> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.gta.clothing/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.gta.clothing/basics/essential-knowledge/3d-preview-clothes.md). # 3D Previewing Clothes Learn about our 3D Preview ## Introduction The Clothes 3D Preview window in Durty Cloth Tool provides a real-time 3D visualization of clothing assets with various adjustable settings for precise previewing and debugging. This is an integral part of the Durty Cloth Tool, allowing users to visualize how clothes will appear on the ped model and apply various rendering and preview options. This helps in ensuring proper fitting, rigging and overall look and feel of textures before exporting or using the clothes in the game. {% hint style="info" %} Open 3D preview either by selecting Cloth Drawable and Texture Variation, then clicking "3D Preview" button (See [User Interface](/basics/essential-knowledge/user-interface.md)) or by double clicking any Cloth Drawable to preview it with its first Texture Variation.\ \ Did you know you can also enable automatic preview on simple selection? See [App & Project Settings](/basics/good-to-know/app-and-project-settings.md) for more information. {% endhint %} {% hint style="warning" %} 3D Preview is **only supported to work on clean GTA V installations** without any graphic or other client mods installed. {% endhint %} {% hint style="success" %} Want to look at a single file without a project and without a GTA V installation? Use **Quick Look** instead. See [Home & Quick Look](/basics/useful-to-know/home-and-quick-look.md). {% endhint %} #### Main Features: * Real-time 3D model rendering * Texture, model, and animation previews * Cloth physics simulation with adjustable wind for drawables with a YLD * Advanced rendering controls (lighting presets, shadows, HDR, time of day, render modes, tex samplers and more) * Model breakdown and inspection * Texture breakdown and inspection

