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AI mesh cleanup

Models from AI generators such as Meshy, Tripo, Hunyuan3D, Rodin and TRELLIS arrive with hundreds of thousands of messy triangles, floating fragments, small holes, faces pointing the wrong way, scattered UVs and a random size. This template fixes all of that in one chain and gives you a model that drops straight into Unreal, Unity or Godot: the right size, standing on the ground, about 10,000 clean triangles, smooth shading, tidy UVs and baked textures.

Start

Section titled “Start”
  1. On the start screen, click AI mesh cleanup under Create from Template. The new project opens on an AI-generated hut that comes with Forge, and cooks. It is named AI mesh cleanup; rename it any time by clicking its name in the menu bar.
  2. The Import node is selected: choose your AI model’s .glb under File there, and the chain cooks again on it. Or drop the .glb on the card in step 1 to start with it straight away. Starting from File ▸ New from Template ▸ AI mesh cleanup instead, you name the project first; it opens on the same sample.
  3. Wait for the chain to cook. The viewport shows the Clean Color Edges node: your cleaned, textured model, exactly as it will export.
  4. On the Transform node, set Fit length to the model’s real height.
  5. On the Export node, choose a file inside your game project and click Export.

The chain

Section titled “The chain”
  1. Import

    Load the AI model.

  2. Transform

    Give it its real size and stand it on the ground.

  3. Clean Color Edges

    Turn the ragged lines between colors into clean ones.

  4. Export

    Write the finished .glb.

Between Transform and Clean Color Edges sits Game-Ready Mesh, the cleanup subnet.
  • Transform comes first. Fit size scales the model evenly so its height matches Fit length (100 cm to start), and Align stands it on the ground at the centre of the world. Every size after it, such as the largest hole to fill, is then in real centimetres.
  • Game-Ready Mesh does the cleanup in seven steps. Double-click it to dive in and see each one with its comment:
    • Clean repairs the faults almost every AI model has: hairline cracks, faces with no area and floating fragments.
    • Fill Holes caps holes up to 10 cm around. Bigger openings stay open on purpose.
    • Polyreduce in Target triangles mode brings every model to the same budget, whether it started with 80,000 triangles or a million.
    • Normals turns inside-out faces around and shades the whole surface smooth. The creases come back in the baked normal map, so there are no hard edges to line up with UV seams.
    • Auto Unwrap gives the reduced mesh new UVs, packed tightly with the same texture detail everywhere.
    • Bake copies the colour, metal and roughness, and the surface shape of the cleaned full-detail model (Clean’s output) onto the new mesh as 2048 by 2048 textures. It reads from Clean rather than Import, so deleted fragments never show up in the textures.
    • A last Transform only aligns: it centres the finished mesh and stands it on the ground again. The first one measured the model before Clean removed its floating fragments, and Polyreduce moves the lowest points slightly, so without it the export can sit a little off-centre or dip below the ground. It comes after Bake so the bake still lines the new mesh up with the original.
  • Clean Color Edges works on the freshly baked texture. AI generators paint the borders between colors as wavy, smeared lines; it redraws them as clean ones and leaves the rest of the texture as it is. It runs after the bake because the new texture gives each part about ten times more pixels than the original, enough for a clean line.
  • Export writes the finished .glb.

Settings worth changing

Section titled “Settings worth changing”
  • Transform ▸ Fit length (the first Transform): the model’s real height. Use Rotate Y if it faces the wrong way.
  • On Game-Ready Mesh:
    • Target triangles: raise it for a hero asset, lower it for background props.
    • Bake resolution sets the texture size.
    • Small piece size: raise it if debris survives.
    • Max perimeter: raise it to close a bigger gap.
  • Clean Color Edges ▸ Straighten: raise it (to 10 cm, say) to flatten slow waves out of the lines too. To keep the texture exactly as baked, right-click the node and choose Skip.
  • Anything else inside Game-Ready Mesh, such as Normals ▸ Smoothing angle (lower it to about 30 only for hard-surface props such as crates and weapons) or Bake ▸ Max distance (raise it if parts of the model come out blank): right-click Game-Ready Mesh, choose Unlock, then dive in and change it.

Check the result

Section titled “Check the result”

Select the Game-Ready Mesh node and look at the stats under its parameters: about 10,000 triangles, no small pieces and no inconsistently wound edges. A step inside that had something to report, such as Fill Holes leaving a hole over its limit or Bake failing to fill part of the texture, wears an amber badge: dive in to see it.

Limitations

Section titled “Limitations”
  • No LODs or collision. Unreal, Unity and Godot generate both when they import the model.
  • Lighting stays in the colours. AI generators often paint shadows and highlights into the colour texture. The template keeps the colours as they are, so that lighting stays.
  • Unity needs glTFast. Install the glTFast package to import .glb files in Unity. Unreal and Godot import them as they are.
  • Holes over the limit stay open. The model is not guaranteed to be watertight.

See also

Section titled “See also”