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auto retopo won't complete task


gswartz
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I have a scanned mesh at 3.5 million polys.  I used auto retopo in modo with most of the default settings except that I lowered the poly count to around 10%.  I ended up with a very good mesh at around 300k polys within about a minute.  However the edge flow isn't quite what I wanted and modo's retopo guides aren't working as described so I figured I'd bring the model into 3d coat and use the auto retopo feature there.  I have tried with creating guides and not creating guides and neither way will actually complete.  Each time I try it just sits at CreatingCutGraph  I let it run for about 8 hours last night and it was still processing.  Are there any gotchas I need to be aware of to get the auto retopo to work?  Thanks.

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That did help.  After cleaning up the mesh in modo and then importing it to the sculpt room I was able to then use the autopology.  Unfortunately it really didn't give me good results.  I'll have to keep playing with it.  But due to the complexity of the model and the edge flow I'm after, I may have to resort to manually retopology.  Thanks!

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I love 3DCoat. It's awesome. BUT the auto and manual retopology tools frustrate me to no end. I've watched most of the tutorials on retoping and they never helped or enlightened me.

Modeling in 3DC is fairly straight forward and not very difficult. Retoping is the most difficult in 3DC and IMHO a not very enjoyable task....

Edited by kenmo
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2 hours ago, kenmo said:

I love 3DCoat. It's awesome. BUT the auto and manual retopology tools frustrate me to no end. I've watched most of the tutorials on retoping and they never helped or enlightened me.

Modeling in 3DC is fairly straight forward and not very difficult. Retoping is the most difficult in 3DC and IMHO a not very enjoyable task....

???????? It would be very constructive to give some examples of where you encounter problems. I actually find the manual method to be an enjoyable task. Some parts are a challenge (inside the mouth occurs to me) like joining several separate objects into one mesh.

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Sorry...I did not mean to hijack this poster's thread. But since you asked... I created the gunship in this thread. I tried to auto and manually retopo the starship and found it quite frustrating. I was spending more time on retoping then what I did on modeling the object. Which IMHO is ridiculous. Getting quite annoyed I decided I would bring the heavy object into Hexagon and reduce it manually there. Which was a much simpler and quicker process.

I really hate the point to point modeling process of retopoing. It was a reason I gave up on Milkspace3D many years ago...

Cheers & many thanks...

 

Edited by kenmo
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PS: I'm not interested in modeling organics. I like to model cars, hot rods, space ships, zepelins, vessels, locomotives. My passion in life is cars. I photograph cars & hot rods. In 1983 I restored a 1960 Corvette which I still own. I'm beginning to think 3DC is not well suited for hard surface items like cars. Maybe fine for a house or robot. But not for cars. Matter of fact is there even any tutorials on 3DC modeling and retoping a car or hot rod? I've not seen any....

Cheers & my apologies to the original poster....

 

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I dont know how neat you guys need your retopos , but I am loving "retopo via decimation"  ( right mouse button whilst over the model about half way down) It all ends up triangulated to heck. But once the normals are baked it looks perfect....

Obviously no good for games characters,because of messy edge flow. And maybe not good for vehicular stuff.

( the last couple of "Ladies" on my Artstation page were done this way.)

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Wow...you got some amazing characters there. Thanks for the link. I too am starting to think retopo is overrated for an hobbyist... I can understand if you are doing stuff for commercial films. But it's only an hobby to me...

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Thanks Kenmo,

Yeah, I just hobby also....all the techie stuff leaves me cold,I just learn the bare minimum to get a picture done. Excited at the moment because I think I found my perfect workflow...for now anyway

Sculpt,paint in 3dcoat using retopo via decimation.

Import into Daz Studio and render with Iray ( only got Daz Studio last weekend,learned the basics in about two days!)

Tart up the image in Photoshop and Artrage...   .done!..      I can make and render a monster in 2 days....no time to get bored with stuff.

I reckon this workflow would do your hotrods or whatever just fine.

Sorry gswartz for interloping your thread!

