.05 we will have the texture perfectly doubled in both sides.

Now a video where we can see the use of this function in action:

It is worth noting one very important thing, when we do not proportionally change the design in the scale logically happens an effect of changing the original appearance of the design.
This normal situation we can use it as a “trick” to create different effects from the same design, which we might not expect!

From this we start to talk about the last very interesting and curious customization possibility that is possible.

Fabric pattern DEFORMATION:

Thanks to the change of the rotation values in X and Y and also thanks to the change of the texture scale in non-proportional mode, it is also possible to deform and modify the design of the material, thus being able to create new designs even very different from the original one.
This possibility adds even more customization possibilities to each material, recreating new design shapes using your imagination.

The deformation can be performed on any material even if it is recommended more on those fabrics that have geometric designs, fantasy, because other types of design, such as floral ones could give very strange results and perhaps not suitable for the characteristics of a design for fabrics.

Below is a demonstration video that shows for example what can happen using this technique.

Importing materials into new project

Now let’s find out how importing materials into a new project in Blender works.
The procedure is actually very simple.
When we have created a new project and we want to import materials, such as those in each HR MINIPACK project, we first have to click on the menu : file

Select the menu item : Append

At this point the window for uploading files will open. Go all the way to the path where the HR MINIPACK project you purchased is located, for example:

Select the file by clicking on it and confirming the upload with the – Append button.

At this point after a moment, folders will appear in the same upload window that correspond to the various types of elements that can be loaded into Blender, and are present in each project, as shown in the image below:

Click on the Material “folder”, and after a few moments the entire list of materials present will appear.

Select one or more materials that you want to import as, for example, we did in the next image.

Click Append, and after the time it takes to import the chosen materials, we will find the various selected materials in our asset-browser.
One important thing to remember is that the append function does not import the various categories of the original project but only the separate materials, for obvious reasons.

Now you are ready to use the materials you have chosen in your new project!

Please note: the asset-browser window does not appear automatically, in case it is not part of the layout you have active at the moment, you have to go and activate the asset-browser view as per Blender’s documentation.

Compatibility

HR MINIPACK was made for Blender 3.0 and higher versions, but is theoretically compatible with older versions that are not too old. However, we do not guarantee full compatibility with older versions of Blender.

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