Layered Assets (Clothing & Accessories)

This section covers creating clothing and accessories that precisely match body vertices for effective skin weight transfer and natural appearance.

• Accurate alignment simplifies debugging and ensures seamless integration of clothing and accessories with the character's body.

• Close vertex matching simplifies debugging final skin weights, reducing issues and integrating seamlessly.

Workflow Pipeline for Clothing Creation

Below you will find the ideal workflow pipeline for every garment.

1. Start with the Master Base Mesh: Always begin with the master body mesh to ensure consistent topology, making it easier to apply skin weights. Example: For a leather vest top, retopologize new high-poly clothing using the master base mesh as a guide.

1. Minimize Mesh Count: Fewer meshes make the baking process simpler, allowing for simultaneous bakes.

   • Mesh Separation: Separate elements where the silhouette breaks (e.g., zippers, buckles) to reduce polycount while maintaining clear shapes.

   • Bake other details (e.g., collars) together within the base clothing silhouette.

1. ZBrush Workflow: Use the ZModeler Brush (B + Z + M) for low poly control.

   • Select the low poly base body, hover over a face, press Spacebar, go to Polygroup > Polyloop, and remove unnecessary faces to shape the leather vest.

1. Align Low Poly Mesh: Carefully align the new low poly mesh to match the high poly version using Move Brush. Minimize movement to avoid mismatching the topology flow between the base body and clothing.

1. Cleanup with ZModeler: Use ZModeler (Vertex Mode) > Slice Mesh for cleanup, such as cutting unnecessary mesh in the collar area.

1. Fine-tune Alignment: Mask the border and use Project and Deformation > Polish by Groups / Features for closer results. Finally, you should have a topology that is very similar to that of the base body.

2. Add Thickness: We can then add the thickness of the low poly on the sides, collar, and bottom.

Here is the result from the steps above.

1. Add Detailing (Zippers, Buckles, etc.): For smaller components like zipper heads, knobs, and buckles, traditional retopology in ZBrush or any preferred 3D software is recommended. For belts and similar parts, align the topology flow with the base cloth to simplify skinning. Refer to the original Milanote Tutorial.

1. Adding Thickness to meshes: Make sure all interior meshes are closed off - extrude the openings inward and cleanly cap off the holes with low poly geometry. (Caps highlighted in orange)

1. Ensure Watertight Meshes: It’s important to ensure meshes appear watertight and not rely on back-facing geometry. When modeling enable back face culling to ensure there is no undesired transparency.

1. Final Adjustments: For objects floating above the main mesh (In this example belt loops and belts) remove any back faces if they are not visible. It’s preferable to create a small amount of overlap between the floating meshes and the main clothing piece to ensure no transparency and that polycount is not wasted on unseen geometry.