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….

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:

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:

• I would very much caution you NOT to join these pieces together into the ‘whole outfit’ without marking them or distinguishing them in some way. IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS: you will ruin your glove & boot compatibility not just with other vanilla items, but also modded items. That’s so sad! Don’t do that :(

• You can either join things together NOW or do it AFTER separating by loose parts. Personally I do it AFTER. Either way is fine.

• When you join these parts together, I HIGHLY recommend marking the edges of each mesh as seam (more preferred) OR changing the material to another material so that you’re able to separate these parts easily at the end of the process (less preferred).

• I will cover both of these later in the process in detail in "Merging by Distance" . It is your personal decision whether to join them all now or do it closer to weighting, but eventually you will need to join them together to make weights work.