Transfer Mesh Data (or how to clothe your Avatar) Tutorial 

In case anyone needs a summary: First: Make sure you're in Object Mode! 1. Select the clothes (object), then the body (object). (Hold SHIFT to select multiple items) 2. Select "Transfer Mesh Data" from the Object menu (for me in ver. 2.93.0 it was in Object > Link/Transfer Data) 3. Select "Vertex Group(s)" on the "Transfer Mesh Data" menu 4. Under "Source Layers Selection" drop down menu choose "All Layers" 5. Parent the clothes to the rig by selecting the clothes (object) and the body (armature), and under the Object menu select Parent > With Empty Groups 6. Go under pose mode and rotate the model's bones to ensure the clothing moves with the body. Thank you Kaideart for this helpful tutorial. This method worked great for me!

You get even nicer results when you change the Vertex Mapping to Nearest Face Interpolated. At least in my experience!

OH. MY GOD. I WAS GOING THROUGH HELL ATTACHING ACCESSORIES TO MY MODELS THIS IS BLACK MAGIC WHAT?? THANK YOU SO MUCH you've literally saved my life

Wow, that's the very firs time I manage to do this this after lots of tutorials. I can't believe my eyes! Bless you, man!

I keep coming back to this specific tutorial ever time I try and retrofit an asset onto my model to remember how to do this quickly and effectively. Thank you so much for this video.

THANK YOU FOR THIS OH MY GOD RIGGING HAS BEEN A NIGHTMARE BUT U HELPED A LOT

THANK YOU SO MUCH, I have been agonizing for hours trying to figure out why my model's clothing was not moving with it's body, despite all the vertex group data being transferred to the clothing mesh. Thank you thank you thank you!!

Amazing tutorial!~ IS as straight forwards as it gets~ If someone is using blender 4.2 the Transfer data option is not outside in the "Object" menu, everything else is identical~

Simply amazing tutorial, very useful. Can’t wait for the follow up tutorial videos in the character modeling line.

Your voice is simply delightful

You are such a legend! Thanks so much! You are such a good tutorial maker too, you explain why you're doing things so clearly.

Another method I've seen others use (and have done myself) is to quite literally duplicate the model and cut it into the shape of the clothes, fatten it slightly in edit/sculpt mode, then retexture it.

Thank you for this, Ive been weight painting all my commissions clothes by hand and this helps alot and saves me so much time

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I was having a huge problem with the pants of my character for days and your video help me solved it in ten minutes, thank you!

Man you helped me so much, I was stuck on my character mesh and deformations in unreal engine for a couple of months. From all of us at our little indie studio, thanks so much!!!

being a fantastic artist aside, your voice goes so well with your character haha

I love you! Thank you very much for the explanation, I didn't know how to solve this problem and your tutorial helped me, so I'm very grateful for it.

For anyone that can't find Transfer Mesh Data under Relations tab, they are now in Object => Link/Transfer Data

god damn! I searched really best tutorial cloth/armor rigging by my character! And yeah, this is best tutorial i saw!

came for the thumbnail stayed for the quality blender tutorials.

This was so succinct and well done!! Instantly going in my blender notes. Thank you Kaide!

Thanks Kaide! Your tutorials are really helpful. I've learnt some things I just missed in Blender for years!

Thank you for this tutorial, it was really helpful! Also you and your avatar are really cute!

goddamn this tutorial is just what i need, saved me hours of looking for solutions

Dude you just saved me a massive headache. I tried getting these weights right manually and nearly lost my sanity. :D

Thanks! Short and to the point in 2.9+, just what I needed!