Durty Cloth Tool Clothes 3D Preview demo

## The docked workspace The 3D Preview is part of a dockable workspace together with the Appearance Items list, the Error List and the Project Logs. Each of them can be **docked, floated, auto-hidden, hidden and reopened from the View menu**. Your layout is saved per user, with a recovery backup. If it ever ends up somewhere unhelpful, **View > Reset Workspace Layout** puts everything back. Defaults adapt to the screen you are on, so the workspace stays usable on a laptop as well as on a large display. The preview starts without blocking the editor, and keeps its scene through docking and focus changes. Static scenes render when something changes. Animation, cloth and camera movement remain smooth while the preview is visible. Hiding or minimizing the preview pauses rendering and simulation; after a minute hidden, it releases cached graphics resources and reloads them when reopened. **Options > 3D Previewer > Adaptive preview rendering** is enabled by default. Turn it off if you need continuous rendering while the preview is visible. {% hint style="info" %} Opening the 3D Preview from the View menu while nothing is loaded shows a card explaining that you can send a drawable or texture to it from the list context menu or with **Enter**. {% endhint %} ## Preview tools Select **Menu** in the preview top-left corner to open the controls over the live viewport. The menu appears above the scene without shrinking it. Select **Menu** again to close it. The drawer is resizable and starts wide enough for its translated tab labels when the viewport has room. Sections remember whether you left them expanded or collapsed. The tools are grouped into six tabs: **View**, **Outfit**, **Ped**, **Animation**, **Inspect** and **Advanced**. ## View tab ### Quick view * **Only selected cloth**: Preview only the currently selected clothing piece. * **Auto-focus current clothing**: The camera follows the area of the ped your selected clothing occupies. * **Auto Rotate Camera**: Automatically rotates the camera around the model. * **Reset Camera**: Return to a front view. With auto-focus enabled, the camera frames the current clothing piece. ### Scene * **Show Floor**: Toggle the floor display to get a feel where exactly the ped would be standing and whether shoes or clothes will potentially glitch. * **Floor height offset**: Fine tune the floor height. It sits next to Show Floor and is disabled while the floor is hidden, because the value has no effect in that state. * **Grid**: Overlay a grid in the center for reference. * **Lighting**: Choose how the scene is lit. * **Studio (even light)** is the default. A soft light follows the camera, a strong even fill lifts the shadows, and a fixed blue sky gradient sits behind the ped, so a garment reads clearly from every angle. * **Sun (time of day)** brings back the timecycle sun and the game sky. * **Custom light direction (right-drag)** keeps the draggable light. * **Shadows**, **HDR rendering** and **Time of day** sit next to the lighting choice and apply to the **Sun** and **Custom** presets only. {% hint style="info" %} Studio lighting is a neutral inspection light, not a preview of how the garment will look in game. Switch to **Sun (time of day)** when you want to judge the item under game lighting. {% endhint %} ### Camera and framing Opens collapsed, because exact angles are a refinement step rather than the first thing you reach for. * **Horizontal angle**, **Vertical angle** and **Distance** * **Camera presets**: save the framing you keep coming back to under a name, and delete presets you no longer need. ### Controls for the selected clothing Below **Time of day**, View shows the controls supported by the selected clothing. These update as you select another item. * **Primary hair colour** and **Secondary hair colour**: palette ramps, shown when the focused drawable sits in the Hair component and its materials support colouring. * **Palette tint**: a single tint selector for supported non-hair palette materials. {% hint style="warning" %} These colour controls are **preview only** and are never written into your project or built resource. Colours normally stay with the slot for the current session. When a character head setup is active, its hair colours are shared with **Head and face** in Ped and can be kept with **Save as my default**. {% endhint %} ### Material simulation Preview-only controls for the supported materials of the focused garment: * **Wetness** * **Environment effect amount**, **Environment effect colour** and **Vertex-colour coverage bias** * Individual **wrinkle mask** channels and their strength, with **Reset wrinkle tracks** * **Fur quality**: Auto, Low, Medium or High ## Outfit tab ### Wearing several items at once Select several drawables in the list and use **3D Preview selected clothes together** to put them on the ped at once, one drawable per component slot. You can also add a selection to the outfit you already have on. * **Worn items** lists everything currently on the ped. Focus or remove individual items. * Selecting another drawable replaces its own slot and leaves the rest of the outfit alone. * The drawable list marks the items that are currently worn. * Changing gender removes clothes that do not fit the new one. * Replacing a worn source file in DCT reloads it in the preview. {% hint style="info" %} Previewing several clothes together requires a valid license. {% endhint %} To keep previously loaded items while you preview another one, enable **Keep these clothes when I select another item**.

