Quote - Fugazi1968 - oh!  the comment wasn't on the skirt.  it was on the whole tris vs. quads thing, and i was thinking about any lurkers here who haven't modeled dynamic clothes yet.  the mesh looks more than regular enough to work well.

just for discussion: have you done much using the opposite effect?  using topology to create structure and invoke folds where you want them to be? and have any of you done much work with pleats?  i have a vague idea for a process for making them, but i'm still kind of stumped.

No worries, I didnt take offence or anything, I can see several places on that skirt that need a lil work :)

I have done pleats in the past, though to various levels of effect.  I hope I can explain this properly without the aid of pictures.

instead of starting with a circle I modelled each strip of skirt individualy, comeing off the waistband area.  The first step was to bring a single quad, from the wait down to the hem.  I would repeat this right around the skirt.

At this stage you have a kind of roman centurian skirt, lots of single unconnected strips, with a trangle between each one.  I then place a single tri in each gap to join everything together.

Now it depends on how you want your pleats, but a good wat of doing it is to grap the bottom line of every other quad and move then away from the original hemline, then scale them up a little to add some overlap to the underlying quads.  Then select the bottom line of the underlying quads and apply the same scale.

Lastly all you need to do is slice across the skirt to get a good mesh resolution.  Once you run the sim (with self collision on) the skirt will flatten onto itself, the overlapping polys giving a pleated effect.  The tris betweet the quad slat mean that the pleats will me more apparant the lower down the skirt goes.

Hope that helps :)

I havent done muck in the way of carving folds and then adding the mesh just yet, though I can see it would be an advantage.  One thing I have done is put a mesh through a simulation to get the folds, then take it back into my modeller to level the hem of the skirt out, so it doesn't look too wonky :)

John

Fugazi (without the aid of a safety net)

https://www.facebook.com/Fugazi3D