An all-in-one Blender Plug-in for character clothing and accessories design!

Basic: 9 Templates

Download Size: 16MB

Ultimate: All Templates

Download Size: 22MB

Enterprise: Ultimate version for Studios

  • Features
  • Documentation
  • Frequently Asked Questions
Features

A Library of Clothing Templates

Ready to dive in? Cloth Weaver comes packed with a growing library of templates to get you started. Easily give your character the essentials; from pants, dresses, swimwear and undergarments to accessories like glasses and handbags!


Ultimate Templates Included (29):

  • Accessories: Eye Glasses, Sun Glasses, Gym-bag, Pillow, Pocket, Tent, Socks
  • Fabrics: Carpet Square, Towel, Body Suit
  • Bottoms: Gym Shorts, Pants, Shorts
  • Tops: Collar Shirt, Hoodie, Unbuttoned Shirt, T-Shirt
  • Formal: Dress, Long-Dress, Suit pants, Suit shirt, Suit coat, suit Jacket
  • Swimwear: Bikini Top, Bikini Bottom, One Piece
  • Underwear: Boxers, Bra, Panties

Basic Templates Included (9):

  • Accessories: Pillow, Socks
  • Bottoms: Pants, Shorts
  • Tops: Collar Shirt, Hoodie
  • Formal: Dress
  • Swimwear: Bikini Top, Bikini Bottom

Custom Clothes

The legacy way of 3D modeling clothes can be very time consuming and frustrating. Cloth Weaver removes these headaches and simplifies the process. Easily create your clothing outline, setup the sections to be sewn together and Cloth Weaver takes over the rest in just a few buttons! Then, manually adjust and fine tune your fabric to fit your character. Cloth Weaver creates a backup of your outline to enable quick troubleshooting and tweaking.

 

Custom clothing is a trial-and-error process. It will require some basic knowledge of Blender and 3D modeling. We recommend beginning with the templates, expanding on them and experimenting.

Fabrics & Accessories

You don’t get limited to clothing only; With Cloth Weaver you can create entire objects made from fabrics such as bags, purses, tents, towels, etc. We also recommend that you experiment with Cloth Weaver to see what you can come up with!

Materials, Patterns & Textures

From polyester golf shirts to leather jackets and more, Cloth Weaver’s built-in Blender Cycles material can create a myriad of photo-realistic fabrics. Use the provided patterns and textures or supply your own to bring your clothing to life!

Patterns & Textures included:

  • Patterns - Leaves, Plaid, Pineapples, Stripes
  • Bump Maps - Cotton Fibers 

Save & Load

Save your own designs to an external location and re-load them into a custom gallery. You can also import other artists' clothing into your version Cloth Weaver.

In-App Updates

Cloth Weaver will show an alert in the top status panel when updates are available for download. You can directly download new updates right within the Cloth Weaver panel! There is no more need to spend time opening a web browser, logging in to web portals and manually downloading.

Other Features

Backup/Restore: Cloth Weaver automatically creates a backup of the current clothing model when you use the “put on clothing” button. This allows you to restore the previous version, providing a faster work-flow and saving time when troubleshooting!

Reflect: Reflects your model on the Z-Axis (mirrors your clothing, swaps left<->right)

Reset UVs: Resets the UV map to the default unwrapping (useful starting out and after adding seams)

Compatibility

Cloth Weaver will work with any character as long as they can be imported into Blender (FBX, 3DS, OBJ, DAE, etc.) Characters work best when they have a lower polygon count. Extremely dense mesh characters might slow down the cloth simulation. Remove any subdivision modifiers before importing into Blender. Known compatible character libraries include but not limited to: Avastar, Blender, Daz3D, IMVU, Make Human, Manuel Bastioni Lab, Poser.

Documentation

Installing

Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_58en5FWAs&list=PLY7tnlwiJ4aiUk7ZjmqC7mQAl0I4u8Z2f

Note: Blender must be in English for some functions of Cloth Weaver to work properly

Download the Cloth Weaver .zip file (Some web browsers may automatically unzip zipped folders.) Keep this file zipped!

