Retopo clothes without losing details or breaking a sweat!

Blender 4.0+ compatible

Guide retopo using simple planes

• Retopology based on source garment's UVs
• Constant feedback from flexible GUI
• Automatically adjusted density of connected patterns
• Built in snapping for precision

Manual density control

Additional control using edge crease & edge sharp

Keep details with subdivs & UVs

Ready for further sculpting and texturing

And more

• Select seams to seperate patterns using Edge Bevel Weight
• Relax lowpoly mesh
• Convert 3D garment to flat patterns
• Handles any shape of patterns also with darts
• Fit UVs to 1st tile
• Speed - source garment polycount doesn't matter

Instructions below (Scroll down)

See also:

Release Notes

Update 1.1 - Compatible with Blender 4.0+

• Added support for circular patterns/holes

• Added debug notifying when face of retopo plane is not a quad

Installation

Retopo Planes is a geometry nodes setup. To install it simply set folder containing RetopoPlanes.blend file as asset library.

You'll find all assets in the assets browser. 

How to use

1.First step

Apply 3DtoPatterns geonode to imported source garment. Make sure to apply rotation and scale so it lays flat on the floor.

Also make sure that all the UV islands are seperate, not overlapping, not merged if not supposed to. (That sometimes happens when using mirror instance for patterns in Marvelous Designer - in that case just edit UVs in UV editor)

2.Start retopo

Drop RetopoMain asset into the scene and pick the flattened garment in Cloth Pattern selection and you're ready to go. It is your starting kit to begin retopology. 

All planes in RetopoPlanes collection will serve as guide for the retopology.

Grab the plane and start retopo!

You can add cuts with knife tool, extrude edges, duplicate faces. Only limitation is that Retopo Planes only works with quads - so no tris, no ngons. 

I recommend pinning the RetopoPlanes geonode modifier in the panel on right so all the settings are available while editing.

3. Apply Modifier

Once you apply RetopoPlanes modifier all the helpers and patterns will be gone and you're left with retopo mesh with transferred details. You can then retrieve subdivs with multires modifier or in Zbrush with reconstruct subdivs. Final mesh will have UVs same as source garment.

Features

Retopo Settings

Base Density:

Snapping Distance Scale:

Seams Merge Distance:

Distance at which lowpoly patterns vertices will merge.

Smooth Low Poly:

Relaxes base mesh.

Crease & Sharp Density Control

Auto Density:

Automatically adjusts density across all connected patterns.

Full Crease Control:

When OFF Crease Edge 0-1 will add more cuts to the pattern.

When ON Crease Edge 0-0.5 will reduce number of cuts of the pattern; 0.5 will be neutral; 0.5-1 will add more cuts to the pattern.

Note:  Crease Control takes into account the side with most divisions, so to reduce density you need to select all of the sides of patterns (and also connected patterns)

When switching to Full Crease Control On you need crease edge at 0.5 for neutral state. Use Crease To 0.5 tool in edit mode to quickly set it up.

Density Add:

Uses Edge Sharp to add cuts to mesh.

Density Add Threshold:

Offsets the reach of additional cuts.

Subdiv & Reproject

SubDiv + Reproject:

Fit UVs to Tile:

Scales all UVs to fit 1st tile which might be helpfull for other softwares like Zbrush for example.

Extra

Edge Bevel Weight Control:

Edge Bevel Weight > 0 will select seams to cut in final mesh and seperate patterns

3dtoPatterns

UV Map Name:

Needs to match the source garment UV name

Simplify:

Drastically speeds up calculations when working with dense source garments (above 1M).

So the polycount of source garment doesn't matter - just uncheck Simplify when transferring details with Subdiv + Reproject.