Free Maya script Couture helps retopologise 3D clothing

Florian Croquet, production manager for digital doubles firm Eisko, has released Couture, a neat free script designed to streamline the process of working with 3D clothing in Maya.

The tool “takes care of all the redundant tasks [like creating] blendshapes or wraps” necessary when retopologising 3D scans or high-poly models into clean, animation-ready meshes.

Convert high-poly models into animation-ready low-poly 3D clothing
Couture streamlines the process of converting high-poly 3D clothing – as well as 3D scan data, it works with models created in tools like Marvelous Designer or ZBrush – into a low-poly, animation-ready form.

Users can import a high-res 3D mesh into Maya, then have Couture automatically generate a flattened version separated into 2D panels that can be used to generate a retopologised low-res mesh.

The low-res mesh can be created manually in Maya itself, or by exporting the flattened version to another DCC package: as well as OBJ and FBX export, Couture supports Pixologic’s GoZ for export to ZBrush.

Couture creates all the blendshapes and wraps required for this workflow automatically, and transfers UVs automatically from the flattened garment to the retopologised version.

Geometry can be edited in either 3D or 2D space, including the option to soften the edges of selected parts of a mesh to fix artefacts.

The script saves all of the data it needs in a custom node in the Outliner, making it possible to open a previous scene and resume work exactly where you left off.

You can find a video tutorial showing how to install and use the script on Vimeo, and written documentation on Croquet’s ArtStation blog.

Availability and system requirements
Couture is available free for Maya: the video documentation shows Maya 2018 running on Windows, but it’s a standard Python script, so it should work with other versions.

Download Couture for Maya from Florian Croquet’s Gumroad store
(Enter a figure of $0 to get the script for free)