Over and out.....

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16 hours ago, kenmo said:

I love 3DCoat. It's awesome. BUT the auto and manual retopology tools frustrate me to no end. I've watched most of the tutorials on retoping and they never helped or enlightened me.

Modeling in 3DC is fairly straight forward and not very difficult. Retoping is the most difficult in 3DC and IMHO a not very enjoyable task....

Could you record a video showing the areas you are struggling with and share it, here? Like Tony said, and this goes for any software...not just 3D Coat...it's far more beneficial for you and those who may want to help, to give specifics and even record the issues you experiencing, because the community cannot make much out of "Retopo in 3D Coat sucks." There are a lot of people using it in production, when they could easily use something else. There are a lot of good Retopo tools out there, and the fact that a many industry veterans choose to use 3D Coat mainly for Retopo work, would indicate says it doesn't suck.

I would try to help, but I don't know where to start. We have to have more to go on. Perhaps "Instant Meshes" is better suited to your preferences or expectations? If Auto-Retopo wasn't working for me and I didn't have time for manual Retopo, that might be the first alternative I would turn to.

Direct Download link for Instant Meshes:

https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes/archive/master.zip

 

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I have no doubt that there are pro modelers who use 3DC in their pipeline, including for retopo. However as I said earlier. I am only a hobbyist. I may spend 15 hours on modeling an object that I will only use once or twice in a Vue render or in a Photoshop/Painter/ArtRage paint over. I often given some of my models away free on ShareCG or Renderosity. It's simply not worth my time to spend another 5-15 hours on retopo.

https://www.sharecg.com/kenmo

I tried Instant Meshes and most of the time it works better for me than 3DC's auto retop on most hard surfaces but not automobiles. However when on a car both do not seem to work very well...

The only solution for me is to reduce the poly count via reducing it in Hexagon3D or via 3DC's decimation tool when exporting as an obj.

Has anyone retopo'd an car via 3DC? It is often thought cars are one of the more difficult objects to model, so perhaps so is retopoing...

Sorry but I have no idea on how to record a video of actions on my desktop... And to be honest, really not too interested in learning.

At the retirement age (mid 60s) and I do network support for a living (over 30 years). When it comes to my down time, I just want to either photograph with my DSLRs and process them via Adobe Lightroom CC 2017 * Photoshop CC 2017, digital paint (ArtRage 5 and Corel Painter 2017) or model 3D via Hexagon3D, Silo3D, 3D Coat and render 3D via Vue Complete 2017, Daz Studio, Poser.

There's already too much software swimming in my head and I would like to purchase MOI3D soon. Seems too easy to use.

Cheers, I do appreciate the feedback...

http://kenmo.fineartamerica.com/

 

Edited by kenmo
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PS: Add Groboto3D, Wings3D & Curvy3D, UVMapper Classic to 3D tools I sometimes use.

And an earlier thread of mine where I compared Instant Meshes to 3DC's auto retopo.

 

Edited by kenmo
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One thing that one needs to remember is that none of these Auto-Retopo engines work on a single sided shell....such as the body of a car. It needs some thickness. To be honest, that is where Manual Retopo comes in. Just sketch out your topology with the Strokes tool > hit ENTER and you're pretty much done.

 

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I've tried as you suggested. You've recommended this to me in the past. Strokes doesn't give me the results I want.  I got much better results from a manual retopo. But it's too labor intensive and takes too many hours.

Again your examples are always of organics. I'll ask once again... Have "YOU" ever modeled a car or truck and retopo in 3DC?

If so I'd love to see your video on the process for retopoing in 3DC.  Again that's a car or truck and not a rocket or a wall or a house or robot.

I'm done with retopo and agree with stustucliffe. It's much easier to just decimate the object.

I'm sorry AbnRanger, but I'm only a hobbyist and at 63 years of age when I retire I don't think Pixar will be knocking at my door.

I love my hobbies BUT they are not 24/7 for me. I have a regular technical IT job and other responsibilities. When retoping is a click of a button then I'll be interested...

