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A comforter created with 3ds Max Cloth Modifier

Welcome back to the Surreal Structures Blog. This is my second in a series of tutorials dealing with cloth simulationin 3ds Max. I’m using 3ds Max 2009 for those who want to play along. Today I’ll be showing you how simple it is to create a nice blanket, comforter, duvet, quilt – whatever you want to call it. It is simple because our aim for this project will be simple – just a comforter draped over a bed-like object.

Fig. 1: Cloth and collision properties

 In this simulation, there will be one cloth object – the comforter, and two collision objects – the bed and the floor. For  the comforter, I created a Plane object that is 96″x96″ and has 48 length and width segments. I’ve named it “comforter” and placed it a few inches above the bed object as you see in Figure 1.  I usually choose “Cotton” for the

Fig. 2: Simulate Local

cloth type because it simulates very fast. Leave the Collision properties for the floor and bed objects at the default settings or no smaller than 0.6″ (~2cm). If the Depth and Offset values are too small, the cloth will slip right on through the collision objects. 

Once you have your cloth and collision object properties set, select the comforter object and click Simulate Local. Let the simulation go until you like the way the cloth is draped. Figure 2 shows a local simulation in progress.

Something that is pretty cool about the Cloth modifier is the Live Drag! function in the Faces sub-object rollout.

Fig. 3: Using Live Drag!

When you enable the Simulate Local button and Live Drag! you can select faces of the cloth object and drag them around to make wrinkles or otherwise muss up the bedding. I’ve done a little of that in Figure 3. Be careful not to select too many faces per drag or Live Drag! won’t respond. Once you have the cloth looking the way you want it, I advise you to take a Snapshot of it. Sometimes the simulation will reset itself unexpectedly. I learned that the hard way! I’m not sure if it has something to do with the Edit Poly modifier or not.  

If you went through the towel tutorial, you’ll probably remember that the next thing to do is to give your comfortersome thickness. I applied a Shell modifier and set the

Fig. 4: Comforter with Shell and Turbosmooth modifiers

Outside thickness to 0.5″ and left everything else to the default values. Next, I added a Turbosmooth modifier and set it to 2 iterations. You can see the results in Fig. 4.  

Fig. 5: Selecting an Edge Loop

Often times you’ll see piping on the edges of a comforter. Piping is easy in Max because you simply select some edges of your object and create a smooth shape from them. What I’ve done for this exercise is add an Edit Poly modifier to my comforter. Then, in Edge sub-object mode, I selected an edge where I want the piping to be. Then when I clicked Loop in the Selection rollout, the edges in the entire loop were selected (see Figure 5). Then, click the Settings box for Create Shape in the Edit Edges rollout (see Figure 6). When you select your new piping object, make it renderable and set the thickness to your liking. Figure 7 shows my result. 

Fig. 6: Creating the piping shape.

An  alternative to piping is to create a seam along the edge of the comforter. To do this,

Fig. 7: Comforter with piping

go back into the Edit Polymodifier in Edge mode. Using the same edge selection you used to create the piping, click the Extrude settings box in the Edit Edges rollout. In my demonstration render, I used micro-poly displacement to make the quilted effect and the seam tended to get swallowed up, so I opted for piping instead. Play with it and see what happens. 

I advise you to make a Snapshot of your cloth simulation if you’ve done extensive tweaks with the Live Drag! tool. I

Fig. 8: Creating a seam in Edge mode

You can download my scene in 3dsMax 2009 format here. You have to run the simulation, but I’ve put the texture maps for the comforter diffuse color and displacement maps, and the carpet map in the archive.