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I work for a fabric company and we have 100s on fabrics that need showing in a more realistic way, is photoshop is the best program to take a photo and change to the fabric on a sofa and chairs, will it look real enough? Any ideas on how to go about this?
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How about some examples of both the fabrics and the furniture?
»will it look real enough?«
What does »real enough« mean?
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Not sure about other programs, but Photoshop should be very good for this. You would want to create a master file for each piece of furniture, and then use smart object to "reupholster" each piece. You would use transform to adjust the perspective, and masks to make the fabric fit. I would avoid scaling to keep the pattern the same size, other than for perspective reasons. You can duplicate many smart objects for each fabric cut. When done, you should be able to replace the contents of just one of the smart objects and they will all change. Make sure all fabric files are the exact same size in pixels dimensions and that the resolution is the same.
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Depending on the cut of the upholstery, the fabric used in the photograph and the patterns on the replacement fabrics this could be quite a demanding task, though, and I wonder if, depending on the OP’s expectations, a 3D solution may not be necessary.
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Yes it can be....
For this mockup Template I had to pre-process the fabric for the Drivers and Passenger seats. For it was easier to the add seams and binding materials to the flat rectangle fabric then to create transform and warped seams and binding overlays in the mockup and try to position the fabric design for good composition. So I created and interactive action the let me use the flat seams and findings black overlay like a cookie cutter to cut out flat Driver and Passenger seat covers with the seams and trim with the interactive composure. Then I could batch process these into different model Car model mockup templates. This just show one template populated twice. The seat covers can be populated into many templates. I found the tenplates on line. I wanted to be abble to Batch Process then. Therefore I created the Car seat interactive action to pre process fabric sort of an interactive batch process.
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How good are your Photoshop skills. You can create Product Mockup Templates. Your Fabric covering sofa and chairs. However, your fabric would need to be Places into the templates as smart Object layers which would need to be transform and warped the conform the the furniture shape and surface which nay requires a displacement Map. Templates are not difficult to created but knowledge and Photoshop skill are required. Without knowledge and Photoshop .kill a templates you create may not look realistic. Your Fabric sample files will need to be sufficient size to work with the your templates scale the works with the templates. Your simple fabric files need to be nearly the same size and resolution for the Smart Object layers because The smart object layer's Object transform, warping, masking, and smart filters are not change when you replace the fabric content.
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You could do this in Photoshop using smart objects as described above.
Alternatively, this is bread and butter for 3D applications. That would involved making a 3D material from a photo of each fabric (Adobe 3D sampler). A model of each piece of furniture - a 3D application (e.g. Blender) which is "unwrapped" so that the 3D material can be applied to the surface. A rendering application to light and render the results (for example Adobe 3D Stager or Blender). The results can be as photorealistic as you like and, once modelled, switching materials and re-rendering is very fast.
Dave
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My photoshop skills are good my 3d skills not so. This is the type of image I'm wanting to use and switch the fabric on.
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I have no 3D skills and Photoshop 3D feature is too basic for what you want to do. My Photoshop skills are not the best but there not all that bad. I would have a very hard time rapping your fabric around some areas of that chair.
Adobe new 3D offerings are design for ease of use with object models you import. I have not used these products so I can not say that you could create your chair model withe ease. I believe the chair model may need to be created with a complex complicated 3D application that is hard to use. I believe Adobe offering like Dimension, Aero and Substance 3D offerings are not for actually creating the 3D object model they are more foe using models you import to create your 3D world you populate with the models you import. Their UI are design for ease use to manipulate these models in your 3d world. I could be wrong there . You may be able to create 3D models. I just look at a few video that seems to show that 3D is becoming easy. 3D still boggle my mind it has no capacity left to handle 3D. Still if you want to cover that chair with your fabric if you brain still has capacity. You should look into the new bread if 3D applications.
In Photoshop I would not want to try to covet this area with patterned fabric.
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In Photoshop I would not want to try to covet this area with patterned fabric.
Yeah, the cut of that chair’s upholstery seems challenging.
Though I suspect creating a 3D model of that chair would not be terribly easy, either.
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I think some of the replies might be over complicating this As Chuck and dave have said, going the Smart object route is a total no brainer. To make it clearer, you start with the first fabric flat and square and immediately make it a Smart Object. You'll probably need separate Smart Objects for each panel
Shape each panel into place with Free Transform and apply shading by clipping a curves layer to the Smart Object
Then to change the fabric double click the Smart object which opens in a new window in its orginal flat and square state.