Preview multiple Addon Clothes in Durty Cloth Tool

### Focused item * **Preview Alternation Model**: Adjust the loaded model of the currently selected cloth to either their first-person (`_1`) or other (`_2`, `_3` etc.) alternation models. When configured, the preview also supports hair alternation states (e.g. masks or hoodies with "no hair" or special hair alternation models) to visualize clipping fixes. * **Apply Skin Tone Data**: Compose Body, Legs and Shoes with a selected base skin tone. See [Skin Tone Data](/game-mechanics/skin-tone-data.md). ### Cloth support profile The **Support profile (saved with this cloth)** section shows whether the focused garment has a saved setup. **Configure focused cloth support** lets you choose the skeleton and supporting body models that load automatically when you preview it. For example, save a matching game torso or another torso cloth from your project beneath a top. See [Custom Ped Preview Support](/basics/good-to-know/custom-ped-preview.md). ## Ped tab Use **Ped** to change the game clothing underneath your project outfit. Drawable and texture numbers are together in one row for each component, followed by common props such as hats and glasses. Expand the component details when you need alternatives and file names. A slot occupied by a project item shows what you are wearing. Select **Take off** before choosing game clothing for that slot. * **Reset to default** restores your saved ped defaults and keeps your project outfit on. * **Save as my default** remembers game components, props and character appearance for the current gender, including when no project cloth is focused. These are your local preview defaults. * **Head and face** offers parent blends, facial features, hair colours, eye colour and facial overlays. **Use plain head** returns to editing the head as a game component. ### Import a Menyoo character Select **Import Menyoo outfit...** in **Outfit** or **Ped**, or on the empty preview card before loading any clothes, then choose a Menyoo outfit export for `mp_m_freemode_01` or `mp_f_freemode_01`. DCT loads the clothing, props and supported head settings using your installed game files. A Spooner XML containing several peds uses the first supported freemode ped and reports the extra placements. The import changes the preview. It keeps compatible project clothes on top, so take off a project item if you want to see the imported game clothing beneath it. Select **Save as my default** if you want to reuse the imported character. {% hint style="warning" %} Menyoo drawable numbers depend on the game build and DLC order used when exporting. Missing or adjusted values are reported. Use matching game content for the closest result. Facial overlay colour is previewed, but overlay normal/specular effects, body overlays and parent-derived body skin tones are not yet reproduced. The manual skin-tone selector is still available for supported Body, Legs and Shoes clothing. {% endhint %} ## Animation tab * **Enable Animation**: Toggle animation on or off. * **Enable Root Motion**: Enable the root motion for specific animations (useful for walking or action animations, to understand the actual animation movement). * **Playback speed**: Adjust the playback speed of the animation to understand glitching better. **Reset to default** sits next to the Playback title and resets everything in the tab. * **Quick select**: 32 animations verified against the game files, covering male and female idle, walk and run, sprint, jump, stealth crouch, ladder climb, swimming, a single frame bind pose, hands up, arms folded, flexing, cheering, texting, smoking, impatient standing, pistol and rifle aim, gun point, chair, bus seat and driving poses, sitting on the ground, kneeling, yoga, push-ups, sit-ups, lying on the back and dancing. * **Clip Dict** and **Clip**: Enter any GTA V animation clip dictionary and clip to preview clothes with it. The dictionary drop-down handles its tens of thousands of entries without freezing the app. {% hint style="info" %} Use animations to see whether your clothes are correctly rigged and how they look in motion. {% endhint %} ### Custom Animations Load your own `.YCD` animation files and use them in the preview. 1. **Add YCD files...** opens a file dialog. The chosen files are copied into the application anims folder and kept for later use. 2. Added animations appear under **Saved animations:**. **Remove** deletes one from the list, and **Open folder** opens that folder directly. 3. You can also drop `.YCD` files into that folder while the application runs. DCT picks them up automatically.

Preview Clothes using Custom Animations in DCT

### Cloth physics (YLD) Every drawable with a linked YLD is simulated by default. Pinned vertices follow the skin and the animation, free vertices hang and are held by the edges of the cloth, and they are pushed out of the collision capsules of the body. The **Cloth physics (YLD)** section appears while an item in the outfit has a YLD, and offers: * **Simulate cloth physics** * **Wind**, with **Wind strength**, **Wind direction** and **Gusts** * **Use authored wind response**, which switches to the wind behaviour the YLD itself declares * **Collide with body capsules** * **Simulation quality** * **Show simulation mesh**, which draws the simulated mesh in the viewport * **Reset simulation** If repeated instability pauses the simulation, **Reset simulation** clears that paused state and starts the cloth again. Items in the outfit that carry a YLD are marked with a **Cloth** badge, and the focused drawable lists findings such as missing pins, missing edges, missing capsules, vertex count problems, and model vertices that are not bound to the cloth. {% hint style="warning" %} The simulation is **preview only**. It is a good way to find obvious pairing, binding and deformation problems early, but final collision and wind behaviour must still be tested in game. See [Creating Cloth Physics (YLD)](/cloth-modding/cloth-physics-yld.md). {% endhint %} Your cloth physics settings are remembered across sessions. ## Inspect tab ### Models A hierarchical view of the model data, including the breakdown of each loaded cloth or body part and its different LODs.

