V4.1 BETA (experimental 4.1.17D)

[Tony Nemo]

Manually retopology where it is indispensible and then calling the autopo engine to fill in seems a great, time saving idea. Has anyone carried out the strokes tool for edge flow to a greater extent than may at first appear necessary? I mean, closer to a manual retopo without creating polygons.

[AbnRanger]

I know that I can do it that way, but it's not really ideal.  because if I merge without voxelizing, then I have a mesh that doesn't sit together with the other vox layers.  Also, if I want to tweak it, I'd have to delete the layer, make my edit and merge again.

 

We have the option of moving the retopo geo based on changes to the sculpt via checkbox, I wonder how difficult it would be to go the other way around.  Either way, this is changing the topic.

 

I'm still a fan of manual topo, autopo combo, because as Beatkitano said, you would be able to define the areas you really care about and let 3D-coat connect the dots after that (especially if it's something like the back of the head or some other area that will not been seen much).  We give ourselves more control and leave less important decisions to the computer if we define what areas we want topolologized a certain way first.

I understand. Not trying to be a wet blanket, just would rather Andrew spend time add features/functionality that we really don't have. To me, what you and he have described is very close to the "Bridge Selected Edges" request, already on the Mantis:

http://3d-coat.com/mantis/view.php?id=1056

 

I think the SHIFT key option with the Transform tool, to extrude on the fly, will speed up Manual Retopo considerably...allowing you to rotate the angle, scale in/out and move the extruded edges simultaneously.

http://3d-coat.com/mantis/view.php?id=1057

[Gravin]

I think I'm going to agree with abnranger, I too would rather see some muscle added to the manual retopo workflow. As for the Shift key extrude on the fly request, is this something that we can accomplish with a macro now that we have scripting in 3dcoat? I haven't looked at the scripting at all in 3dcoat to be honest but this sounds a lot like the extender+ tool in lightwave and if we can script the switching back and forth between transform and extrude and back again it would be pretty easy to setup, just maybe not with the shift key as the shortcut...

[TimmyZDesign]

Yeah I did know that.  Zbrush just expanded upon the idea,seems to me that most of the cool stuff in zbrush were originally Andrews idea's

I've often wondered if there are any copyright laws that would apply to any of this? Do any of these software companies create patents for their ideas?

I know that Apple recently won a settlement against Samsung for patent infringement. I wonder if Pilgway could do the same with Pixologic?

 

My guess is that it would be a long, stressful, drawn-out, legal thing that probably wouldn't even be worth it in the end...

 

Andrew would probably be happiest just creating awesome new tools instead of worrying about that.

Edited July 26, 2013 by TimmyZDesign

[alvordr]

I already do most of this.  Edge flow matters regardless of animation or not, especially when it comes to normals.  I often will now just start manually retopo work, and if I feel it's quicker and just as easy, if not faster...I'll use the strokes tool to do the autotopo work I prefer not waste time on.  There are times when this doesn't work well, so I have to manually clean that up, but I've gotten better about knowing when this might occur and just doing the retopo work myself in those cases.  It seems that when you autotopo from the voxel room, you get the benefit of painting areas where the mesh would be more dense and dictating the target amount of polys, but that's the big difference.

[digman]

Manually retopology where it is indispensible and then calling the autopo engine to fill in seems a great, time saving idea. Has anyone carried out the strokes tool for edge flow to a greater extent than may at first appear necessary? I mean, closer to a manual retopo without creating polygons.

I'm not sure if this is what you are taking about Tony but I will throw out the information for anyone who does not know the strokes tool will do this when manual retopoing...

 

The strokes tool will do this for you for filling in between polygon strips... Simple example but works on more complex polygon strips for good edge flow. You do have to connect the stroke line with the vertex of the polygons on both strips. The polygon vertex will turn yellow when you are hovering over it. 

 

I held down the shift key to get a straight line for the strokes tool in this example. The above method does save a good amount of time as you are using the stroke tool to guide your polygons creation between polygon strips when manual retopoing...

 

I used the brush tool to even out the polygons a little after the polygons were created.

 

I set my stroke control points density to about 25%

[AbnRanger]

I'm not sure if this is what you are taking about Tony but I will throw out the information for anyone who does not know the strokes tool will do this when manual retopoing...

 

The strokes tool will do this for you for filling in between polygon strips... Simple example but works on more complex polygon strips for good edge flow. You do have to connect the stroke line with the vertex of the polygons on both strips. The polygon vertex will turn yellow when you are hovering over it. 

 

I held down the shift key to get a straight line for the strokes tool in this example. The above method does save a good amount of time as you are using the stroke tool to guide your polygons creation between polygon strips when manual retopoing...

 

I used the brush tool to even out the polygons a little after the polygons were created.

 

I set my stroke control points density to about 25%

In 3ds Max, you can select an edge or edgeloops on the two parts your want to join together (Bridge) and click the Bridge button. You have a caddy or small options dialog that allows you to set how many (parallel) segments you want....and you can slide them together one way or the other, or pinch/spread them apart. This would effectively give you what Beat is asking for

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrYIrJsZmS0

[digman]

Yep, that would be better and more effective AbnRanger as I was just letting some users know what we have now... The 3ds Max solution sounds very good and something like that in 3DCoat would be great...

 

Man, I spent a lot of time of the forums today, off to digital clay land now in 3DCoat...

[AbnRanger]

Yep, that would be better and more effective AbnRanger as I was just letting some users know what we have now... The 3ds Max solution sounds very good and something like that in 3DCoat would be great...

 

Man, I spent a lot of time of the forums today, off to digital clay land now in 3DCoat...

Oh, yeah...I agree on that technique. I was just thinking of something that could be done in a few clicks

[alvordr]

I was recently thinking it would be great to have a bridge tool for times like when I just had to do the inner topology of a tube (gun barrel).  This would have saved a good bit of time.

[AbnRanger]

I was recently thinking it would be great to have a bridge tool for times like when I just had to do the inner topology of a tube (gun barrel).  This would have saved a good bit of time.

Here is another example...at least the first half of the video. Pretty nice, interactive way to bridge. And we really, really need a Shell/Thickenss modifier, to make it easier to apply topology both sides of a thin object

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o2CO9wY6os

[manticor]

Here is another example...at least the first half of the video. Pretty nice, interactive way to bridge. And we really, really need a Shell/Thickenss modifier, to make it easier to apply topology both sides of a thin object

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o2CO9wY6os

Is this not already possible ? Import model into topo room as surface with make shell option on ? