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.