Vanilla to Bimbo+ (A Vanilla Upscaling Guide)

A guide for people mildly experienced with Blender on how to use proportional editing and sculpt tools to create vanilla upscales. This guide assumes you have some upscaling knowledge (how to transfer weights/import into textools/etc) but will talk you through any keybinds or processes I do step by step. Though this was made for the Bimbo+ body, it is applicable to most/all bodies that exist.

Processes this guide covers: Separating by loose parts; shape keys; extruding vertices; joining meshes together/taking them apart; general upscaling knowledge.

Introduction

Hi, I’m Khara! I am an affiliate of the Bimbo Boudoir and I have been in love with vanilla upscaling since before I was even introduced to the Bimbo body. You have likely seen my vanilla upscales floating around on XMA.

I wanted to write a text based guide to accompany video notes for those of us who don’t do so well focusing on LONG videos. I have tried my best to make this accessible for people and included Blender shortcuts used so that you can follow along. Unfortunately, some parts of upscaling are easiest to show rather than tell. When that’s the case, I’ve included videos that include me chatting at you to show you everything I’m doing for that piece of the ‘upscaling journey’.

I am a self-taught Blender user, so this is definitely not a ‘professional’ method. I am very sorry for any professionals who read/view this and cringe into next century. I learned from YouTube.

 

I hope this guide helps other self-taught users complete works they're happy with. If you have any questions, please poke me in the Bimbo Boudoir, or in my own personal server, The Sun Rock.

Intro & Notes

This goes in depth on who I am to teach you this stuff (hi!) and also notes and links to other guides you may find helpful.

Intro & Notes

Important Note

This guide assumes you know the 101 basics from Zizi’s videos/any other “how to upscale” tutorial. This is not a tutorial meant for the bare basics of upscaling, but rather, a text guide for someone looking to do vanilla projects who likes to see how other people do it.

 

My version of vanilla upscaling does NOT use shrinkwrap tool in any fashion, instead preserving the shapekeys of the original vanilla item to minimize the amount of work I have to do at the end of the process to get everything to fit into existing boots and gloves. This trades off the ability to easily shrinkwrap and mirror with the ease of not having to manually make future shapekeys.

 

This does not make it better than other methods out there, simply makes it different. I urge you to try other methods of vanilla upscaling to decide what is best for you and your workflow.

 

For another amazing guide to reference (and one that I have personally used and take inspiration from quite a bit), check out: Yet Another Vanilla Upscaling Guide.

Step 1: Prepping the Mesh

Before you upscale, you must prep.

Step 1: Prepping the Mesh

Import/Material Setup

Import the vanilla item of choice into Blender. I’m using the Ravel Keeper’s Chestpiece of Casting for an example here - because this skirt has MANY parts and is very intricate. You may see that your textures immediately look weird. That’s normal for vanilla. I don’t really understand why SE sets up their items the way they do, but they do. We’ll fix it!

image42.png image13.png

Go do your Properties column or tab - this is the tab that contains all of your vertex groups, materials, armature etc. You want to click on the button that looks like a circle with two black and two white parts in it. (marked on picture as 1)

My new blender layout is aggressively pink, so it may be hard to see, but here it is on mine, at the bottom.

image36.png 

From there: go to Settings and Viewport Display, and change Alpha Blend to Alpha Hashed. This will fix the strange shapes and backface collision issues that you have on the original. (marked on picture as 2)

 

Some people click “Backface Culling” in settings but I personally don’t. I like to see where the backfaces are on my outfit, so I can figure out if I need to remove them or leave them alone. That is a personal preference, and one I urge you to play with.

At this point I import a second copy of the vanilla item I’m working on and keep it in a collection labeled “backup.” This is important because sometimes I mess up. Additionally, this can be useful if you ever have a problem with the model’s normals, as you can copy data from the backup.

Step 1: Prepping the Mesh

Fixing Unconventional Vanilla Parts

Opening the parts, you’ll notice that SE doesn’t always follow the 'traditional' modding convention of the skin being on Part 0.0. For example, this outfit, the skin is actually on 2.x. You can leave it like that or change it to whatever you want it to be - just remember which part you put it on for import into TT much later. For me, I just leave it where it is, I find that to be easier.

 

The golden rule of vanilla upscaling: As long as you leave all pieces that use the same material in the same Part (IE: 1.x, 2.x etc), you can split it into as many subparts (x.1, x.2, x.3) as you desire without messing up the appearance in game. Obviously be reasonable about this!


EXAMPLE: Your commissioner would very much like if you could remove the feathers on the No.2 Type B arms. The feathers come attached to the elbow part, which for this example we will call 1.2. You can place the feathers in their own subpart (such as 1.3) by selecting the feathers using L (select linked) and pressing P (separate) > “By Selection” without causing any problems to the design of the outfit. You CANNOT place the feathers in a new part (such as 2.3) without causing texture issues.


Go ahead and put your Bimbo body + piercings and pubes (if wanted) into the armature (please check Zizi's guide linked in Important Note if you are unsure of how to do this!). As you’re clicking through the vanilla parts, you may notice that SOMETIMES the elbows look like this, where there’s both an upper/lower elbow and a center elbow as separate parts on vanilla:

 

image33.png

Just delete both vanilla elbow bits & import your Bimbo elbow part as ONE part as normal. Ignore trying to make Bimbo match vanilla, and don’t give it a second elbow bit. Square Enix does this to delete the middle of the elbow as “excess detail”, but we don’t need that, because modding does not generally care about excess detail to decrease load times.

 

Now that everything’s set up for LATER, I hide my Bimbo body parts to continue to prep the actual mesh. Because vanilla is needy and has many steps before you get to begin the upscaling portion.

Step 1: Prepping the Mesh

Fixing Backfaces

Turn those backfaces on (using Viewport Overlays > "Face Orientation") and in anything more complicated than a simple pair of underwear you’re gonna get….

image30.png

EW. All of those backfaces are baked into the dress. This means that unless you get rid of them, everything will be 10x harder to adjust using Proportional Edit or sculpt tools. Also they tend to pull apart when weighting or merging by distance, causing an annoying hassle.

 

The fixing of backfaces is the longest part of vanilla upscaling. But once it is done, you will find the rest of the process is very simple and similar to upscaling modded outfits!

Joining Similar Parts

 

At this point, I join together all of the parts that make the most sense to be a single item. For example: for whatever reason…this skirt on the Ravel Keeper’s Casting is two parts. (Part 0.0 and Part 0.2 respectively.) Even though they use the same material, they’ve become two separate parts. Separate skirt parts or elbow parts are a great way to begin joining logically.

 

Do not ever join together parts that cross between vanilla materials when preparing the mesh.

(I.E.: Do not join a 1.x part, to a 2.x part!)

 

You are asking for a world of pain doing this to yourself. You will NOT be able to tell which parts should have connected to what material at the end of this, and you will mess ALL of your materials up and honestly, likely have to start over. There are times LATER in which it’s OKAY to join these together (such as in weighting), but you must ALWAYS separate them back out or you will mess up your textures.

 

Before & After of my meshes on the Ravel Keeper’s Chestwrap of Casting:

image48.png

image23.png

The reason I join similar parts is because in the next step I’m going to rip the entire dress apart, and for whatever reason the separating works better when I’ve joined everything logical together. I learned this from someone else who does vanilla upscales and it somehow works just so much better than trying to separate by loose parts on each individual item. If you find another method that works for you, you're welcome to use it!

Joining together Knees, Shins, Wrists, and Elbows:

Step 1: Prepping the Mesh

Separating by Loose Parts

Because I forgot I was making a guide, I started a different upscale in the time that passed between starting and completing this document. So we are moving to the Red Mage Level 100 Artifact Coat. If you are following along using the Ravel Keeper’s Chestpiece of Casting, the same steps will apply regardless. All upscales are approached similarly.

Video Reference

If you’re a video person or simply need some video reference, you can view a video I made covering much of this material here: Separating By Loose Parts

Step 0: If you opted to NOT join your parts together above, I suggest renaming your parts to avoid accidentally hiding or deleting critical parts of the mesh. For the Red Mage coat, I renamed my wrists to “wrist” and elbows to “elbow.” This will help me remember that those are IMPORTANT and I SHOULD NOT get rid of them or join them into what I’m working on.

Step 1: Go into edit mode on your first Part (you can do this by pressing Tab). In this example, I am opening up the Torso part of the red mage coat, which includes everything except for the elbows and wrists. Press A to Select All, and then press P, which opens up the separate menu. Select “By Loose Parts.”

image5.png

Step 2: Scream now about how many parts it is. Mine is hundreds. The picture is but one small part of the red mage coat.

HOWEVER now it is ready for you to begin working back and forth to figure out which parts you can hide or delete so that all the textures are fixed and the outfit is beautiful and facing a single direction. Don’t be scared! Many parts doesn’t mean it’s more complicated.

Why should I separate?

How to Decide what to Remove

This is kind of complicated to describe (and I would recommend a cursory glance at the video here if you read it and don’t get it!), but the easiest way to explain it is that I go through this entire, horrible list of parts and carefully begin hiding (using H) the ones that appear RED from the outside of the outfit when I have View Backfaces on, until I have only faces that point the same direction and the entire outfit is BLUE. Doing this will fix the unsightly texture issues that you saw when you first loaded in the model, as the texture mismatch and distortion is caused by overlapping backfaces.

I do this for both the parts that show up red and blue, but also the parts that show up purple and pink. Purple and pink are code in blender for two faces are pointing opposite directions. That means at least one of those needs to go - we will add them back in later!

So my PERSONAL work process is:

Picture examples:

Here I have selected this part.

image18.png

Hiding the part turns it blue. This means the part I selected is a backface.

image32.png

I will keep going, keeping the part hidden, if it is a backface. If it’s not (AKA it turns RED), OR hiding it creates some sort of hole or problem in the detailing, I will undo my hide and keep going.

image4.png

I highly recommend working slowly and carefully, and hiding parts rather than deleting them immediately. That way, if you make a mistake somewhere in the past and accidentally hide the wrong part, you do not need to figure out how many steps ago you accidentally deleted the item. This is a personal choice, however, and if you feel very confident you can delete pieces with abandon!

I don’t intend to leave any duplicated backfaces at this point. Everything is either red or blue. I’ll add in additional backfacing at the end of the ENTIRE process. For now, simple is best.

For parts where the backfaces are ‘hidden’ inside of it, such as this little hanging down part of the red mage coat, I will make a mental note of any backfaces I may need to add later to make it look beautiful on the move and go ahead and delete them. The goal is NO backfaces!

image47.png

THE ONE EXCEPTION to this is backfacing where it would create a hole or distort the mesh. For example, there is a part on the red mage coat that shows up like so:

image2.png

However, when you hide the part, it creates a hole in the mesh if you upskirt the model:

image7.png

This is why I hide things rather than delete them to begin - I actually messed this up and had to go back and turn it back on! You don’t want to leave unsightly holes if you can help it. This is something we can work around later, but the less of this you have, the better.

Joining Parts Back Together

As you go along, you’ll begin to form an idea of what items should go together in logical parts. Keeping in mind the golden rule of vanilla, that ANY MESH can be made into distinct subparts as long as you keep the original part (IE: 1.x, etc) the same for textures, you can begin to join together pieces you feel in your heart should be joined as one.

For example, in the video I show that I notice all of the actual ‘large’ pieces of the coat are purely front faces with no backfacing attached. So I begin to join those pieces together, adding in the detailing and piping I find, until I am left with something like this (remembering I do not fix my elbows and wrists in this part, but you may):

image21.png

A few rules of thumb:

At the end of the joining and hiding process, you should be left with a project that looks something like this:

image43.png

Step 1: Prepping the Mesh

Situational Issues

These are some issues I have had when separating by loose parts, that I will fix as I come across them. These do not ALWAYS crop up in vanilla upscales, so you may never see them, but just in case!

 

In the video of the red mage coat, I cover funny edges of the mesh that clip into the skin. That is the only problem this coat really has. I have other videos however for some of the others, and will endeavor to update this when I find the other problems I don’t have videos of again.

Funny edges of the mesh that would clip into skin

When SE creates a vanilla item, they seamlessly touch the clothing mesh to the skin. Vanilla skin and vanilla outfits have very similar polys and poly structure, so it’s easy for them to magnet everything together. Unfortunately, our bodies are very high poly and this is NOT, so it is virtually impossible to do this with our modded version.

 

You will sometimes find strange edges that don’t appear to make sense, pointing into the mesh. These are places where SE has done that “seamless look”. You can either leave them in, or delete them if you feel that they don’t add anything to the outfit. I prefer to leave them, as I find that if I clip them slightly into the skin, I can achieve a similar “seamless” look to vanilla that I wouldn’t be able to get without.

image9.png

This is an example of a strange seam that sits INSIDE of the clothing but I would leave alone. Here is a picture of it with the bimbo chest in place so you can see what I mean by the “seamless look”:

image26.png

Without that part, it would either GAP at that location (meaning I need to leave more skin in the torso mesh later when upscaling), or it would float fairly significantly. I have had others where removing them made no noticeable difference, so it comes down to personal choice.

Wrist or waist “caps”

You will find that wrists, ankles, and torso areas tend to have what I will call “caps”. These are places where SE has created a ‘block’ so that they can remove skin inside of shirts/pants/skirts without the player seeing it. If you take these out, you will swiftly find that you’ll begin to see into the portal to the space dimension whenever your character waves their hands and legs around Here’s a picture of the sleeve cap from the bottom of the sleeve looking UP, as the RDM coat does not have arms inside of it.

image14.png

Generally, you have two options when handling caps: you can either keep SE’s existing caps and upscale them like normal, OR (provided you do not mess up the texture/UV by doing so), you can extrude the region and create a NEW cap off of the existing mesh. I would advise at this point, opening up the UV Editing panel at the top of blender and examining where on the UV the cap sits.

image12.png

You can see in this example that SE actually created a separate texture for the arm cap. So in this case, I would leave the cap alone and subdivide/upscale as normal, as it can cause issues when dying the fabric in game if you do not.

