How to retopologize clothing in Blender

Sculpted and simulated cloth looks right but is far too heavy and too messy to rig. Retopology draws a new, clean skin over it.

What you need

• Blender
• The dense garment as a reference

Steps

1. Set up snapping. Create a new mesh, turn on snapping to Face with Project Individual Elements, and add a Shrinkwrap modifier aimed at the dense garment.
2. Lay down the main loops. Start with rings of quads round the openings - neck, waist, cuffs, hem - and round every joint.
3. Fill between them. Connect the rings with even quads. Follow the big folds; ignore the small ones, they will come from the normal map.
4. Add loops where it bends. Give elbows, knees and shoulders extra loops so there is geometry to fold.
5. Check the count. Look at the triangle count in the statistics overlay and remove loops that do no work.
6. Finish. Apply the Shrinkwrap, add thickness only where edges are seen, and unwrap the new mesh.

Tips

• Even quads deform and bake better than long thin ones.
• Automatic remeshers are a fine start for flat areas; redo the joints by hand.
• Keep the dense version: you bake from it.

Next

• How to UV unwrap clothing in Blender
• How to bake a normal map in Blender

Words you do not know? See the glossary. All guides: how-to guides.

This page is a written overview. In the SL Designers video courses you watch clothing being made from start to finish, and our Blender addons take over much of the technical work.