OK, it's been a very long time since I've been here asking questions about how to accomplish something in Blender, but I've just come across something I've not done before in any modeling software, so was wondering if any of you good folks have any ideas as to what tool/action I can use to make it relatively easy.

I have an outfit modeled by someone who gave it to me to try texturing it. It's a prop as it'll be used in Poser as Dynamic Clothing, but I had a problem getting the texturing done so that it doesn't stretch, and I realized she had pulled some polys under the edges of the armholes (sleeveless) and across the front and back of the bodice.

Since she doesn't plan to do anything more with it, she said I can adjust the mesh if I want to, so I deleted her extra polys and added my own in place, UV mapped them, and now want to get the new polys pulled under the adjacent polys to make a facing, as a seamstress would do when sewing in real life. My problem is, I can't figure out an easy way to get the new polys for the facing pulled under. Is there some tool or action that I'm not seeing that can help me accomplish this?

Thanks in advance for any and all tips/tricks or links to a tutorial.

If I understand what you are trying to do correctly then creating a Custom Transform may be what you need. Most software packages have a set of default orientation axis that you use to move scene elements around. The typical transform orientations are global, view, normal, and local. Blender allows you to create a custom transform so you can transform an element along a user defined axis. To do this select one of the poly faces you are referring to as the "adjacent" poly. Press Ctrl+Alt+Space Bar. You should now see the transform widget align itself with the normal of the selected face. On the bottom left side of your workspace screen you will see the "Create Orientation" panel. You can now name your custom transform. Now when you select one of the "new" polys that you created you can use the custom transform to move it around on the same axis as your "adjacent" poly.

If I have misunderstood your question it might help to either attached a picture or better still post a link to your blend file on dropbox or similar.

OK, see now, considering how many years I've been playing in Blender, I've not come across that.

That said, if I'm understanding you correctly, I don't think that's what I'm looking for, though I haven't tried it yet, so I might be wrong.

In any case, I'm attaching a screenshot of what I'm talking about. It's actually both sides of a shoulder strap. The 4 tiny polys on either side is what I want to fold/flip under the adjacent full-sized polys. IOW, the first tiny poly next to each adjacent full-sized poly, would be a "fold", and the other 3 would fall, hopefully right behind the full-sized polys. This will give the edge a finished look, and since I made them tiny, it shouldn't add too much thickness to the shoulder strap. Basically I want the back side of the tiny polys to be back-to-back with the back side of the full-sized polys next to them. Hopefully this helps to better give you an idea of what I'm trying to do.

OK, now I can see what you are trying to do. In short there is no way that I know of to do what you want the WAY that you want, as in folding the existing mesh the way you describe. I would suggest that you delete the faces in red and then add a Solidity modifier to what remains. This will turn the mesh from something with just an "outside" to a mesh with both an "inside" and "outside" and then delete any unwanted faces . Another option is to again delete the faces in red and create your hem by extruding edges. Either way will mean uv mapping parts of the mesh again.

I'm keen to see how this renders. More so, how it sims. I've had huge issues with Poser spitting the dummy on double -sided mesh, myself. I had to go with displacement strategies on single -sided cloth instead of using a modeled approach, in the end. Saying that, this was Poser 7, so maybe the sim engine is a bit better these days.

By the way, I do agree with Keppel on deleting unhappy mesh and just extruding new stuff. One thing you can try is scaling that final edge -loop inwards slightly to give the impression of thickness. The bane of dynamic cloth: paper-thin edges. There is a lot that has yet to be discovered in dynamic cloth development.

Here's what I mean: this is not the most brilliant mesh ever, but you sort-of get the idea.

The highlighted edge-loops are added on. The slight tapering in you see on that outer edge I did in vertex mode, of course.

Poser actually handles displacement a bit better than Blender, for cloth at least... or that's been my experience, at least.

Hi Kepel and Robyn, thanks for your responses.

Kepel, your suggestion to use the Solidify modifier at first sounds like the perfect answer to my question, except I would have the same problem as the original mesh, because I wouldn't be able to UV Map the "inside" polys, and that's why I saw the stretching when I textured it with the original UV Map. Your second suggestion is how I got those faces I painted red to begin with. Those are not the polys from the original mesh.