Add the new fabric as a new layer in the SO edit window, and turn off the first fabric.
Save the SO and close it
And the new fabric will be transformed and shaded the same as the original.
I have fallen into a wee trap there where the SO is still called Fabric 1 but that came out of me finding a couple of sample fabrics for the screen shot.
I am not sure if it is possible to combine all of the panels into a single nested Smart object to make the changes faster and slicker. I am thinking about linked Smart Objects, and I am also thinking about using CC Libraries. Dave or Chuck might have a quick answer for that, but I would need to think about it and try it out.
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I think some of the replies might be over complicating this As Chuck and dave have said, going the Smart object route is a total no brainer.
But in your example: How many Smart Object instances would you guess you would need to make, transform and mask to fill up all of the upholstery?
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One of the Sneak Peeks from MAX 2015 would have been useful for this application if it had got into Photoshop. It was called Extract Shadows and allowed you change a covering while maintaining its shading. Unfortunately it never got into Photoshop, and we have heard that the project was abandoned. That was a real pity as it was a tool that could have been incredibly useful to compositors, editors, illustrators etc.
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Can you do it with smart objects , masks and warps - yes, as below. Would I recommend it - no. 3D would have been much easier 🙂
Dave
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Too long ! 🙂 No, in reality it just repetitive, splitting each part of the chair with a pen path and duplicating the new fabric smart object, before using each path as a mask. I unlinked the masks before distorting and warping the smart objects to position the fabric. I used the original image to re-introduce light and shade.
Dave
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@davescm wrote:
Too long ! 🙂
Dave
Haha! Then will you do it in Blender? For the sake of comparison? 😊
~ Jane
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"Haha! Then will you do it in Blender? For the sake of comparison?"
What do you want - blood ? I'll see if I get some time later 🙂
Dave
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Yes toooo loooong !!! 11 transform for the fabric object some with wrapping all with vector layer mask. Overlay layers for texture shadows and highlights plus a chair mask. A lot of Photoshop work that require knowledge and skill.
Though I want not part of 3D I can see this is right up 3D alley There is so much more function in the 3D world the end results will be more realistic and easy to change. Composition perspective lighting, shadows reflections etc 3D has much more functional capabilities and it look like these new bread of application will make 3D more approachable for the less tech savvy users. So you will have the tech savvy model created and action animator's and then construction workers the crews that builds the 3D worlds and the AR games and visual mockup environments. I believe it will take a lot of work the create a 3D model of that chair but once you have it there is so much you can do with it. For all I know they may be able to build a scanning device that will have firmwhere that can build models of some scannable object automatically.
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@davescm wrote:
What do you want - blood ? I'll see if I get some time later 🙂
No! Stop if it gets bloody Dave 😊
~ Jane
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3D render. I modelled a similar chair, textured it, and added it to a previously modelled scene. It is not perfect - I didn't have any dimensions or alternative views to work from, but hopefully you get the idea.
Dave
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@davescm wrote:
3D render. I modelled a similar chair, textured it, and added it to a previously modelled scene. It is not perfect - I didn't have any dimensions or alternative views to work from, but hopefully you get the idea.
Very, very nice, Dave, and it works well in the 3D bathroom scene that you modeled! Now that you've created the chair in both PS and Blender, what is the preferred method if you have hundreds of fabrics — @Ljm2021's issue?
~ Jane
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I think the OP didn’t give examples, but depending on the fabrics (how different are their structures, coarseness etc.) and whether they might contain highly reflective threads (essentially metallic effects) they might provide additional challenges for both approaches.
If they are all fairly smooth and of a similar reflexivity that may be overthinking the issue but if one wants to avoid unpleasant surprises it might be useful to verify such properties beforehand.
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Personally I would use 3D, but I am familiar with the process.
The long part on both cases was the preparation i.e. building the model for 3D and UV unwrapping it, or creating all the masks and warps for the Photoshop approach. Once done:
To change the material in the Smart object process would simply require replacing the contents of the smart object, but the shadows may need to be readjusted if the material is darker or lighter. The disadvantage in this approach is that a material with texture will not catch shadows correctly in its surface or reflect correctly if metallic. Also fine patterns are hard to warp correctly.
In the 3D process, it would require a new tileable 3D material for each fabric - which can quickly be made from a photograph in Substance Sampler. Then it is just a matter of replacing the existing material on the model and re-rendering. Surface texture and metallic elements are all part of the material. Patterns are taken care of at the UV unwrapping stage which effectively lays out all the surfaces flat, in the same way as they would be layed out before stitching in real life.
Dave