How to Get Good Topology for your Marvelous Designer Models

in this video tutorial, we are showing you how you can get good topology for your models while working in Marvelous Designer. This is essential to know if you're serious about Marvelous Designer, as it makes your life so much easier.

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[DreamerWhitLL]

NOTE! If you are following this tutorial, make sure when you export your OBJs from MD that " Unified UV Coordinates" is checked. Mine was not by default, it wasnt mentioned in the video so I didnt notice it at first. This process wont work when you project your mesh on to the high poly if you dont do that. Having that option unchecked leaves your UVs on top of eachother, which makes a mess when projecting. Just a heads up! :)

[StylizedSchools]

FOR PEOPLE IN 2019:
When trying this today I ran into a problem with the uv's all being on top of one another. I'm not sure if this is due to having a newer version where they implemented this change. Turns out there is a UV editor in marvelous designer and it will export the uv's based on what appears there NOT on the 2d sewing pattern. In the top right corner of MD there is a drop down menu and simulation should be selected, you can click it and go into uv editor to change the uv's. Id recommend doing this before arranging your pattern to 2d so you can have both the flat and the 3d with the same uv's to transfer the attributes. Hope this helps for anyone who had this issue too.

[remon]

for those wondering in the new version of Marvelous there is a remehs option that works really well and preserves UV's !

[RebeccaR]

This is a great tutorial but I'm still so glad they implemented retopology tools in the newest version of Marvelous 😩 saves me a lot of headaches

[Anton_G_]

Guys this is a fantastic video, thanks! I use a slightly different technique where I retop the same way you do in Maya, but then blend shape flat marvelous mesh to the simulated one. Once you make a blend shape, use wrap deformer in Maya to make your retopologized mesh follow the flat marvelous mesh. I think it works out to be roughly the same thing, except I don't transfer UVs from marvelous mesh but make my own on the retopologized flat mesh.

[neelambikadhan]

Hey, I use this technique a lot. Wanna add something.
While drawing quad at cloth piece joints, maintain edge counts so that it will be easy to stitch piece together. Only model half dress and mirror merge it.

[davidyon]

This is a perfect workflow for still images, but what about the workflow for cloth animations coming out of marvelous designer ? Thanks

[Beeblingz]

Holy cow! My jaw literally dropped when you "sewed" it to the high poly in seconds. Absolutely amazing. Thanks for the awesome tips as always

[ChaosWolfNinja]

Wish this video popped sooner in my search! Thanks guys!

[nestorlichev]

It's crazy how you always post the most relative things. Keep it up!

[doltonm]

You could have also stated that for more complex folds you can select by UV shell and easily hide unneeded sections to get to other overlapping and folded sections. Nice walk through

[HanSolocambo]

I had to do that twice on two Marvelous works to fully integrate the workflow. I used your video for the second attempt.
This is definitely the absolute technique. Maya Transfer Attributes is so insanely useful.
Thanks for sharing. Hopefully someday Marvelous will come up with something equivalent to ZRemesh instead of their crappy quadification. And we will be able to avoid that many extra sets.

[ChuckPalomo]

I'm at a loss of words to describe how cool this is.

[baofei]

Never use Transfer Attributes in Maya. Mind blowing. Thanks again.
BTW. The flat model imported from Zbrush is fragmented. Need to be merge vertices first. (If anyone has problems with merge UV🤔)

[yaschan]

It is impressive method. However what about collars or deep creases?
In order to get good poly flow for them one must anticipate the creases and twists of fabric while looking at the flat plane (or the marvelous screen). In addition of making sure that edges will match one must also take that into account, otherwise you get polygons twisting diagonally which is unusable. Even standard Marvelous mesh beats - mesh like that.
The only true pro way I can think of the task of retopology of a collar for example is to export them separately and retopo them in 3D view while making sure that the edges will align with the following pieces.
I have greatly struggled with this phase and yet to find a really good workflow for more complex fabrics.

[SkrikzArt]

You guys just blew my mind with Transfer Attributes. Thanks so much!!

[alexpurkhalo]

thank you so much guys, it's probably most usefull video I'wathced ever

[gion]

I have done several techniques trying to clean the topology and save time. The only way to make it quick and simple is export with quads using MD. Although the quad may not be accurate and what to expect the topology result. On other hand, to make it less headache is to fix it in 3d software and that would do it but the higher density is quite crucial to fix when the number of vertices. Thats how it works to solve a headache problem otherwise MD should integrate a guide point like zbrush does. will see in the future

[Ruyanisme]

Just what I needed at the moment, thanks!

[cathyfoil]

You can find a free mel scripts that take a 3D mesh and flatten it into the UV pattern just like ZBrush does. You don't need ZBrush. I have often in Maya done fast retopologizing by selecting the edges long one side of a polygon now in the shape of a UV island and convert "Polygon To Curve" and use the option of 1 Linear for degree. Rebuild curves so that opposite curves have same number of spans and use linear and uniform. Do this for at least 4 sides of the UV island. Next using those curves do a Birail 3 and use options Polygon, Quads, Control Points. Don't use the resulting quad mesh with "Transfer Attributes" for more control possibilities create a "Subdiv Proxy" and change the input of the polySmoothProxy to Linear and set the Linear Level to 0. Now copy the UVs using "Transfer Attribues" to the original Birail quad polygon and it will automatically be transferred to the Subdiv Proxy mesh. Next reshape the Subdiv Proxy mesh using the "Transfer Attributes" to reshape it into the 3D shape. Why use a Subdiv Proxy and not the original Birail quad mesh? Because you can make changes to the Birail quad mesh and the changes will automacially update to the Subdiv Proxy. If say you want need more edge loops you can just rebuild the curves to what ever spans you need. The Birail mesh will update and so will the Subdiv Proxy. Why not just do the editing like adding edge loops on the Subdive Proxy? Any edits you make will not follow the 3D shape. You will have to redo the Transfer Attributes. Besides you can create the LODs a lot faster simply by rebuilding the curves. In theory you could Transfer Attributes to the Birail so you can better see where to insert edge loops and other edits.


Basically I can retopologies faster using the birail method and since the curves have uniform spacing there the seams meet are either exact or so close that performing a merge on all the parts and then tweaking the merge distance means very little cleanup needed at the seams. Not to mention that creating other LODs by simply rebuilding the curves is a huge time saver.