  1. In Blender, go to Edit → user preferences → Add-ons and “install Add-on from File”.
  2. Locate the ClothWeaver.zip folder and choose install…
  3. In Blender’s 3D viewport: press ‘n’ to open the Right toolbar. You will see the Cloth Weaver Tab

*Blender 2.79 is no longer supported

  • https://clothweaver.com/news/dropping-blender-2-79-support-for-cloth-weaver/

Preparing your character

Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P---dRZbyws

*IMPORTANT: Turn off or reduce any subdivision modifiers/levels on your characters. Highly dense meshes will slow down the simulation. Lower poly characters and clothing work best. Make sure there is nothing else visible in your current 3D view besides your character and the 2D clothing. Move items to different layers when possible.

In the Cloth Weaver Sewing Panel, click the checkbox if your current character is a Manuel Bastioni Lab or IMVU character. This will automatically scale the clothing templates to the default character size.

Select your character (make sure you don't select a rig) and click "Add Collision to Character" in the Cloth Weaver panel. View your character's modifiers tab and make sure the 'collision' modifier is moved above any subdivision, but below any rigs/armatures.

Having your character in a T-pose or A-pose works best when creating clothes. This helps reduce cloth overlapping and collision problems.

(click image to enlarge)

Using the Templates

*Note: this is a trial and error process, it may take some manual adjustments for desired results to be achieved.

In the templates tab:

  1. Click on the gallery of images and choose a template you wish to use.
  2. Choose between a 2D and 3D version. Some templates only have 1 option.

2D: Templates/Outlines to be used for sewing/making clothes for characters.

3D: Pre-Built objects (such as accessories) that can be added to your scene.

Optional, Pre-Built clothing models could be aligned to your character and using the ‘Re-Calc sim’ button to attempt to fit it to your character.

2A: Create a 'guide' and checkmark 'use .. Guide

2B: Manually align guides to your character

Clothing Templates

  1. Create a shirt/pants guide (optional) and align it to your character. Click ‘use ..guide’. This will auto-align templates to your character)
  2. Click ‘2D..’ and the template will appear in the 3D View.
  3. Align and scale the template to your character. The faces of the clothing object must not intersect with your character.
  4. Adjust if necessary: Enter Edit-mode with your clothing selected and further adjust the vertices if necessary. Make sure the clothing extends beyond the character. Do not allow the 2D template to touch or intersect with the character. IE: The sleeves are above the shoulders and extend over the arms. Same with the body. There needs to be enough fabric when the clothing wraps around the entire body.

Custom Clothing

*Note: this is a trial and error process, it may take some manual adjustments for desired results to be achieved.

In the templates tab:

  1. Create a ‘Base Plane’ and a square will appear in your 3D view.
  2. Align it to your character’s front side. The object must not intersect with your character.
  3. Enter edit mode and delete the 1 of the 2 horizontal edges. Now you have 2 vertices, 1 at center position and 1 towards the right side.
  4. Create an outline: Begin extruding vertices, Select the right side vertice and press ‘E’ to extrude an edge. Continue extruding edges to create a basic outline of your clothing. The Edges must extend beyond the borders of your character’s body.
  5. Close the outline loop: Select your last vertice and the center vertice then press ‘F’ to connect and complete the loop. All vertices should have 2 edges.
  6. Fill in the faces: Faces are constructed from 4 vertices. Select 4 vertices and press ‘F’ to fill/create a face. Continue creating faces until the outline is filled. (If you are unfamiliar with this process and proper topology, please see video tutorials for Blender modeling) All faces should have an even number of vertices. 3 or 5 sided will not work properly. (If you want to use triangles for game engines, checkmark use triangles in Cloth Weaver’s Design Panel. This will convert your object to triangles during the ‘sewing’ phase)

7.) Create the Backside of the clothing: Use the ‘create backside’ button in Cloth Weaver’s side panel when in Edit-Mode. Adjust this selection of vertices, move it behind your character. If manually creating the backside, you need to ‘flip the normals’ of those backside polygons.

