Ghastly

So far the only way I've been able to get a somewhat decent retopo of the chain is to decimate it to around 5K then export that and import it as a retopo mesh. It works but I'm left with a messy tri mesh that does not UV well at all. Is there a covert tris to quads function in 3D Coat? Because that would really be a useful function.

I've been trying to use autotopo to retopo a chain. It is a very frustrating process. Basically each time I run it one or two links are completely ignored. Is there a secret to getting the chain model to autotopo?

A-HA!!!! Textures > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast!!!! NOW it looks better!

I'm using the plastic shader now and it's still not working and I don't understand why. Even with the lighting and ambient set to maximum the bakes are extremely dark. Why isn't the paint room WYSIWYG? Can you see anything in my paint room that isn't set how it is supposed to be?

So if I understand this correctly, I have to make sure nothing in my scene uses the default shader and then the colours will bake true?

Yup, hit the unwrap button. It just won't unwrap properly.

I'm having problems unwrapping the UV on a retopo mesh. When I hover the house over the islands they preview as if they unwrapped correctly, but the actual unwrapping doesn't separate the mesh at the seams. I also had a previous problem where a boot mesh that was symmetrical across the X axis unwrapped one boot correctly and would not unwrap the other boot despite it being identical and having the same seams. In both cases the seams were complete and should have given a clean unwrap but the unwrap was happening as if part of the seams were not complete.

I will try that next, thanks.

This is how it looks in the voxel room, then in the paint room, then in the paint room flat shading, and then the exported diffuse map. I've set the default shader to white but it still comes out as grey. The other colours all come out muted too.

I've noticed that despite what colour my bakes show up in 3D Coat the resulting texture map is significantly darker than how the bake appears in the paint room. Here's a texture map that was baked using the default shader set to white. The outfit appears white in the paint room but the texture map exports dark grey. Any ideas why my bakes are burning?

Every now and then something will happen and the camera will be stuck upside down. Eg. I hit 2 for a front view and I get the front view of my model but it's upside down. The only way i've found to fix it is to save and quit and reload the program. Is there another way to fix it when this starts happening? Has anyone else encountered this?

Yes! Floating polygons inside the mesh are proving to be problematic along the edges of the mesh. I have to go and delete them all and then rebuild those areas manually. Sometimes I have to delete a bunch of good polygons just to be able to get at the polygons that are causing the problems.

I haven't been doing much 3D work lately as I've been having some health problems this winter that left me feeling like death warmed over (turns out it's Pernicious Anemia, how anyone as much a meatatarian as me can be b12 deficient is almost as big a mystery to me as getting autotopo to work.). Doing a little retopo work today and I'm almost frustrated to the point of tears. I've installed the latest 4.1.04 but autotopo woes continue. I really miss 4.0's autopo. I keep getting odd holes showing up and messed up geometry. I've followed the autopo guildline restrictions. I'd tried with density maps and without density maps I've adjusted every setting to every possible setting again and again and again and 4.1 is just not giving the clean results 4.0 did. So let's see if some of the terminology is as I understand it to be. Auto-density Influence Multiplier: If set to 0 it means the polygons will be distributed as evenly as possible over the model and set to 2 there will be more variation of the density based on the density modulator? Is that right? Density Modulator: The higher the number the higher the density in the areas I have painted? Am I at least correct so far in my thinking?

*sigh* I didn't think it would be such a pain to have two versions running on the same machine. I guess I'm going to have to decide what I want more. Better autopo or better sculpting.

I'm starting to get better results. The voxelization is definitely messing things up but regular decimation does the trick. It looks like 4.1 is way way way more picky about guide lines than 4.0. It's making it a little difficult to get the exact results I want though but I suppose such is the nature of autopo. It's definitely starting to look better though. One thing I gotta watch out for is accidental guide loops that are almost impossible for me to see because I made them so small when I accidentally tapped my tablet.

This is the result of the attempted retopo with no guides.

When I decimate on my machine the straps disappear in the middle. I'm not able to get a result anywhere near that good with 4.1 guides or not. It would appear that 4.1's autopo is simply not at all compatible with my computer. I'll have to see if I can get both versions installed on my computer.

Yeah, then the results are even worse.

Even following these instruction I was not able to get decent results. I deleted most of the guide lines and conformed the others as per instructions but the autopo mesh is a complete mess. This is kind of depressing. Luckily I still have my version 4.0 install files on my machine so I can revert to 4.0 if I have to. Is it possible to have 4.0 and 4.1 installed on the same machine? Then I could use 4.1 for the sculpting and 4.0 for retopo. It would be an annoying work flow but the autopo results from 4.1 are simply unacceptable.

Here is what Andrew had to say about it. Hi! I discovered file. It seems that just decimation does not work well for this file because at 50K it leaves dense curvy details and makes big polygons over the rest. But there is solution that gives really nice result So, check "Voxelize before quadrangulation", set 40 K for decimation, then run with symmetry. But, it is better to clone suit because volume will be voxelized and you may loose details. Remove most of strokes, 4.1 is more sensitive to strokes because it tries to follow them exactly: - leave strokes only on one side of symmetry - remove too close strokes - it will not improve quality - never intersect strokes There is good guide: http://pilgway.com/files/guidesexample.png Andrew

That may be but even with no guides at all my 4.0 clothing sculpts simply will not autopo in 4.1

Here you go. Have at it. Swim Suit v4_0.zip

Nope that still doesn't work. For some reason certain files made with v4.0 just won't autopo with v4.1

This appears to be a particular oddity of some files that were saved in 4.0 and not others. Weird. I tried to autopo the default voxel bust and it did fine. I autopoed the genesis goo files I have and it worked fine too. But the different clothing files I made with 4.0 won't autopo in 4.1. Doing a really quick and dirty mesh that is similar to the swimsuit I made in 4.0 produces a decent retopo result. So it has to be sometime to do with certain files saved in v4.0

I've sent him the file, hopefully he'll be able to figure it out. However I was just using that file as an example of the autopo problems I've been having with the new version. Testing it out on other files it seems to be a problem with only some of the files I made in 4.0 not autotoping in 4.1