HOW CAN I GET MORE USABLE TOPOLOGY OUT OF MARVELOUS DESIGNER?

Rebecca Stearns, Bulgaria

Antony Ward replies

It always amazes me how a model’s topology seems unimportant to some people. I’m not just talking about using the correct edge flow so your model can deform and animate correctly, there’s a lot more to topology than this. For example, it’s important to be aware of how many polygons, edges and vertices you are using. I always work by the rule that less is more, and I am constantly optimising my models to get the best performance out of them. Densely packed topology can be difficult to rig and can also produce surface artifacts like creases, pinches and bumps, which can ruin the overall aesthetic.

One company that seems to be finally embracing topology is CLO Virtual Fashion, although it has not always been the case. I’ve been using their application, Marvelous Designer, to create virtual clothing for many years now, but the biggest issue for me has always been converting the models it generates into ones that are usable in other areas.

The densely packed, triangulated meshes you could export had no usable edge flow so could not be directly used in games or production. They couldn’t be rigged successfully, not without a lot of issues, so you always had to factor in a retopology pass into your pipeline, which just added more time to the process.

CLO Virtual Fashion have been aware of this for a long time now and have tried to add tools and features to help. First came the ability to quadrangulate the models, but this still didn’t produce an even edge flow. Next came the remesh option and although this did help by laying out the topology in a clean, grid-like pattern, there was still a lot of clean up needed especially around the edges. Again, the edge flow was still unusable so you inevitably ended up rebuilding it.

In version 9 they introduced the topology tools, which were another attempt to help artists by allowing us to build the surface we need, inside MD. Although it’s still limited in areas, this time I think they have cracked it. Let’s have a quick look at them in action.