8.) Check & Flip Normals: Make sure that the normals are facing the correct direction. Outside should appear 'blue' and insides are 'red'. Search in Blender for 'Recalculate Normals...Outside.."

9.) Define the edges to be sewn together: In order to sew your clothing together, you must define the edges that will connect. Begin by selecting 2 parallel edges and click ‘mark parallel edges’.

Sewing the Clothing / 2D -> 3D

Before you can turn the 2D pattern into a 3D model, you first need to define the character/model and clothing you are using. In the Design Panel, there are 3 areas to define: The cloth that you want to sew, the character or model that the cloth interacts with and an armature/rig (optional).

1) Sew the clothing to your character: Exit Edit-Mode, make sure your character is setup properly and has a collision applied. Select your clothing and click ‘sew clothing’. The clothing will begin to wrap around your character and connect at the defined edges.

2) Apply, Re-Calc, Smooth - Process for adjusting the clothing, no Undo: There are 3 main buttons that you might be alternating between in order to adjust the clothing: Apply, Re-calc, and Smooth. We do not encourage using Undo as this can produce undesired changes in the simulation and is also known to sometimes cause Blender to crash. Here is the process: play the simulation to a desired frame (IE: 25) and click ‘Apply Clothing’. Change any physics settings now before applying the cloth sim. Now enter Edit-Mode and make small adjustments to the cloth model, then exit Edit-Mode. Use ‘Smooth’ to smooth out the clothing if desired. This could make the clothing appear smaller, so scale it up a little. Now use ‘Re-Calc’ to run the simulation again with new changes. Repeat this process until desired.

3) Stitch Clothing (Optional): To remove the seams/gaps in your clothing (sometimes it serves as a style choice) use the ‘stitch’ button

Physics Settings

In the sewing tab, there are some specific physics parameters. Mass, Stretch, Compression, Bending, Sewing Force, Shrinking, These settings can only be applied to an object when an active simulation is available. An error will occur if you first apply the cloth simulation to your model before you click apply physics settings.

Materials & Textures

Open Blender's Material & UV Editor

  1. Select your clothing - In the 3D View, select your clothing and enter Edit Mode
  2. UV Maps - In the Properties Window (far right side); Cloth Weaver templates have 3 UV Map groups: Pattern, Bump and Grunge. Select one to edit that specific UV mapping
  3. UV Unwrap - In Edit mode, select all vertices and press 'U' to UV unwrap your model. Scale and adjust the size of your texture/pattern
  4. Textures & Materials - In the material view, there are 2 image slots; 'PATTERN' and 'BUMP'. Use the drop down to see more or import your own textures

Advanced UV Unwrapping

Updating

In-App Update

On Cloth Weaver’s top status panel, it will alert you when a new update is available. Then you can download the updates right inside Blender!

Manual Update

Manually download the new update from our website or the platform you originally downloaded from. In Blender’s user preferences, REMOVE the old Cloth Weaver version, save user settings and restart Blender. Then install the new update as usual.

Rigging your clothing

Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4Jiv5_OuJE

*IMPORTANT: Clothing and Armature/Rig must be visible. Armature needs to be in OBJECT mode.

In the Cloth Weaver Design Panel:

  • make sure all clothing, character and armature slots are defined
  • click "attack to armature"

Select the clothing. Make sure the 'armature modifier' is on the top. Then the following if applicable:

  • Cloth
  • Solidify
  • Subdivision

Saving & Loading Custom Clothes

Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jFs8EKWVhU

*NOTE: This feature is only available for the Blender 2.8 + version of Cloth Weaver

You must enable 'auto-run python scripts' in Blender’s preferences for save features to work.