Again I do respect your skills, knowledge and opinion....BUT retopo just isn't something I want to spend a lot of time on. 

 

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 What I like about 3DC is how it gives the artist a number of ways in creating his art.

Like you and Stuscutcliffe in that if all you need is decimation, that is available. 

I am more organic in my creations but have seen many beautiful hard surface models some very complex, not a full car yet but some as complex as car. I do think it is possible to create a car in 3DC  from watching hard surface tutorials in creating complex objects. I see the tools they use.  My mind does not think in hard surface very much, wish it did more... 

Now retopoing a complex car would be labor intensive, very much so. The creation as I stated, I think can be done but retopo, there is no easy way but doing a lot of manual work.

It is a artist call on his approach to modeling and there is nothing wrong with saying that is too much work for the objects I am creating. Again that is what I like about 3DC in that the power of the application meets many forms of model creations.

I am mid 60s as well and there are times I simply want to see my model quickly in Cycles, a game engine or now in VR. Now that viewing in VR, standing by and walking around your own created model, is a most pleasant feeling. 

 

Edited by digman
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12 hours ago, kenmo said:

I've tried as you suggested. You've recommended this to me in the past. Strokes doesn't give me the results I want.  I got much better results from a manual retopo. But it's too labor intensive and takes too many hours.

Again your examples are always of organics. I'll ask once again... Have "YOU" ever modeled a car or truck and retopo in 3DC?

If so I'd love to see your video on the process for retopoing in 3DC.  Again that's a car or truck and not a rocket or a wall or a house or robot.

I'm done with retopo and agree with stustucliffe. It's much easier to just decimate the object.

I'm sorry AbnRanger, but I'm only a hobbyist and at 63 years of age when I retire I don't think Pixar will be knocking at my door.

I love my hobbies BUT they are not 24/7 for me. I have a regular technical IT job and other responsibilities. When retoping is a click of a button then I'll be interested...

Again I do respect your skills, knowledge and opinion....BUT retopo just isn't something I want to spend a lot of time on. 

 

No. I've not done a car, but have modeled plenty of hard surface objects, like spacecraft, weapons, helmets, etc. The process is the same. To be honest, I would probably not choose to model an automobile in 3D Coat, at all. Just about anything else, but I would use 3ds Max to model it, because polymodeling is a bit more suited to handle some of the nuanced shapes involved. Having vertex level control while constructing would be the ideal way to work.

Having said that, if Andrew would ever add Soft/Gradient selection in the Retopo room, then the Polymodeling capabilities in that workspace would be more than adequate to create an automobile in 3D Coat. I'd like to see a BRIDGE tool as well. Both of those would help make 3D Coat a fairly capable polymodeling solution, to compliment the ease of Voxel modeling.

 

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Thanks kindly. No need to post these links as I follow you on youtube and watch most of your videos. I frequently give you a "like". They are excellent tutorials. Well narrated and very professional. You and Javis Jones are not only two of my favorite 3DC tutors but two of my favorite art tutors. I enjoy ALL your videos. Except I'm not getting the retopo tutorials. The issue is obviously more with me. 

1) I do not enjoy the retopo proceess. Even if it is a simple sketching over as you put it.

2) Sorry but not too sure how many times I have to post this - I simply do not have the time to do retopo work.

3) Spending time on retopo for a model I will only use once or twice in a Vue render or a Photoshop/Painer/ArtRage painter over simply doesn't make sense to me. I am not a professional animator nor do I envision myself ever being one.

4) I do technical work during the day - network sys admin. In my spare time I want to do simple stuff, like create art with a DSLR camera, 2D painting app or 3D modeling\rendering tools. Retopo is (at least IMHO) too technical. If I wanted to do some technical stuff I'd brush off some of my old programming manuals and do some code writing on the side.. :-)

And I never said 3DC sucks at retopo. It simply doesn't work for what I want to accomplish with it.

Retopo via decimation as in the new beta will do what I want.

 

Cheers

Edited by kenmo
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