I'm after an easy(ish) way of making cloth look wet without necessarily using a wet texture, I'm guessing transparency is going to be involved somewhere but I've got no clue what else to try - I'm not that proficient in the materials room just yet (I normally only use it for the atmosphere settings)

Anyone have an idiots guide to doing this ?

I'd also be interested in the idiot's guide! ^__^  :tongue2:

  well you could take the easy way , like i did , do a search for wet t shirt in the freebe zone, i think there's 2 of them download that. Then load it into your scene and  then replace the t shirt Tex with  the Texture of clothing of your chooseing. then save . You might have to tweak the setting a bit to get exactly what your looking for .
Hope this help you folks.

Imagination is more important than knowledge,

knowledge is limited,

Imagination encircles the world

kurt

You guessed it, transparency is involved. But it isn't as simple as all that.

1. Your transparency map should, ideally, be more opaque where there are multiple layers of cloth, such as seams, collars, cuffs etc.
2. Not all colors become transparent at the same rate. If a character was wearing an outfit with a white background with a darker pattern, the pattern should be less transparent. Also, most colors darken when wet, so you probably want to change your base texture as well.
3. Wet cloth is often shiny, so you want to add some reflectivity in the material room to fabrics such as polyester and denim.
4. Wet fabric drapes differently. It tends to be both heavier (so it hangs lower), and also stickier. You might try using the cloth room and playing around with the parameters.

Quote - You guessed it, transparency is involved. But it isn't as simple as all that.

1. Your transparency map should, ideally, be more opaque where there are multiple layers of cloth, such as seams, collars, cuffs etc.
2. Not all colors become transparent at the same rate. If a character was wearing an outfit with a white background with a darker pattern, the pattern should be less transparent. Also, most colors darken when wet, so you probably want to change your base texture as well.
3. Wet cloth is often shiny, so you want to add some reflectivity in the material room to fabrics such as polyester and denim.
4. Wet fabric drapes differently. It tends to be both heavier (so it hangs lower), and also stickier. You might try using the cloth room and playing around with the parameters.

O.O err ok, that sounds a bit more work than what I was thinking about is actually worth :)
Hmmm - time for plan B (once I work out what it is)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1258448

I've also used Blinn and Glossy through the lighting in the transparency node, this image had some of that although I'm first to admit it came out a bit more plasticy than wet [LOL].

Attached Link: http://www.philc.net/images/forum/wet_cloth.jpg

Can one have too many examples? :)

Full size screen shot at the link.

Hmmm . . . that looks promising.  I think I'll have to have a fiddle when I get home and see what I can come up with.  Isn't it a pain when your lack of skill stops you creating  the image you have in your head ? :$
Of course, if I actually knew what all those weird nodes did it might help some heh

[Edit]
Phil, you are a veritable god.  That's exactly what I'm after I think.  Now to figure out how to do it and apply it to some dynamic cloth and we are good to go

Quote - Can one have too many examples? :)

Full size screen shot at the link.

 

Cool. That would also work really well for a wet cocktail napkin.

Quote - You guessed it, transparency is involved. But it isn't as simple as all that.

1. Your transparency map should, ideally, be more opaque where there are multiple layers of cloth, such as seams, collars, cuffs etc.
2. Not all colors become transparent at the same rate. If a character was wearing an outfit with a white background with a darker pattern, the pattern should be less transparent. Also, most colors darken when wet, so you probably want to change your base texture as well.
3. Wet cloth is often shiny, so you want to add some reflectivity in the material room to fabrics such as polyester and denim.
4. Wet fabric drapes differently. It tends to be both heavier (so it hangs lower), and also stickier. You might try using the cloth room and playing around with the parameters.

 

So I've been playing around with my suggestions. 

1. This is tricky -- it probably involves actually creating one's own transparency map to get right. The classic outfit which relies on this technique to get right is something like white slacks, which are often a little translucent to begin with. You have seams, the reinforcement for the zipper, the waistband, and often pockets. No easy fix here.
2. This is easier to do. You can generate a quick and dirty transparency map by inverting the colors of the texture map and grey scaling them. There is actually a way, more or less, to do this in the material room, but I can't quite remember it. You can then blend this transparency map with some appropriate noise.
3. You can darken stuff like denim by adding some grey in the material room. One issue is that if the figure is actually partially in water, the cloth which is out of the water will be shiny, but the cloth which is in the water won't be. You can make two renders -- one with the material shiny, but the surface of the water black with no reflection or highlights (this makes it easier to work with in post work), and the other with the water normal, but the cloth with no highlights. In postwork, layer the relevant parts of the first (shiny) render on top of the second.
4. Some materials work well in the cloth room. You need to increase parameters which reflect stretchiness, fabric weight, and fabric friction against skin, and decrease parameters which reflect how easily the fabric slides against itself and how easily it returns to normal shape. On the other hand, some things are difficult in the cloth room, most notably the tendency of some fabrics to get really wrinkly and bunch up, and also the clinginess (especially the tendency to cling to overhangs (breasts), and crevices (buttocks). For those you probably want to find the best conforming cloth.

A further note on cling -- wet clothing tends to cling, but once pulled away will hang pretty limply. However, wet clothing, especially light colors, are more transparent when touching something else than when even a slight distance away. (This is why wrinkles aren't transparent.) So if a woman is wearing a when shirt, which hangs loose in front, her nipples should be visible, but her navel shouldn't be.

::: lurking and watching :::

"*You can generate a quick and dirty transparency map by inverting the colors of the texture map and grey scaling them. There is actually a way, more or less, to do this in the material room, but I can't quite remember it. You can then blend this transparency map with some appropriate noise.*"

Subtract original from white = "negative" colours.
Plug into a math node to convert to greyscale. (Actually, not needed when used for transparency or any other node that requires grey-scale; the conversion is done automagically).

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Diolma

the main problem i see with wet clothing is that there is no node in poser that will effect transparency depending on closeness to an object, ie a wet t-shirt on a woman has more transparency at the breasts than under the arms,and it would be helpfull if a node existed to do that, unless there is a python way of doing that? who knows...

Quote - the main problem i see with wet clothing is that there is no node in poser that will effect transparency depending on closeness to an object, ie a wet t-shirt on a woman has more transparency at the breasts than under the arms,and it would be helpfull if a node existed to do that, unless there is a python way of doing that? who knows...

 

That is something that can be fixed in postwork, along with the difference in shine between above and below the water. You can have a top layer using less transparency, a lower layer with higher transparency, and then use a 20-40% erase tool to erase appropriate parts of the less transparent layer.

One big problem, when using dynamic cloth, is that the dynamics will vary between below the water (usually floaty, as if it were light weight), and above (usually heavy and clingy.)

Egawds lets do the static non dynamic ones first lol.