Durty Cloth Tool 3D Preview Models data

* **High Detail, Medium Detail, Low Detail**: View the number of geometries and vertices for each model component. * **Collapsible List**: Expand and collapse each component to view the detailed geometry of the head, hair, upper body, lower body, feet, and specific clothing pieces. ### Textures Breaks down the applied textures on each part of the clothing and character model. This tab is essential for inspecting texture maps such as diffuse, bump, specular, and more.

Durty Cloth Tool 3D Preview Textures data

* **DiffuseSampler**: View and inspect the applied diffuse textures for each model part. * **SpecSampler**: Inspect specular maps (used for reflections and light response). * **Texture Coordinates**: View the UV mapping applied to the model. * **VolumeSampler**: Used for 3D textures, view how volumetric textures are applied if applicable. ### Details Facts about the focused item, gathered in one place. ## Advanced tab ### Render mode * **Default**: Standard rendering. * **Single texture**: Highlights individual textures. **Tex sampler:** and **Tex coords:** become selectable in this mode. * **Textured wireframe**: Keeps the ordinary shaded scene and adds depth-tested mesh edges to the focused component or prop only. The ped, reference outfit, floor, grid, shadows and fur shells stay normally rendered. * **Vertex normals**, **Vertex tangents**, **Vertex colour 1** and **Vertex colour 2**: Debug modes to visualize different aspects of the geometry and vertex data. * **Wireframe**: View the model in wireframe mode to see the underlying geometry. * **Ped Skeleton**: Visualize the skeleton structure of the model for debugging rigging issues. ### Advanced rendering Supported Legacy ped clothing renders through dedicated material paths rather than one opaque fallback: cutout materials use family-specific alpha references, ordered hair keeps its authored layers, transparent geometry is sorted, decals blend without writing depth, and fur uses bounded shell layers. A clothing shader DCT does not recognize is reported once and continues through a conservative opaque fallback. * **Game-style ped lighting** enables the Legacy material lighting model, with skin and hair specular, hair sheen, reflection on transparent materials and vertex-colour ambient handling. It is off by default, because the preview own lighting is easier to inspect under. ## Live Texture Editing / Preview With an active license, iterate on texture work in your own image editor and watch it live-reload in the **3D Preview**: 1. Open the **3D Preview** for a drawable 2. Open **Advanced > Live texture editing** and select a channel (**Diffuse**, **Specular**, or **Normal**, when available) 3. Choose **PNG** or **DDS**, choose your image editor and press **Edit in image editor** 4. Save your changes in the image editor to update the preview 5. Press **Save to cloth** to store the edit in the project, or **Discard** to return to the saved texture You can also start with **Edit texture in image editor** from a texture variation. The variation is shown on the ped first, then DCT opens the same Live texture editing section. PNG is compressed in the background with the existing Balanced quality settings while preserving transparency. **Save to cloth** reuses that prepared result when it is ready. DDS keeps the format and mip levels you saved in your editor. History records the edited channel and texture changes. You can keep editing after saving to the cloth; a newer editor save remains unsaved until you save it to the cloth too. One session runs at a time and follows one cloth and variation. It pauses while that cloth is out of focus, then picks up edits made meanwhile when the cloth returns. An observed editor write counts as unsaved immediately, even if the file is still locked, incomplete or cannot be decoded yet. DCT therefore still asks before discarding it, and a project replacement preserves the working file instead of silently deleting the edit. {% hint style="info" %} Use DX11-compatible formats (e.g., BC1/DXT1 for opaque, BC3/DXT5 for alpha). Keep resolution and UV layout consistent with the original. {% endhint %}

Durty Cloth Tool Live Texture Editing / Previewing Demo

## Watermark A small translucent Durty Cloth Tool logo sits in the bottom-right corner of the viewport. **Ultimate** users can turn it off under **Options > 3D Previewer**. Without that license the option is disabled and the watermark stays. Generated thumbnails are not affected either way.