 

I created a video guide on how to extrude the region, if you end up needing to learn this skill by watching, which you can find here:

How to Cap a Hole

 

When extruding and ‘capping off’ an area, ideally you do this where people will NOT see it very much, as it will distort the mesh in some fashion on the cap. However, it’s still a useful skill to learn for other things as well.

 

Go into Edit Mode on the item that has a hole you need to cap. For the purposes of this example, I will be using the elbow PURELY because it is a nicely shaped cylinder for ease of pictures. Go into Edge Mode (the second icon in the row of three next to the Edit Mode dropdown) and select all of the edges of the area you want to cap off:

 

Once those parts are selected, press E to extrude the region. Drag these out to a reasonable length and then left click to confirm. In the picture below, the bracketed area is the new extruded region.

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image25.png

Once you have extruded the faces, click M for the merge menu, and then select “At Center.” This should create a cone.

image45.png

With your edit mode on “Vertices”, scoot that cone back until it makes a flat plane. Congratulations! You’ve capped the region. AGAIN, I really don’t recommend this unless you absolutely have no other option, as it DOES distort the textures and, in my opinion, really makes very visible areas look pretty bad in most circumstances. However, it’s very helpful for places like the top bit of vanilla pants/skirts, or other places where you won’t see the errors in the textures much (if at all).

Step 2: Subdivision & Fixing Up The Mesh

Making it prettier after separating out the parts.

Step 2: Subdivision & Fixing Up The Mesh

Subdividing

Once you’ve prepared the coat by removing backfaces,I find this part pretty easy and self-explanatory. Subdivision is the process of adding more polys to the mesh in order to make it smoother and easier to upscale. The downside is that the more polys you add to something, the more graphical power it takes to render it and warping of the UV may occur. Plus, FF has a cap on polys that you can import per item. So for vanilla upscales, I will generally only subdivide 1-2x.

For this part, you can go ahead and turn backface viewer off, we no longer need to see red and blue.

Select all of the parts of your item that you believe need to be subdivided. Remember that subdivision on a single part of the mesh (as in, titties ONLY) will cause the mesh to distort and can sometimes ruin the textures. Additionally, if you subdivide the torso area, you should ALSO subdivide the elbows and wrists so that their vertices continue to align for seamless movement (the same for pant parts!) So if you want to subdivide the coat bit in the Red Mage AF, you will be subdividing ALL of the parts of the coat except the detailing. (I will likely also subdivide the detailing here too, because it goes across the chest. But you don’t HAVE to.)

Open up edit mode and select all (A). Right click and select subdivide.

(If this were anything but vanilla, I would tell you that this is bad practice, and that you should turn it into quads before subdividing. HOWEVER. On the newer coats I have noticed some distortion of the UV when I turn tris into quads, so I just go all in on the subdivision.)

image37.png

On the Subdivision Submenu (bottom right corner of your Layout window), you want to uncheck Create N-Gons.

This was something Rox (the creator of Bimbo+) suggested, as N-Gons can create Normal issues later down the road on vanilla objects. Please don’t ask me to explain the science behind it, but I have noticed I get far better results leaving the N-Gons out!

image10.png

After you have done that, you should be left with a much higher poly coat than you had about two seconds previously. IF YOU ARE NOT SATISFIED with the number of polys, you can subdivide again. I generally do not go past 2x subdivision, as I’ve noticed it distorts the mesh to an absurd degree. But if you can get it to work, more power to you!

BEHOLD the coat post-subdivision:

image34.png

Go into Solid Viewport Shading (the completely filled in circle at the upper left) and take a look at your mesh. You’ll likely notice that it looks…bad. This is normal and to be expected, as you just told Blender to add in many more polys and haven’t yet told it how to shade those polys, or how to properly point them in good directions. You can see mine here:

image8.png

At this point, we will be fixing the issues here, so don’t panic!

Can you just leave this?

I mean yes, I guess….but when you get it into game, you’ll see ALL the distortion, lumps, bumps, and strange shading you see in this view. So I highly recommend you do NOT leave this unless you want it to look bad.

Step 2: Subdivision & Fixing Up The Mesh

Merging By Distance

Up until now, unlike in a normal upscale, we haven’t really done any sort of merging by distance. Before now, the coat wasn’t really in a place where we could safely merge without destroying parts of the coat by joining together Forbidden Backfaces. But now that we’ve sorted all of those out and we’re prepared to fix the lumps and bumps on the mesh, we can begin merging by distance.

