PolyCloth brings Blender-style cloth sculpting to 3ds Max
PolyDesign3D has released PolyCloth, a neat new 3ds Max add-on that adds a physics-based cloth sculpting brush to Autodesk’s 3D software.
The plugin brings a workflow like that in Blender and ZBrush to 3ds Max users, with the brush automatically pulling 3D surfaces into realistic cloth-like folds and wrinkles as you sculpt.
Sculpt cloth surfaces into realistic wrinkles with a Blender or ZBrush-style physics brush
Physics-enabled cloth brushes are very much the flavour of the month in 3D apps, with both Blender 2.83 and last week’s ZBrush 2021 adding similar toolsets.
PolyCloth’s take is more similar to Blender’s than ZBrush’s, in the sense that it adds a single cloth sculpting brush whose behaviour can be modified with shortcut keys, rather than a complete set of brushes.
By default, the brush displaces a 3D surface into cloth-like folds as the user sculpts, but by holding down modifier keys, it can also be used to pinch the surface or smooth out existing wrinkles.
The demo video above also shows a set of simple numerical parameters – Iterations, Damping, Plasticity, Bendiness and so on – that can be adjusted to control the deformation of the surface.
Aside from the video, we can’t find any documentation for the plugin online, but early reviews are positive.
PolyDesign3D – the developer also sometimes writes it as Poly Design 3D, PolyDesign or Poly Design – also has a number of other 3ds Max plugins, including a voxel remesher and brush-based snow tool PolySnow.
Pricing and system requirements
PolyCloth is available for 3ds Max 2016+ via CGTrader. It costs $59.
Read more about PolyCloth for 3ds Max on the plugin’s CGTrader page