This is a very powerful tool in the retopology arsenal. With it, you can quickly retopologize cylindrical objects such as arms, legs, and other similar items.
You can draw lines by clicking and dragging the LMB. There are a few commands local to this tool:
- Clear: This will clear all drawing lines.
- Smooth: Smooths all current drawn lines.
- Delete: This will delete your currently selected line.
Here is a more in-depth look at it:
Firstly we’ll start by making some strokes in the viewport to cover the whole of this leg. When this is done, a spline will loop around. We’ll create a few loops to have some area to create polygons in.
Next, we’ll create a perpendicular line within the confines of the area of the mesh, as opposed to the previous lines. You’ll notice that line is a green color instead of orange.
Green lines mean that it is discontinuous. Orange lines mean that it is continuous and makes a full loop around to connect back to itself. Now let us look at the top toolbar; we’ll need to select some segments.
And press ENTER. You will get the ring of polygons with the corresponding number of segments.
Now we’ll try something a little different from this… Instead of drawing lines around a mesh, let us draw something of a grid look within the mesh instead of slices. Now press the ENTER key, and you will have the area you surrounded with the strokes created as polygons.
Now let’s demonstrate one more method here. We’re going to draw a circle within the confines of the mesh to create edge loops or circles. Then we’ll draw a perpendicular stroke to the circles that we previously created and then hit the ENTER key.
You’ll notice that it automatically created our entire loop based on the “Number of segments” setting in the top toolbar, similar to before with the first demonstration we gave for cylindrical objects.
These are just some of the methods with this tool that you’ll soon discover. You are encouraged, as with all other tools in 3DCoat, to dive in and find out what tools and techniques work for you.
Tutorial
Retopo Room Pt.2 : This video continues the walkthrough of the Retopology tools in 3DCoat, and includes demonstrations of the Strokes tool and basic Auto-Retopo usage.