Sailor

Hi, well i agree that retopo tools are neat..this said the most time consuming tasks and the most creative tasks should have top priority...teh ability to create intricated surfaces as fast as possible is still the problem...topology is a secondary problem that is totally production pipeline related...btw the day we no longer rigg or texture polys that topology constraint will be gone since there is no concept of "good topology" in nature...in that same idea absolutely nothing is texture...texture is just a cheat to what nature really is....everything even color is shape since it is realted to the density and alignemnet of molecules and atoms (whenever we reach subatomic resolution modleing we can ditch surfacing as well hahaha) anyways joke aside and to answer to ur specific human mesh retopology in todays production there is absolute no need of reinventing the wheel...every company that i know that has one day modeled and rigged succesfully a human does copy and paste......u cant beat that tool ! then the modler is limited to inflate deflate the mesh and change proportions... a displacement pass and its done...in the other hadn industrial class or other convulated surfaces are hard to do and very time consuming with little possibility to reuse as a quick exampel in a car u could proabbly only reuse teh tires and even then....everything else is abosultely custom...while i could with the same face mesh model a digi double of an actor then another of another one without changing topology for man made surfaces that have infinte solutions this is impossible and tehrefore any tool enhancing this is needed. again the real deal will be as u can c in the freeform demo and specs to have a toolset that will cover the best of every possible need...a really new paradigm and not just another flavor for doing the same thing....i hope 3d coat Voxels get the real Voxel thing and not some "lite" version of it....that would be really awesome and a great success for Andrew P. well i suppose that nice

Hi andrew, first of all let me congratulate you for your great efforts and great ideas and overall fresh approach to things...,it is nice to see that people are trying new paradigms and approaches . I have 10 years experience as a professional modeler and i hace tried a lot of different packages...when i first started i had to fight my way against Nurbs for animation pipleines despite the fact that Nurbs industrial design packages like Rhino or Form Z where my first steps into the modleing arena.... i also saw the appearance of Zbrush 1.0 when it was pretty much considered a toy and toaday we use it in large pipelines everyday. This said i have to point out a few things that i hope you will take into consideration since it might make the often subtle differnce between good and GREAT! for confidentiality reasons i cant name my company or project but it is a very large one..probably the largest at the moment....as a senior modeler i am always looking for real life modleing problems to solve and i would like to give you my input so that u concentrate on those. first of believe it or not creature creation in modleling is maybe rewarding because is hero asset and foreground stuff but in real life production believe it or not Environmnet, props and vehicles are by far the bulk of production....more production days, more production effort and a massive amount of modleing time is put in backgorunds, props etc....this includes depending on teh project organic BG but very often man made and industrial hard surfaces...with a lot of tricky modleing issues taht few modleing packages has solve even today. that is my point here...i suppose that u where inspired by Sensable technologies when RE introducing teh idea of Voxels wich is great...be aware that creating blobby structures using voxels or inflating meshes via Zbrush is not the holly graal of Voxels actually but rather the ability to deal with all kind of surfaces from soft to hard and in that respect im feeling that u are getiing very close to grasp that ...i just dont want to say so close but so far... so dont forget to check not only sensable Clay tools but sensable FREEFORM...the differnece? voxels modleing for both but: u can create fillets, not half assed pinching effects but actual variable radius fillets and blends...u can conform surfaces to curves , u can chamfer, trim with curves etc... remember that Voxel modeling was first introduce to solve what Nurbs surfaces had a problem to deal with....but not getting rid of the Nurbs toolset that are still today missing in polygonal toolsets ....in conclusion....character modleing requires not such an extensive modleing toolset despite what a lot of people think... as an overall marketing approach i will suggest you open an especific hard surfaces gallery display...why? because although the organic sculpting looks great it is not IMHO the best selling point of voxels modeling...You could easily reuse human meshes + Zbrush or Zpheres to make a rough lion shape in Zbrush and sculpt away all teh tiny detail...i know that u can create holes in the fly or extrude in teh fly wich is not possible when limited by a poly surface but again it is not the most impressive part of that techonolgy ...actually everyday peopel is having a harder time with industrial surafces in Zbrush so teher you go..polys and Zbrush weak point! in fcat even resolution wise so far you havent matched Zbrush so...hit where it really hurts please note in this vid teh clean quality of the surface because of teh trims and curves constraints...havent seen anything like it in 3dcoat so far...i know its easier to say than do but in the other hand by implementing those tools you will THEN ONLy fill an existing gap between Polys and Nurbs with and all rounder Modleing package. or this http://www.sensable.com/documents/document...eatureChart.pdf Again Andrew you are doing an amazing work and hope you will find in here great new ideas Keep up the excellent work! Pierre Salazar