When i use merge by distance thse black triangles / artifacts pop up. How do I fix it?

The top is an example of what the dress should look like and under the silk belt, it shows you the black artifacts that happen when I merge by distance.

It seems there are some layers of ā€œclothā€ here so the surface ā€œtouchā€ ?? You might try to select this layers one by one ?

if you could share the .blend file before the merging by distance, it would be easier to assess the problem

I remember experiencing something similar. Have you tried messing with the normals? I canā€™t remember what fixed it, but Iā€™d like to know for the future.

You could also have duplicated geometry that has been offset so the Merge by distance is snapping the top layer to the underlayer and lower to the top, ( What @Okidoki hinted at )

Yes, we need to see the Blend file of just the dressā€¦donā€™t need the textures, etc.

Here everyone goes! Sorry for the late reply
Dress.zip (3.3 MB)

You have lots of loose vertices in the mesh. They are unconnected but present.

Iā€™m 99% sure thatā€™s what caused those ā€œblack trianglesā€ you mention in your original post.

In addition the mesh has many separate pieces, where I believe you want them to be united.

Itā€™s a messy affair. You will need to delete those loose vertices and you might have some success with the weld modifier to pull portions of the dress together where appropriate.

To best identify and delete the loose vertices you might try to the lasso selection tool. Encircle the points with your selection and delete. For the cleanup you want to work in vertex mode.

Thank you for the reply. How would I use the weld modifier in this instance? Like what mode, what distance, should I have a vertex group selected? Things of that nature.
image

Letā€™s backup a moment so that we properly prep the model for your goals.

Will this need to be re-posed on a character?
Will this need to be animated where the dress will change shape?
Will you want different materials/fabrics/colors on different parts of the dress?

We might want to combine things in logical units.

This dress is a free model I got from someone in the Sims 4 community. It will move with a rigged character with an armature modifier. The character connected to said armature will only be posed and not animated. I wanted to add cloth physics to the dress so that the dress will fall and collide with the floor in a more realistic fashion, but still only for a picture and not a video. I have 2 textures on the dress currently which are a silk material for the belt and a custom-made texture I did in Photoshop for all the pink watercolor patterns and the transparency you saw in the first pictures I posted. I was trying to add the cloth physics and got no results because I hadnā€™t cleaned it up with merge by distance, thatā€™s how I ran into this issue.

OKā€¦I am much more a motion design artists than a character designer.

I think I can help you get things to a more useful state, but Iā€™m not that far from going to bed.

Within the next 20 minutes I will post a short video (no audio) but with screencast keys that display what Iā€™m typing. Iā€™ll add a few comments, but thatā€™s all I can do.

I believe it advantageous to think of the dress like this:
Top
Collar (or is that a belt, LOL?)
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3

For each of these we have multiple swaths of fabric, so Iā€™ll start a naming system I recommend you follow
Top.a
Top.b
Top.c

etc.

Walk-through:

I wasnā€™t able to get screen-casting to work, but with a few tips (below) you should get the basic idea.

It looks like I might have done the parts that require welding. But I recommend you follow the video to learn the process.

You will still want to select and separate the other separate pieces of fabric.

At tip: the zipped files is 3423930 bytes large and any ā€œhelperā€ has to unzip itā€¦ if saved with the compression feature (save dialog top right :gear: cogwheel icon) itā€™s done by blender (with a newer compression method) and pnly has 3406431 bytes and can be opened directly with blender without any extra work for teh ptential helperā€¦ :wink:

Using the weld modifier in this way work nice for meā€¦ left without; right with weld modifier applied before merge by distanceā€¦

Ive never tried posting a dropbox video here, and this doesnā€™t seem to be working. Not much more I can do tonight.

Here is the updated version of the file. About 25% of the needed cleanup is done.

Dress_revised.zip (2.0 MB)

Usually uploading mp4 files or youtube links work ( i donā€™t remember in this moment about vimeo or else )ā€¦

Funnily be quoting you postā€¦

ā€¦and clicking the link i I now can see the video on dropboxā€¦

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Yes, okidoki, and thanks. Clicking that link will work.

I was trying to go slow to make it easy to follow, but itā€™s sure a bit of a boring video, LOL!

the key things for the original poster to learn here are:
-The ā€˜Lā€™ keyboard shortcut for ā€œselect linkedā€ as you hover over some mesh. You can repeat that to expand the selection (no shift key required).
-The separate command to create a new object
-The weld command --which in the video I had to repeat because my first attempt had too small of a tolerance.

Separated out like this has the following benefits:
-Easier to create good UV maps
-Easier to assign unique materials
-Easier to manage and troubleshoot

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I appreciate your help and everyone elses help here! Iā€™m heading off to sleep soon so the next time I work on this project Iā€™ll take all the resources you gave me here and Iā€™ll begin cleaning everything up on my end. Thanks again so much!

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