I explain what I want to do so you dont have to guess: I want to have baked animation cloth physics on a file I can import in unreal, as alembic format for example. I want this file to be reasonably low poly. I want to preserve UVs, preserve animation data.
Here there are some tutorials on how to take an MD animated file, make it look better with all quads topology.
The options are the following: use zremesher on zbrush to obtain a somehow “decent” ordered topology, but I never tried and I wonder how this method retains both animation info and uvs (extremely important).
This video discusses a method that would bring the solution I need, only issue is that its made for maya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaDJS5ycD2w
I was able to follow the video tutorial up to the point where the guy used a tool in maya to transfer uv info, that is also possible in blender. But I was stuck when the guy took the mesh cash file and applied it to his new retopoed mesh, I wasnt able to do that in blender, and the mesh data I used transformed the geometry entirely.
I used then another method, I simply used a decimation modifier. This method doesnt gives you the clean ordered topology, but at least it serves the purpose of having a mesh with less geometry in it, lighter, and the animation data is preserved.
If you usethe automatic retopology tools of marvelous designer, you get a new mesh that doesnt carry any animation data, unless you remake the seams anew and bake a new animation, but this would not serve the purpose at all, this method is used often in combination with data transfer modifier so that the cloth is moved by the main rig armature.
Do you have a solution for this issue? If I dont find another solution I will simply use the decimation, since its the only method that provided what I wanted, which is preserving UVs that come from MD and preserving animation data in the animation bake.
Other methods used are often about using automatic tools inside MD, like quad mesh topology and so on, they are useless as they arent made for simulation and give worse result than having the tris. The idea is to use the triangulated mesh made from MD simulation to move the low poly version for game engines. Baking maps is also possible, I used substance painter for that.