Hello everyone, I’m new here.
I would like to share the nodegroup I created to transfer shapes between different topologies.
It uses UV coordinates to interpolate between the source and the target mesh, so, if the UV layouts are similar enough it works even if the indices are messed up and the topology has been heavily altered.
The result is similar what can be achieved with the Surface Deform Modifier but there is much more control even with overlapping geometry.
In my test I took the human base from Blende Cloud, duplicated it, then added horns and a belly button via extrusions and insets, then I used the bisect and bevel tools to alter the geometry even more.
The deformations still worked properly.
There is some small caveat with vertices between mesh islands, somehow, even transferring between identical meshes, some UV positions need to be tweaked very slightly. In my test there was something like ten UV positions to fix in total for a mesh with more than 15000 vertices.
I used Blender 3.4 new nodes (like Sample UV Surface), it may be possible to achieve similar results with 3.3 but in far less efficient ways.
If anyone is interested I will share the blend file as soon as I can add attachments.