Featured: Leather stitching (Rhino and 3dsmax) by ORB

[element]

Here's a tutorial for the leather stitching.

Here's the textures u need:





STEP 1

I made a simple model for this.. Lofted a couple of surfaces and created a sweep2-surface for the part where the stitches will be. The stitch surface needs to be a separate surface in order to change it's material id in max..




STEP 2

When you've imported your model in to max, select the stitch surface and change the mat ID to 2. Then open your material editor and assign a multi/sub-object material to it. For the first slot select a standard material. Phong, glossiness 30, soften 1. Then go back to the root of the multi/sub-object material and copy it to the second slot. (you can reduce the number of mats to 2) The basic idea is that the materials have the same look and the stitches are just composited on top of it..



STEP 3

Now we're gonna do the leather.. Go to the first material and select a leather bitmap for the diffuse.. rename it, so you find it later on.. Set the map channel to 2. (you can also check the "alpha rgb from rgb intensity" from the output rollout)



STEP 4

Instanciate the diffuse leather map to all the slots (see pic below)



STEP 5

Now go to the second material and we're gonna do some stitching.. Go to the diffuse slot and select a composite map. Set the number to 2 and click on the first slot. From material/map browser check the browse from selected and select the leather map from the first material.. Check the instanced and click OK.



STEP 6

Go back one step to the composite map and for the second slot choose mask. For the masks map slot select the stitch texture and press the button so you can see it in the viewport..



STEP 7

Now go to the editable mesh and while you have the stitch surface selected, choose UVW Xform from the drop down menu..



STEP 8

Press F3 to get shaded view and now you should see the stitching.. The texture is probably misplaced and you need to tweak the U and V tile to get it correctly.. When you're finished collapse the UVW Xform map to the mesh.. And apply a UVW Map modifier to the whole mesh. Put the map channel to 2 and you should see the base leather texture on the whole object.





STEP 9

We're almost done. Go back to the material editor and to the stitch mask. Select the black-n-white mask texture for the stitches.
Now go to the maps rollout and instanciate the composite map to the other slots.. Now that everything is instanced with each other you can easily modify the material without changing things one-by-one.





For the final touch add blurred reflections and remember to instanciate it to both materials.. Here's what it should look like:



To enhance it, i raised the RGB and the bump level of the stitch texture and blurred the stitch mask a bit.. and made it tan (below)



Well that should do it. Hope it's through enough and not too hard to follow.. If i'm forgettin something and you have problems, please ask.

[EquiNOX]

Wow look good.... Thanks for tut..

P.S. Where did you get that leather.jpg? wouldn't you mind sharing it with me?

[teeworks.]

...it should be in the max texture database, isn't it?

[Dave_3d]

A BIG thanks to Mr. Orb :buttrock:

VERY nice.

Looks easier to make the seat in Rhino ... might have to try it.

Dave

[Crea]

thanks for the inspiration. What you presented is a good concept and should be easy to adapt it in other apth.

thanks..

[steve123]

Awesome results on a flat plane. But when I try and do it on more of an irregular shape I cant get the stitches to line up properly. Anyone got any suggestions?

[A3DR]

Excellent tutorial, that worked like a charm And I though that the best way would be to make stitches with splines

Thanks!

@Steve: you need to adjust the UV values, otherwise it won't look right.

[Alan Guerzoni]

Really useful tutorial.

After some tries, I found the faster way to do that only using lightwave.

Maibe I'll release a tutorial as soon as I can.

Thanks!
Alan

[Mr. Phonso]

Just experimented with this tutorial. It's a bit of a pain to UV map the stiching into the right place, but in the end the results are well worth it. Fabulous.

[Mr. Phonso]

Just wanted to say thanks to the creater of the tutorial, ORB. Man, this is the kind of inspiration and knowledge I needed to continue my car interior. I'll show my work else where now

[Martinez]

Please re-upload pictures.

[lookdown11]

.................updated................

[kosso_olli]

Please reupload pictures. Would be usefull for all visitors.

[Duron]

Please reupload pictures. Would be usefull for all visitors.

Element, it is possible?

[0utsid3r]

Please. I was looking for a tutorial such that too. Modeling stitches is a pain!