*Navigate to the User Templates Tab: 'Templates -> User Templates'

Saving your items:

  1. Define a directory -Browse to your desired location on your system and create a new folder for your custom items (IE: myClothing)
  2. Select your custom clothing template/model in your scene that you wish to save -NOTE: If the object is a child, the parent will also be imported (IE: Bones)
  3. Rename the object with a category: "Category_fileName" (IE: Causal_HoodieNew) -NOTE: Skipping this important step will cause Cloth Weaver to crash.
  4. Align your active camera to your object for the preview image - NOTE: This will render all active/visible objects and lights in the scene
  5. Click ‘Generate Icon’ to create a thumbnail and export your object to a new .blend folder - NOTE: Thumbnail is a 256x256 jpg and might take time to render depending on the complexity of your scene - NOTE: A new Blender window will quickly appear and disappear on your screen. However, if ‘auto-run python scripts’ is not checked, you will have to manually allow the script to run.
  6. Click ‘Refresh’ to reload the thumbnails

Loading your items:

  1. Define a directory and click ‘refresh' (unless already defined)
  2. Click on the gallery and all thumbnails will appear
  3. Choose an item and then click ‘create’


Import items from other sources:

  1. Download the item(s) as a .zip folder. Unzip and you will find 2 files (.blend and .jpg).
  2. Move those 2 items to your custom directory or create a new directory
  3. In Cloth Weaver, define the directory mentioned in step 2 (unless already defined)
  4. Click ‘Refresh’ to reload the thumbnails
Frequently Asked Questions

Current users who wish to upgrade from Basic to Ultimate will only be charged the difference. Go to your purchase history -> View Details/Download -> View License Key -> Upgrade License

General | Installation | Updates

How do I install Cloth Weaver?

Once you have downloaded the Cloth Weaver .zip file, In Blender 2.8 go to Edit → user preferences → Add-ons and “install Add-on from File”. Locate the ClothWeaver.zip folder for your Blender version and choose install… You do NOT need to unzip the .zip folder.

To open the Cloth Weaver tool panel...In Blender's 3D viewport, press 'n' to open Right toolbar

How do I update?

In-App Updating (In Cloth Weaver v4.16+): On Cloth Weaver's top side panel (not in user-preferences), it will allow you to download updates right inside Blender.

Manual Update: In Blender’s user preferences, REMOVE the old Cloth Weaver version, save user settings and restart Blender. Then install the new update as usual.

How do I view my receipt?

For ClothWeaver.com: Log in to your clothweaver account, select Account/Log-in -> My Purchase History. Here you can download updates, view your receipts and license keys.


For Gumroad: Log in, select "Library" and choose Cloth Weaver. Here you can download updates and view your receipts.

For Super Hive Market (Blender Market): Log in, select "My Account" -> "Orders". Here you can download updates and view your receipts.

Which operating system is Cloth Weaver compatible with?

Cloth Weaver will work with any OS that supports Blender: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

 

*Please see Blender's download page for compatible systems: https://www.blender.org/download/

Which version of Blender is Cloth Weaver compatible with?

Cloth Weaver currently works with Blender 4.3

Working with Clothing | Rigging

How do I keep the clothing from falling off my character?

It is best to "pin" some vertices in the cloth sim panel so they won't be affected by gravity. Select your clothing, enter edit mode, in Blender's data panel, create a new vertex group and the area you don't want the sim to influence. For example: Top of a skirt, collar of a shirt, cuffs of a sleeve, etc.

Put on clothing, Blender crashes?

This most likely occurs because a different and high-poly object was selected before pressing 'put on clothing'. It Make sure you have selected the clothing and not the character.

Clothing is hovering above the character?

The collision on the character needs to be closer to the skin. On the character’s collision, change the outer to 0.005 or 0.001.

Cloth shrivels, passes through character?

