Hi I was trying to make some kind of sewing on cloth made of leather ... the way I did was by simply drawing some masks for each sew and then inflate or extrude somehow , but , the result is not that good ... is there any other sugested way to make this?

this is the kind of item I want to reproduce ....

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...eriaOutfit.jpg

see the sewing on the borders? I also tried to make it 3d like making some single sewing and duplicate all along but , its painfull and stressing tedious method and it's hard to aling each sew on the right orientation for the borders...

Curve mode could work, or some patient lazy mousing. You could also try masking along the UVs

Select the edge, convert it to shape/spline, call it path.
Create a helix spline shape (or any other piece of stitching geometry).
Path Deform the helix over the path.

I tried masking and extracting but , the result wasnt good and not convincing anyway , maybe if the sews where smaller coudl but those are quite big and visible , as for the in 3dsmax path thing , I can select an edge and convert to path?

No need for extracting, just a typical mask. The only requirement is to have the geometry in place to sculpt the details in the first place.

Just to be a bit clearer though, are you talking about the X-shaped stitching along the very edges on the top piece, or the straight stitching on that flappy thing?

both of them ... I am not sure how to do the best approach ...

There is no "best" approach, it's whatever is best/fastest for you. They both work so try them both and use the method you like the most. Zbrush also has some detail type brushes too, which lay down a stitch-like pattern on the mesh as you draw.

The bottom one I'd do straight up alpha+lazy mouse.
The side stitching would depend on the exact effect I'm aiming for (how much detail). Either UVs for basic stitching, or I'd have two torus's tracing along the edges. These could be placed with zspheres even.

Originally Posted by cryrid

The bottom one I'd do straight up alpha+lazy mouse.
The side stitching would depend on the exact effect I'm aiming for (how much detail). Either UVs for basic stitching, or I'd have two torus's tracing along the edges. These could be placed with zspheres even.

This one last is the one I was trying to do now , using some toruses and some modeled stitches on the fornt part but, not sure yet how to align best without having to hand move each of the toruses , I tried with no success to extrude a spline path from an edge loop ....

I'll put here the answer i had placed in your previous thread cause it has more to do with your question here

Originally Posted by dreatern

Curve can be used to sculpt and polypaint. curve with alpha can be extremely powerful, without the need to mask before sculpting certain things. like the sewing you asked in other thread

Any brush can use curve, including mask

with curve is possible to do things with precision. before, some things was easier to do with projection master. Now with curves we can do almost everything "live", without projection master

look at zbrush documentation ZBrush4_R2_whats_new.pdf start at page 39

The zsphere method would turn each sphere into the stitches, so you'd be able to move them as easily as you would a normal chain (though hand-moving them manually in an external application doesn't sound all that hard either)