PLEASE NOTE: In the interest of keeping this below a billion pages, I’m assuming you understand the basics of upscaling and will not be explaining where to find merge by distance or averaging faces. If you don’t know where it is, I beg of ye, do a quick google for location before asking in any mod helps!

For any parts that you will not have to merge into the whole in order to weight (like detailing or panties or something), you can go ahead and merge by distance as normal. I recommend averaging by corner angle.

For those parts that will eventually join into the whole for weighting (elbows, wrists, knees, shins, etc), you’ll need to distinguish the parts so that you can separate them back out later. This has to be done BEFORE you merge. There are two ways to do this: Marking as Seam, and Changing Materials in the Viewport.

( Why do I need to do this? If you join elbows and wrists to the coat, or knees and shins to the butt, and do NOT separate them back out, you will ruin your ability to wear gloves, shoes, or other arm/leg accessories. It is vitally important that you keep those 3 separate parts you see in every ffxiv outfit for the ability to mix and match with other outfits! Take it from me: this will save you a bug report later!)

NOW ONTO THE TWO METHODS…

There are pros and cons to both methods of joining things together. Changing materials is simpler, but I’ve found on vanilla items that changing materials can leave unsightly normal problems at the seams for whatever reason. Marking as seam takes longer and requires more steps, but tends to leave a more ‘seamless’ finished product. I’ll cover both below, and generally use a mixture of both in my upscales.

Marking as Seam

I created a video guide to this here: Marking & Ripping at Seam

Generally, I will mark edges as seams on places where they will be highly visible to the naked eye, due to the problem with changing materials mentioned earlier. On my red mage coat, that’ll be the elbow to torso seam, and elbow to wrist seam.

image46.png

Go into Edit Mode on the Elbow. While in edge mode, carefully select all of the top and bottom edges of the part. You can see my selections here:

image35.png

Right Click > Mark Seam.

Repeat this on the Torso, and the Wrists. Wherever things will join together.

Sometimes you’ll get little stray edges that decide they want to be seams. They’re forbidden, so: left click those strays, Right Click > Clear Seam.

Now you can join these all together and continue onwards with the guide.

WHEN YOU ARE COMPLETELY DONE WITH YOUR UPSCALE when everything is weighted, and ready for testing in game: select ONE edge that is marked as seam and then press Shift+G. On the menu that appears, select Seam. Then, press Ctrl+V and select Rip Vertices.

From there, you will be able to press L to select linked on the various parts of your upscale. You’ll notice that now (if you did it correctly) your mesh will separate at those seams, as they are no longer connected together. You can separate them into separate parts by selecting all of one type (for example, both elbows) > pressing P > “by selection”. Voila! You have retained your elbows, wrists, knees, and shins!

Changing Materials

I feel like this is fairly self-explanatory, but as in modded upscaling, if you want to join two pieces together you can change their material in the viewport and then AT THE END OF YOUR UPSCALE you can select the entire piece and go P > “By material” to separate them back out. As long as you have made the items two separate materials, they will separate themselves in this method.

image44.png

Select any material you want, as long as it’s not the same material as another part you want to keep separate later on. Personally on the Bimbo rig, I use the hotdog materials…because there’s 5 of them. And when you have dick textures on everything you can’t help but smile at how silly it is (and know you are DEFINITELY not keeping those that texture in Textools).

Whatever method you have chosen, you are now ready to continue onwards.

Step 2: Subdivision & Fixing Up The Mesh

Marking as Sharp

After you’ve merged by distance, you’ll notice that a lot of edges will look distorted or particularly muddy in the shading viewport. There’s a few things we can do to try to fix this, but the one that will work the best is marking things as sharp at places where two parts combine at an acute angle. We do this to instruct blender on how the mesh should be shaded. Many outfits from SE are made with very sharp angles that would otherwise cause awkward shading if not marked as sharp.

 

When you merge by distance, you can select Sharp Edges in the Merge by Distance menu (by default, it appears in the lower left corner of the viewport) if you want Blender to try and guess what parts should be sharp for you. I find that it does okay at it - it’s not the best, and you will probably have to manually adjust some things, but it’s a good starting point. However, I find that it frequently thinks seams are meant to be marked as sharp, leaving big ol pointy parts on your mesh.

 

To fix these pointy problem areas, enter edit mode and make sure your selections are set to Edges. Then, click those edges that are giving you problems and right click > Clear Sharp. Then you can try averaging to fix the issue (if it doesn’t fix itself automatically after you clear sharp).

 

Before fixing it by clearing Sharp:

image50.png

And after clearing Sharp:

image22.png


You may find that there are situations, such as a sharp collar, where Blender or the mesh did NOT mark it as sharp but you think it would look better as a sharp edge. In these situations, you would follow the above instructions, but instead of selecting clear sharp you will instead select Mark Sharp which is right beside its clearing cousin in the dropdown menu.