God rigging clothes to a character in 3DS max was hell, this looks so much better

Just spent a day trying to hand weight paint a pair of pants. Glad my work was wasted! On a serious note, I don't really feel that way. This was a great and very useful tutorial! I just wish I found it sooner. 😩 ♥

thanks for the quick tutorial have a good one yea

Is there an easy way to align the shirt to the characters body in the first place?... I like to take your tutorial but I like to try and find an easy way to do that first!

for anyone whatching this,since you are using blender 4.2 now, The ''transfer mesh data'' has been moved to '' link/transfer data'' from ''object'' Menu (object)>( link/transfer data)

if you are on blender 3.3 forward, Transfer Mesh Data is now under Link/Transfer Data. New Path Way: On Object Mode, Object > Link/Transfer Data> Transfer Mesh Data

Hi! Could I ask if this will work if Rigify is applied and the best way to go about around it if it doesn't? Thank you! Your Tutorial is very clear :)

Just want i needed. Easy to follow up. Thanks!

thank you soooooo much i was having so much trouble trying to rig a pair of pants lol

Thank you Kaide! I'm super new to this so it helps a bunch, I'm wondering if I can use this and some other techniques to get sort of a rolling-sleeves-up sorta thing going, like where I can make a shape key that pulls a sleeve up while also shifting the weight paint so that the right bones influence make sense with the sleeve rolled up vs down

I've never used data transfer before, but I will now! Very handy! =D

"typical youtuber pose" god how did you describe that with 100% accuracy

Currently this can be done with a modifier, the data transfer modifier to be precise, add it to the clothing in question, set the target mesh as the body and select vertex groups and just apply the modifier and done. And *sometimes* automatic weights does good enough job but it seems to hate IK rigs where the odd bits n bobs gain weights and distort apparel models quite horribly..

Cool! Great instruction! So for long, flowing clothes, what are we talking about? Cloth simulation physics?

One and a half minute tutorial stretched out to a staggering 8. Bro, you're killing me

thanks mate, this saved my life!

I have the add-on installed but nothing for it shows up in the menus, so I can't even use the "object > relations > transfer" function at all. Searching has given nothing recent or helpful

i wanna just kiss your forehead so hard you brilliant son of a biscuit! you just helped resolve so much "skin tight clothing" issues i have been struggling with for a while.

🤠'that would be so funny partner, if you said what 3D character?..that's me!...🤣ROLF!

I recently needed something like this, awesome

How do you select different bones to see their effects on the mesh while in weight paint mode?

thx bruv you aa bloody legend big kiss from France

I did this and it works tysm! but the textures arent loading in the right mode?

Do you know if there is a way to get just the clothing out of Blender to Unity? I don't want to have to redo an entire model. The clothing item is new to the avatar and the avatar was put together in Unity over a year ago and the model in Blender isn't a fully working model from the creator and taking the clothes out of Blender to Unity makes it not rigged OR crashes software I import it to like VRC.

Can you update this tutorial for Blender 3.5 please? I'm trying to find Empty Groups, and it's not there...

So nice and yet simple .. thanks 👍🏻👍🏻

I followed the steps. In Edit Mode when I have the bones and my sock foot selected, there is no option for Vertex Group in the Items tab. Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Hello, I have a question about the linkage setting of the eyelids and eyelashes of a cartoon character. Can you share the correct way? When I start blinking, my eyelashes always penetrate my eyelids.

Could you also make a tutorial on how to actually model the clothes? It's something I find myself struggling with and would be very helpful to see how you do it

Thank you very much for this method, it works perfectly

Thanks for the amazing tutorial. I have one problem. Whenever I apply the data transfer the clothing shifts position slightly and does not attach properly to the mesh. The clothes still moves with the mesh and is attached just not in the right position

If I wanted to do a baggy hoodie with some wrinkles, how would I do that?

Beautiful tutorial! Thank you very much

I'm curious about how youre animating your avatar.. do you have a tute on that?

Will this work for something like an Eyepatch Accessory made in Blender3D? and will this method work with VRoid Models, too?

hey, i added cloth to my fbx in blender, after exporting my fbx from blender to unity, i notice that i lose all my script/physbones stuff. that's terrible! is it normal? does everyone has to copy them all over again?

can you do it with shoes and how do i make sure after adding shoes that i can still run around in eu5 without flying or clipping?

You tutorials are the best ever!...you actually have a 3D cartoon dragon givin the tutorial!..one little piece of constructive criticism is work on your color grading cuz your exposure is a little bit too high on your dragon... I like this channel to be the best and it's like right there cuz nobody has a 3D character giving a tutorial!