Remember: When attaching clothing, it is a trial and error process. Do not expect it to be exact the first time. Please refer to our tutorials. Try moving the top of the clothing slightly higher above the arms and shoulders. This is the usual area of issue. It will also help to add more ring/loops horizontally in the arm areas. This should close that gap. You could also move the highest shoulder areas closer together. Again, it is a bit of trail and error. You can delete the current model after sewing and restore the backup. This will keep the specific modifiers in-tact. Sometimes, undo-ing may have undesired effects.

Clothing presets appear much bigger/smaller than my character.

If the clothing is too big or small, scale it down or up to match your character. If the character is smaller than one square on the Blender’s default grid floor, then the character’s scale will need to be increased.

Rigging problems ~Clothing or character pose is offset? ~Rest pose is different in edit mode?

~Rigging is offset when switching to edit mode?

 

Explanation: The above character's default 'resting pose' is in an A-Pose. The character's rig was put into a T-pose and then the clothing was applied to the rig. Because the character has already been posed before the clothing was attached, the clothing will now 'offset' and move the with it. As a general rule, anything applied to a rig will follow the 'resting pose'. 

 

Solution: Select the character, apply the rig modifier. Then select the rig in pose-mode, press space-bar and search for "apply pose as rest pose". Parent character to the rig and then clothing to the rig.

Must the figure be in a T-pose? Will the plug-in be able to handle A or Star poses?

The clothing templates are designed to best work with T-poses. However, if the clothing is adjusted to your specific pose before hand, yes any pose should work. Make sure to read the above post regarding "Rigging Problems" for more info.

UV mapping is incorrect when exporting to other 3D platforms

Select the clothing in Blender, go to the data panel and make sure the selected UV map is the one you want exported. When unwrapping each section (patterns, bump map, grunge), make sure you have the correct UV map also selected.

Error messages

KeyError: bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "Cloth" not found

Anything along the error of “key ___ not found…" Blender must be changed to English to execute the command.

RuntimeError: Error: '~scripts/addons/clothEEVEEcycles.blend/Object/(XYZ)' ; not a Library

This indicates that Cloth Weaver was not installed properly. Blender cannot find the directory for extra files (Clothing Template Icons and .blend files). Please see installation for details (install from CW .zip folder)

*If on Windows and Blender was installed with a .msi installer, Windows might move files around and Cloth Weaver cannot locate them. We recommend downloaded Blender for Windows (.zip version NOT .msi) and unzip that folder in a few directory (downlods) keeping everything in-tact. Then run the new Blender and install Cloth Weaver.

FileNot Found Error [Erno 2] No such file or directory: '...Scripts/addons/preseticons/'

This error indicates that Cloth Weaver was not installed properly. You must select the ".zip" folder when installing from user preferences. Some web browsers will automatically unzip the folder when downloading; make sure this feature is turned off. You must install from the .zip folder

AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'select_set' ... selectOnlyOne(bpy.context.scene.my_tool.characterPicker)

It is required to define your character and clothing before using any of the cloth manipulation tools. For example, when adding a collision to the character, the character needs to known. This is why there is a "nonetype" error.

Unexpected EOF while Parsing

Please read this article for more details...


https://clothweaver.com/news/eof-error/'>https://clothweaver.com/news/eof-error/

Error when rigging 'Context is incorrect'

This error indicates that the bones are currently in 'POSE MODE' and need to be in 'OBJECT MODE' and then select and choose 'attach clothing'.

For Education

Do you offer educational discounts for high schools and universities?

Please contact us at support@clothweaver.com and we will make it work!

Do you offer student discounts?

Please contact us using your assigned school email address at support@clothweaver.com

Legal

May I use Cloth Weaver for commercial use?

You own anything you create with Cloth Weaver. Yes, you can use anything you create for personal and commercial use!


**Please obey copyright laws

[Please read our terms and conditions for more information] 

May I sell items created with Cloth Weaver?

Yes! Anything you create with Cloth Weaver is yours to do with as you please. You may NOT re-sell the clothing templates.