Wrinkled cloth textures and shadows.

[eepjr24]

Does anyone know of a good tutorial for wrinkled cloth textures? Can be with either general digital drawing techniques or a plug in / GIMP specific technique. I am trying to get better with ore realistic textures as I develop a map without using elements from other artists. I have a tent image (top down) and I would like to give the canvas a more realistic texture, even if it is slight. Perhaps cloth bunching at the rope connection points or more of a folded cloth appearance at the tent flap?

Also, I have an attempt at the shadows done but I am not pleased with the results. Drop Shadows on another layer look great for the tent itself, but on the ropes, the shadows should merge to the stake (instead of appearing equidistant from the rope along it's entire length) and I am unsure how to make that happen. I tried drawing them in by hand with a low opacity 12.5% round brush, which looks like it could work with a lot of practice, but if there is another way I would love to hear about it.

   

As always, thanks for yout time.

- Ernie

[rich2005]

Maybe something like this, using all Gimp tools.  
There is a texture filter that goes way back into the dark ages of Gimp. Filters -> Artistic -> GIMPressionist and one of the textures is canvas. A quick overview.

   

(1) The most important layer. Selected / Copied / Pasted in place. Then the GIMPpressionist texture applied. That does not look too good, all horizontal and vertical lines, so half of it deformed to the tent 'slope'  using the Handle Transform tool. That bit duplicated, then Flipped, then positioned with the Move tool.
(2) Once-upon-a-time everyone made their own drop shadows. New layer under,  the tent shape in black and Gaussian blurred. Moved into place according to (perceived) light source.
(3) The direction of the shadow determines any shading on the pitch of the tent top. Make a selection, fill with black, adjust the layer opacity.

[eepjr24]

Rich,

First off, thanks! I was not looking for the texture of the cloth itself, but now I think I will rework it and see if I can use that because i like it. 

Since my question was clearly not up to snuff, let me provide a visual instead.

   

The areas I outlined in yellow are the type of effect I am trying to achieve. I found something remotely close using noise with opposing X/Y values to get basically "lined noise", then increased hue / contrast, color to alpha on white and use as an overlay masked to your area. But it does a bad job of any thing other than mostly straight wrinkles. I tried some distorts on it and such but have not gotten the knack yet, so I hoped someone here had done something similar. I am probably way too picky about this, but since I am learning I figure I can be picky with myself and try to learn more that way.

And I think I also was not clear on the shadows. I have done the type of shadow you are talking about, I like that way better sometimes, but it has the same problem drop shadows do. I have left the opacity at 100% for this one, just to see better. The black is (obviously) the shadow I generated by copying, doing a blur, etc. Basically the same as with drop shadow. The green (especially on the ropes, the other I can shade manually if needed, it's much easier with nothing in the way) is where I would like the shadows to go. Hand doing them is the only way I have come up with so far and matching the dispersion and... I don't know the right wording here... degree of transparency of the pixels? has proved to be challenging for me.

Thanks again for helping out.

- E

[Ofnuts]

Something like

* FIlters > Render > Noise > Solid noise and dissociate X & Y sizes to get long waves
* Filters > Map >Bump map and use above as the "Aux input".

Would of course have to be done properly (rotate appropriately for each side of the tent)

   

[eepjr24]

Thanks, ofnuts. I'll give that a whirl once I get the canvas textured like Rich.

Rich, can you share what settings you have on the Gimpressionist to get that texture? I have tried it multiple times with Canvas and ApplyCanvas with various settings and get nothing like what you got.

- E

[rich2005]

Quote:...settings you have on the Gimpressionist to get that texture?

The only thing I changed was the size, but as a plugin, it is well past its sell-by date

   

and https://i.imgur.com/fICrGpf.mp4