 

After you’ve sharped to your satisfaction (or unsharped!) go ahead and set from faces > average by either corner angle (usually my go-to) or face area.

 

This is sort of a back and forth situation. I’ll set from faces/average, see if I’m happy with it. If I’m not happy with it, I’ll go back and add more sharp faces/remove sharp faces. There are not really pictures to show because it’s going to be deeply individual to the upscale you’re working on. I’ll show some more pictures of areas I may ADD or REMOVE sharp parts from however, to guide you on your way.

 

Remember that Vanilla meshes are more prone to showing discoloration on the mesh than modded outfits and fix appropriately.

 

This part doesn’t have any sharp marking, which has caused some distortion:

image15.png

Marking the angle as sharp gets you this:

image38.png

The autosharp tool off of merging by distance marked ALL these seams as sharp and that’s BAD looking:

image19.png

So I Clear Sharp and am left with this:

image27.png

And finally, sharps may be hidden by your seam markings. DON’T BE FOOLED.

image29.png

Clear your SHARPS and NOT your seams:

image6.png

LOOK THE ENTIRE MESH OVER THOROUGHLY! You don’t want to miss one and be sad when it leaves a weird part on your upscale. When you’re done, it looks nice and pretty, something like this!

 

image24.png

Step 3: Upscaling & Weighting

Now we've made it!

Step 3: Upscaling & Weighting

Differences Between Modded Upscaling & Vanilla Upscaling

I AM NOT EXPLAINING THE PROCESS OF UPSCALING COMPLETELY.

Please use Zizi’s guides or other text guides to learn how to upscale!
(If you need a link, here is Zizi’s video guide: 

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3e-oUmTt_uFFsf3mY46FNtUHGYW2_PAc&si=dUxmHDtQgHybceOB)

But we’re finally at the point where you can do these things!! So go ahead and upscale your outfit as normal.

The only difference: MAKE SURE YOU UPSCALE ON THE BASIS SHAPE KEY (as in, select the shape key named “Basis” in your shapekey menu, right beneath your list of weights. If you upscale on the others…you will not change what you need to and instead will be changing things ON that shapekey, which will be very tragic when you get it in game to test.

I may have done that while writing this guide and needed to begin this step again.

IF WHILE UPSCALING you find that you just NEED MORE POLYS feel free to jump back up and repeat Step 2 to get more polys, smooth out those new polys, and keep going.

Remember here that you’re finally going out of the area in which fixes to the mesh are EASY and can quickly be solved, so only upscale when you’re good & ready to go.

The only thing you cannot do with vanilla upscales (if you want to preserve the shape keys) is use the Shrinkwrap modifier or Mirror modifier.

By default, Blender will not allow you to use certain modifiers with shape keys, and Shrinkwrap and Mirror are two. If you remove the shape keys here, you will need to add them back in later on after everything is done and your outfit is looking pretty. I’ll make a general guide to how to do that in “Final Touches.”

Don’t forget the amazing part of vanilla: if you can’t see the skin, feel free to yeet the skin.

For my RDM coat, I am only leaving the front of the torso and the neck, and removing the back and arms.

image16.png

image40.png

I previously upscaled the pants, so we’re looking PRETTY BIMBO now with everything done!

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Step 4: Final Touches

Once you’ve finished the upscaling and weighting to your satisfaction, it’s time to take it all apart and set it up for TT import.

Step 4: Final Touches

Separating Parts & Re-Adding Backfaces

If you were using the Marking as Seam method above, now is the time to select the seams and rip. If you were using Material Changes, now’s the time to separate by material if you haven’t done so already. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about - go back up to Step 2 & check out "Merging by Distance".)

 

And now, it’s time to add the backfaces back in that you removed earlier. Or more specifically: it’s time to CREATE new backfaces now that everything is shaped and weighted to Bimbo, or whatever body you are using.

 

If you followed my advice above and kept your details separated out into their own respective parts, you can simply do the following: select your part with the details and press Ctrl+D to duplicate the part. Open up Edit Mode on the DUPLICATE, select all with A, and then go up to the Mesh menu. Select Normals > Flip. Voila - you have made backfaces. (This is also helpful when doing upscales that come with backfaces, like very complicated modded work!)

 

If there are parts you didn’t keep as distinct parts, OR if you don’t feel like separating everything out into a billion layers, you can still add in backfaces. Manually select the areas that require backfacing while in edit mode and press Ctrl+D to duplicate. Then, while you have these duplicates selected (AKA - don’t go do anything else and lose your selection!), do the same Mesh Menu > Normals > Flip.

