Clean-up steps are not interchangeable. Each one writes something the next depends on, and running them in the wrong order either fails outright or quietly throws away work. The order that works for most generated assets is:
1. Generate the model from the picture. 2. Retopology — rebuild the mesh at the polygon budget you need. 3. Smart UV — lay out the surface for textures. 4. Texturing — paint the surface. 5. Rigging — add the skeleton, for characters and creatures.
Why does retopology come first?
Retopology rebuilds the mesh, and a new mesh has a new surface layout. Anything written onto the old one — UVs, textures, skin weights — does not carry over. So whatever follows retopology has to come after it, never before. Retopology is also what brings a dense generated mesh down to a budget the later steps can handle.
Why do UVs come before texturing?
A texture is painted into the UV layout. Change the layout afterwards and the texture no longer lines up. The UV layout also sets the ceiling on texture quality: a fragmented, uneven layout wastes resolution however high the texture tier.
Why does rigging come last?
A rig binds the skeleton to the mesh's vertices. Retopologise afterwards and the vertices change, which breaks the binding. Texturing after rigging is possible, but it is cleaner to finish the surface first and rig a model whose shape and look are settled.
Where does segmentation go?
Segmentation splits a mesh into parts. Put it after retopology when you want each part to share the clean topology, and before texturing when the parts will get different materials.
Limits worth planning around
Some steps have input limits, and a pipeline makes them easy to hit without noticing. In Zetta 3D, Smart UV takes meshes up to about 80,000 polygons, so a dense generation needs retopology ahead of it — the pipeline editor warns about exactly this while you build. A step that cannot run stops cleanly with the reason, rather than sending a job that will fail.
A typical clean-up pipeline
Picture → Generate Smart 3D (Np1.5) → Retopology → Smart UV → AI rigging. One run takes a concept picture to a rigged, UV-mapped character at a polygon budget you chose — and the same recipe runs on the next picture unchanged.