I don't get that option under relations. not even grayed out. have always used the modifier and have only been looking at this because on my current model it doesn't do it by nearest vertex, it just applies it to the whole mesh which results in absolutely fucky weights

can you do this with females wearing bras or something because i have a character wearing a bra and the parts at the front dont move well

Badass intro!

First off, great tutorial! It fixed a lot of issues I had. Now I'm having a different type of issue. So my friend wanted help editing his avatar for VRchat, Ive been helping him with that. He wanted shirt and pants "No problem" so as I get the shirt and pants edited to fit his model, I come to find out you can't simply just drag and drop them into Unity. They just float there in the T-pose "Seems like it has no weight painting" Okay after hours of trying to figure it out I come across your video. Import the model, import the clothes, copy the weight painting. Bam no problem. Try to import just the clothes into Unity on his already established avatar.... clothes don't work. If at all possible, is it possible to take the clothes from the model in Blender and import them into unity and have them just work with the model?

Thank you for making me laugh about something that genuinely scares the hell out of me is a new creator! This is my first video of yours that I've seen I'm definitely subscribing 💗💗💗

Not bad, I wanted to do the same thing with the armature and the animations from one model to another, it doesn't work for me, besides I wonder if it's possible given the lack of concrete information On the question.

What about coats that you mentioned ? I have a rigged trench coats and I want to animate it with another character rig

This is wonderful, thanks

Great Video! Not only did I use the Transfer Mesh data - but the part I need to know now is how you hid the floof parts? It speeds up so I cant tell, lol. Do you have some steps you could share on how to do that?

I have the model I want to use and it comes with outfits. I already watched how to import models to VSeeFace and I successfully imported my base model but that doesn't cover how to add or switch the outfits. Is there an easy way to just add the outfits the model comes with in VRM? (The outfits come as separate fbx models) I have no experience with 3d and have absolutely no clue what I'm doing.

What does he mean by neutral position ?

U R A LIFE SAVER THANKSSSS

When is the modelling part gonna come out?

whenever i try to ctrl p the "select Parent > With Empty Groups" doesnt appear, is there a different way to do this?

very helpful and easy to understand thank you!!

OH_THANK_GOD,_KAIDE._I_RELAXED_INSTANTLY_IN_MY_SEARCH_FOR_WEIGHT_TRANSFER_TUTORIAL_WHEN_I_SAW_YOUR_FACE

why not select the mesh + the clothe and armature and automatic weight ? what's the difference please ?

will this work for more low poly models?

Great video, thank you!

I am trying to transfer the meshes from one model to the bones of another model doing that, transferring data from old meshes to new ones, but it doesn't work. Anyone have an idea why?

Do shape keys transfer too?

how do i join 2 meshes without loosing the weightpaint?

thanks ! my friend made me a MMD model but my issue was everything was working but the elbows , the shirt would not follow eveen if i weight painted manually, weirdly , this video bypasses that error .thanks

Can we transfer data from these vertices to those vertices in the same object? My cloth have thickness, and the vertices inside do not weight painted like the outside one :(.

Great tutorial! I was wondering, if you wanted to keep the vertex data of the clothing, what option would you use instead of "replace"? Or is this not possible?

Hey thanks for the tutorial. But one very important question for me is, how to export the single shirt into unreal to use it with my character? ;)

thank you so much this was so helpful!

how do we make clothes toggles? like rexouiums have a fox hoodie hoodie crop top t shirt skirt pants shorts short shorts ect

damn that worked thank you

i dont have any animation on the bones yet. does that matter? i went to the relations tab and it didnt give any option to transfer data

So, i managed to do this method but my main mesh (character) got disconnected from the armature. I am now moving clothing but not the character. I have no idea where I messed up. I did need to weight paint the clothing before getting it to work though so I definitely screwed something up. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

with female form, will the dynamic bones movement, will the shirt move with the breasts?

thsm! love the voice btw

data tranfer is friend shaped

Thank you so much!

Good shit, thanks.