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Step 4: Final Touches

Oops! I deleted the shape keys!

If you for whatever reason deleted your shape keys at any point during the upscaling process, now is the time when you would create them anew in order to have gloves and boots work when you get it into game. If you choose to leave the shape keys OUT, you will never be able to wear certain gloves and boots with your outfit.

 

VIDEO GUIDE

The Purpose of Shape Keys

When you wear a vanilla outfit, shape keys inform the game that certain parts of the outfit, when placed into gloves or boots, should fold into themselves (or functionally disappear) in order to not clip with the glove or boot you’ve selected. While some parts will disappear on their own when correctly marked in textools with the elbow, wrist, knee, or shin modifier - some will always clip due to the shapes of the gloves/boots you’ve selected unless the shape key instructs the game to fold that mesh up and hide it inside!

 

For example, on the RDM pants, there is a “shp_hiz” shapekey on the knee part. Here are the pants (shins hidden so you can see) with the shapekey OFF:

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And here they are with the shapekey ON:

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As you can see, the pants have gotten smaller as if they’re tucked into boots when the shape key is activated.

 

WHY would you leave the shape keys?

On RDM pants, it’s actually very simple - the RDM boots that accompany this set DEMAND this shape key so that you don’t have your beautiful red pants poking through the top of your stompers.

 

But this also makes it so that your users of the upscale (be it yourself, or random people) can actually swap boots and gloves out to their hearts’ content without giving you a bug report that xyz boots/gloves/whatever don’t work with the outfit. I highly recommend leaving them in or creating your new ones - the fun of vanilla is being able to swap between a multitude of options, and we want to encourage people to be able to mix and match!

Most Common Shapekeys

shp_kat - Long Gloves.

shp_ude - Mid Gloves.

shp_hij - Short Gloves.

shp_kos - Waistband.

shp_mom - Long Boot.

shp_hiz - Mid Boot.

shp_sne - Short Boot.

How to Create New Shapekeys

“Ah I deleted the shapekeys!” NOT TO FEAR. For today’s example, we will be using the Palaka Vest of Casting and its sleeves because I happen to have it loaded in to upscale for a commission to another body type.

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This sleeve has some flourished elements that make it so gloves will clip with it. It comes by default with two shapekeys: shp_ude (mid gloves) and shp_kat (long gloves). You can see what shapekeys you have on each part by going to your Vertex Groups tab in the viewport - the Shape Keys are directly beneath the vertex groups.

 

If you’re ever not sure what shape keys to add into your upscale, I highly recommend opening up that amazing “Backup” outfit I suggested you make at the very beginning of the guide and giving the pieces a look over to figure out what, exactly, you should be adding to your outfit.

 

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Now that you’ve figured out you’re going to need these two shape keys, select your first part you need to create a shape key on - in this example, it will be the puffy red part of the sleeve. In the Shape Keys list shown above (which for you, should be blank if you deleted them all), click the + sign next to the empty list. This will create a shape key called Basis.

 

BASIS = The DEFAULT appearance of your mesh.

So whatever the shape is on the basis, is what your mesh will look like when you do not have any gloves or boots on.

 

Click the + again to get “Key 1.” Rename this to your first shapekey name by doubleclicking on the text. (Not sure what the names are? Check your “Backup” copy OR refer to the table above in Most Common Shapekeys.) So in this example, as I’m working on the middle part of the elbow, I will rename Key 1 to “shp_ude”.

 

Next to the name of the shapekey, there are numbers, usually by default set to 0.000. Click on those numbers and set them to 1.0, which turns ‘on’ the shapekey. You can also use the Value slider which sits directly beneath the Shape Keys list to slide this off and on! RIGHT NOW when you turn it on, it will not do anything - because you haven’t directed it to do anything. The next step will be to make it deform the mesh so that it can get into those pretty gloves.

Deforming the Mesh

Making sure that you have the Shape Key you want SELECTED (make sure you click it ONCE in the Shape Keys list, it should show up as darker than all the other shape keys) and then head on over to your sculpt mode. We will be using mostly Elastic Deform to shove that sleeve down.

 

I did not take a picture (oops!) and I genuinely believe this is best done via video learning for this example, even as an ADHD text guide lover, so I encourage you to watch the video for a QUICKish guide on how you should do this (Start around 6:49 for the explanation and video of deform tools!). But the best metaphor I have is to think of it like stuffing your thick winter pants into your snow boots. When you shove those pants into your boots, you ‘deform’ the shape and fold it down to fit inside of your boot so that the fabric doesn’t flow over the boot, and doesn’t ‘clip’ with the shape of the boot. The same premise applies to your 3d model.

