Textures!!

This tutorial I'll show you how to create realistic fabric. The key to creating fabrics is noise, shadows and highlights. We'll start with a skirt, for the purpose of this tutorial I will be using this Delure Mesh. I've started with my base color, blue.

Then we want to duplicate this layer and go to Filters>Noise>RBG noise, deselect Independent RBG and click OK. Next adjust the opacity in the layers toolbox down to around 6, until the noise is barley visible. This creates the woven fiber effect of fabric. Update your client and you can see its starting to look a little more like a real fabric skirt.

The skirt is missing shadows. Adding some shadows to the skirt will show more natural folds in the skirt. I start with some straight vertical lines at different lengths and applied a motion blur to them. Changing the blur angle to 90 and the blur length between 70 to 90 depending on the length of your vertical lines. After this I applied a Gaussian Blur with a radius of 8 pixels. Adjust the placement of the lines to sit just below the pelvis where fabric becomes loose and naturally falls. After this set the layer mode to Soft Light and lower the opacity down, I set mine to 24.

Update the client and you should now a more realistic looking skirt. Usually at this point I add some more shadows and highlights to the sides of the skirt and towards the upper around around the hips, going the the flow of the body.

Noise is important when creating fabrics as it adds to the effect and smaller details and shadows blend into the texture better than if you were using a flat color.

Suede is also an easy fabric to make. The fibers in suede go in different directions creating a mixture of light and dark. You will have noticed this if you have ever run your hand across the fabric and saw the direction of the fibers change. Start with your base color.

Then go to Filters>Render>Clouds>Plasma. Leave the default settings as is and select OK.

You should now have a layer with multicolored cloudy appearance.

Next go to Colors>Desaturate. This is will turn the layer black and white.

The final step is set the layer mode to Soft Light, depending on personal preference you may want to adjust the opacity, however it should look like the image below.

Noise is especially important when working with grey. You'll notice any grey fabric has fine black and white fibers interwoven through, muting the color and adding to the overall visual appearance. You'll see in the side by side comparison the difference noise makes when working with grey. The first being flat grey. If you were to add shadows to this, faint rings will appear around the outside of the blur, this is not a good look. The middle picture with the noise added is one step further to a real look fabric, not to mention it is much easier for the eyes to see. The final image shows some shading and wrinkles applied. It's the finer details that boost the texture to really looking like fabric. Check out my colors and shading tutorial HERE to see how to achieve this or click HERE to see a tutorial on adding wrinkles.

P.S. I had included pictures in good faith to help you on your creating journey. Please do not steal my textures, creating your own is much more satisfying. Stealing my texture will result in a DMCA complaint lodged against you and I would hate for it to come to that.