Not a print, the Captain America suit is a coarsely woven nylon, any paint/print over that is affected by how rigid the base material was.
Fabric is not poured or is anything like a plastic, it is incredibly diverse from plain weave to complex knits. Patterns can be woven in in many different ways and knits just get insanely complex. Strands of fibres bundled together and woven. And those fibres can be twisted, overtwisted, flossed, all in one direction, in close bundles or really dense. Just look at your clothes and furnishings to see the diversity.
The fabric is much too thick to be "spandex"- though spandex is only a partial component of any stretch fabric and is a really non-useful descriptor really It's used in woven and knitted fabrics and is purely for adding stretch. I even have stretch silk satin. Yes silk, yes satin, yes it stretches.
It looks like a kind of sports mesh. Spacer or air-mesh. I know spacer mesh came up in the Nolan Batman costumes. It's also possible to layer a plain thin open mesh over a heavier plain base fabric as the piecing also looks like it is internally supported with interfacings and linings to maintain the shape. Note how crisp those edges are and how defined and how deep the spaces are vs the surface. It's a heavy material. Weathering makes it more obvious because single colour blocks just lose a lot of dpeth. Same principle as for body paint.
Figuring out what kind of mesh would be about cell size and density (how big and how often the holes repeat) and thickness. Some meshes are stretch some are not so possibly look for air mesh and spacer mesh.
Sorry, but the Cap suits are a screen printed stretch material.
I went through many incarnations of printed textures on stretch... finding the right one became a trial. ... It took four months of research and development to create a texture that seems so simple and was yet, so complicated.
The guy who made the screen suits posted on the RPF facebook page and said that it's silicone screen printed spandex (deadpool, not cap).
The fabric kinda looks like cordura.
Even though they didn't use it, it kinda looks like they whanted to replicate that effect!
Ah and on the first pic it's seams like the suite is inside out!
Fabric is not poured or is anything like a plastic, it is incredibly diverse from plain weave to complex knits.
Film Illusions Inc. might have used a silicone screen-printed fabric or layered material or textured fabric.
As for people recreating the suit... To each their own.
I know there are several people online that would love to make a profit on a very simple printed fabric and luckily for them there are those that think there isn't any other solution than what they believe is the most screen accurate material.
This forum has some extreme levels of commitment to accuracy (some insanely detailed to the nine and some that enjoy making what they can to represent something they want to have fun with) If the person that is making or wearing the suit is really into the material they chose then that's fantastic.
There are options available to represent the fabric used without expecting to pay $100+ a yard for printed material.
The suit in the movie is used and abused and is definitely meant to look that way. It would be crazy is the printed fabric wouldn't hold up to the weathering process.
FWIW, I agree with @Kevin Gossett, @Westies14, etc. It is likely a silicone screen-printed fabric that is proprietary (uniquely created for the movie). When I spoke to the costume manager for the Daredevil Netflix series, that is what she told me his red suit was made from (and she specifically mentioned that Marvel Entertainment just LOVES using that stuff in the MCU media).
So if we wanted to start discussing the screen printing process for something like this, is a DIY solution going to be as simple as building a frame with 110-130 mesh, getting a 1-2mm checkerboard printed on as large of a transparent sheet as possible and using photosensitive immulsion? Is it more cost effective to find a shop that'll print it for you?
And then do we think silicone is necessary or is normal screen printing paint fine? puff paint?
The movie appears to use a silicone printing to have a 3D effect to the printing, I don't think puff paint would work for such a small design, I suspect it would all just run together and lose the detail of such a small grid, that said I've never used puff paint. Regular screen printing just isn't going to give the 3D effect except in photos or from a distance.
I'd love to know what kind of cost/effort goes into getting a body suit printed with silicone and what shops might offer such a service and how one goes about sizing the pattern on a computer to ensure they have the right size parts printed. If anyone has this information, or a link to somewhere that it's discussed in detail, that would be fantastic!
I know there are some local shops that will do Dye Emulsion but that just isn't going to achieve the right look.
That all said even if I were to find out how I could get the fabric silicone printed I'd still need to figure out how to get spandex to have the weight and lay like a leather or heavy fabric, and deal with the risk that the printing might start peeling off the fabric ruining the suit I think it'd be much better/cheeper/faster/durable to just find a fabric that simulates the look.