 

You should be left with a deformed mesh capable of fitting into gloves or pants like so!

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This is a process that is best done by going back and forth between the game and blender. I usually test a variety of gloves with my outfit and take MANY pictures of clips I need to fix. My suggested gloves for this are: Ravel Keeper’s Casting, Witch’s Gloves, Anemos Halfgloves, Ehcatl Wristguards. Boots: Ravel Keeper’s Casting, Witch’s Boots/Scion Healer’s Boots, Roseblood Boots.

 

If anything clips in game, just deform it even FURTHER down towards your mesh until you’re satisfied. Remember: because you are deforming on a shape key, this won’t affect your default outfit. This is PURELY to make sure gloves and boots look cute and we can enjoy the benefits of mix and match!

Step 5: Import into TT

Vanilla-specific notes on what to do in textools. This does not teach you how to use it specifically, but rather, notes you should be aware of.

Step 5: Import into TT

Import Notes

This is not a tutorial on textools, nor am I going to tell you how BEST to import. Suffice to say: import it how you would like to, be it via penumbra sync or directly into game files, a modpack, whatever.

 

HOWEVER: Whatever you do, BEFORE you do anything else, stop and take note of what your parts are in blender. I would write them down somewhere if you haven’t given them unique names. THIS WAY when you wish to add things like metadata toggles, you will know exactly what each part is and how to fix it.

 

For example: I have a Part 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3. I will make a small list for myself in a notepad: “1.1 = elbows, 1.2 = wrists, 1.3 = decorations” or however you choose to explain it that will make sense to YOU. Once I’ve done that, I’ll import it into TexTools.

 

PLEASE NOTE that if you changed the parts from what they were in vanilla (such as moving around elbows, or swapping skin from 2.x to 0.x), you will need to fix the elbow/wrist/knee/shin toggles and the textures used per part using the Import Editor. Otherwise you’ll have parts go missing or flying off when you put on gloves and boots during Step 6! So when you load in the FBX into textools, make sure you click “Editor” rather than simply “Load Mesh.” You NEED to fix these attributes in order for things to work properly. This would also be where you could add metadata toggles, if you wanted to do such things, though this guide will not be covering them for the sake of…brevity….as much brevity as this has.

 

Also as of Dawntrail, make sure you have “Shift UV” Checked ON during import, or you will have very strange and funny texture problems.

Step 6: Testing in Game

Things to look for while you're testing all your models!

Step 6: Testing in Game

Vanilla-Specific Testing Issues

When testing in game, there are a few things I check that I don’t always check on modded outfits. In particular, if you read my Shape Keys section, you will know that I always test boots and gloves of a variety of lengths to ensure I’m happy with my shape keys.

Sometimes, even if you leave the shape keys alone and don’t remove them, there will be a bit of clipping with vanilla items. On long boots this is inevitable, as bimbo thighs (and YAB thighs, and Rue thighs...) are way too big to be able to fit into vanilla boots. On ANY other type of boots, however, this is likely due to a shape key issue. I recommend going back to Shape Keys and watching the video for how I use sculpt tools to finesse my shape keys. This is very much a trial and error situation, and you will find as you go along that some shape keys may do better than others at constantly fitting into a variety of things. They’re very easy to fix, and I highly recommend watching the video if you’re confused!

Other than that, test the outfit as normal! MAKE SURE you are wearing BIMBO PANTS to accompany your top (if you only did a top) - you need to have the same shape all the way up and down the model in order to best test it. If you test it with vanilla bottoms, and you don’t intend to WEAR vanilla bottoms, you may find you have way too much float, or too much clip, and you’ll be very sad.

If you need a previously upscaled outfit to wear that works well for testing things like booty clip on skirts, I highly recommend Nala’s Leggings by Love for Bimbo+. Dye them something atrociously bright, and then test your run/walk/sprint cycles on all your models.

Make sure to test your character looking DEEPLY to the left and the right while walking, running, and sprinting. Often with vanilla or other low-poly meshes I find that clips can be found when the character is turning their upper torso to glance at something while moving, and they’re easily fixed in blender using proportional editing.

My general method of testing is:

Yes, I check this on every size I do!

IF SOMETHING CLIPS: edit it in blender!
IF SOMETHING WEIGHTS FUNNY: edit it in blender!

This is a back and forth process and sometimes I will go back and forth MANY times before I am happy with it. Please do NOT get discouraged by having to fix multiple clips or problems. For example, just so you understand even the people who do this a LOT sometimes fight things, here is my list of FBX files from a recent upscale of JUST the pictomancer coat…encompassing all of my issues.

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It is OKAY to have problems and it is OKAY to make mistakes. Making mistakes is how we learn and grow. <3 We can fix them! And the end product will look fabulous!

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