Felt and Fabric
- felt shader
- fuzzy render
- fabric render
A rendered figure surfaced in wool and cloth, with fibre standing up at every edge.
Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
Fabric absorbs light and has no highlight, so a fabric character is soft everywhere. Rendering it is a way of borrowing the warmth of a handmade puppet with the control of a computer model.
How it works
Short fibre is grown from every surface so the silhouette is never hard. Clothing is woven cloth at a deliberately coarse thread scale. Seams are stitched rather than painted. A strong rim light behind the figure passes through the fibre and makes it glow.
When to use it
Use it for warmth, childhood and advertising that wants to feel handmade. Avoid it for anything precise, because a fuzzy silhouette cannot hold a hard shape.
Told apart from its neighbours
Needle Felt is a photograph of real compacted wool. Plush is sewn from cut cloth with visible seams and stuffing. Subsurface Character is soft for a different reason, with light passing through rather than caught on fibre.
Where it is used
It suits an advertisement, a mascot, an app icon and any character aimed at a small child or at nostalgia for being one.
- Advertising and idents
- Mobile games and app mascots
The prompt
Replace the blanks with your own character, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.
<character>, felt and fabric render, every surface covered in short fibre so the silhouette is fuzzy and catches a rim light, visible woven cloth with a coarse thread scale for the clothing and stitched seams where two panels meet, matte light absorbing materials with no gloss anywhere, soft studio light with a strong rim behind to light the fuzz, small loose threads and slight pilling on the fabric, shallow depth of field
What goes wrong
A smooth character with a fabric texture map comes back. Ask for fibre standing up from the silhouette and a rim light behind it, which no texture map can fake.
Leave out
gloss, smooth plastic, a hard silhouette, photographic skin, a clean machine finish
Watch for
The rim light is doing the work. Fibre only reads when light passes through it from behind, so ask for a rim light in the same clause as the fuzz.
Questions
Draw it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