Robyn, the original mesh actually simmed quite well. Here's a couple of renders I did with the initial textures I was planning for the outfit. The first one is a solid color with only a bump map to give it a linen-like texture. The second one, however, was done with one of my Filter Forge knit filters, and you can see the dark lines on either side of the shoulder straps I had to throw in via postwork to hide the stretching.

Anyway, I'll be playing some more and let you know if I figure out a work-around.

I think your coming at this from the wrong direction. I don't think you should be looking at how to change the mesh to keep your current uvs but how to change the uvs to match the changes to your mesh so that you can still use the existing texture map.

Well Keppel, I'm, here to tell you, that out of curiosity I tried your suggestion to use the Solidify modifier, and I was wrong. I thought I wouldn't be able to get the inside polys UV mapped, but I just tried it, and it worked. I don't know why that method "sees" the other polys behind the front polys, but it did, and that's exactly what I wanted, especially since I was able to set the thickness I wanted, which wasn't much. Give me a few, and I'll show you a screenshot of the shoulder strap I tried it on, and the UVs of that shoulder strap.

As far as your last comment, I don't want to use the existing original texture map, I wanted a new one so I could actually texture the hidden polys, which I couldn't do with the UV map I extracted from the original mesh, which I didn't model. Now, I have an idea of how to do this in the future. I've always seen the Solidify modifier, but hadn't, up until now, had an occasion to try it.

I'm glad that you had success with this.

OK, the first screenshot is an up close and personal view of the backside of the shoulder strap after I applied the Solidify modifier and deleted the two center polys I don't need.

The second screenshot is the new shoulder strap UVs. You can see the really skinny rows of polys, which are the thin edges on both sides of the shoulder strap, and the top and bottom rows of polys are the ones inside, behind the front polys. This is exactly what I was trying to do, so thank you Keppel very much. This is definitely a win-win, and I'm doing a happy little dance right now.

keppel posted at 8:08PM Sun, 13 March 2016 - #4260861

I'm glad that you had success with this.

Thanks Keppel, I have a fair amount of work because the Solidify modifier is applied in object mode, so it applied to the whole dress, and I didn't want it to, so I resaved to a new file, deleted everything but the shoulder straps and the top polys of the bodice. That way there isn't much underneath for me to delete.

Then I'm going to export to OBJ and import into the original file, delete the old shoulder straps and top polys from the bodice of the original mesh, and then Join the new mesh with the rest of the original mesh and go from there.

This modifier, however, is on my list of things to use when I'm doing the creation. I'll just use it right away, and then continue modeling the rest of the piece of clothing so I don't have to do all this extra work.

Thanks again for the help.

Another way would be to just select the straps of your original mesh and then press P this will separate the straps from the dress creating a separate mesh. Apply the solidify modifier to the straps mesh only and apply, then delete the unwanted faces. Select both meshes again and press Ctrl+J to re-join. In edit mode select everything and press W and select Remove Doubles. So long as you didn't move either the straps or the dress during the steps I just described then the default tolerance for the Remove Doubles function should weld the duplicate vertices created when you split the straps from the dress. There may be a need to create some additional faces to fill some areas that the Solidify modifier didn't include depending on how you spit your straps from the dress. This way eliminates the need to export/import mesh objects as .objs.

OHHHHHHHHHH!!! I've always wondered how to split things off a mesh. For some reason, I've never come across the "P" keyboard option.

You're just a fountain of very useful information Keppel!! Thanks again, and again, and again.

Your welcome

Well done, Keppel and Miss B. I've learned a lot from both your experiences!

Just a quick note Keppel to let you know that your last tidbit on how to split the shoulder straps from the bodice so I didn't have to make a second file/obj, worked a dream.

There was still work to do to get the unwanted polys deleted, but they joined back together fine, and I removed a bunch of duplicate verts. Now I have what I wanted, and a UV map I can work with so the textures won't stretch. I'm a happy camper, and I've made notes for the next time I want to work with the Solidify modifier.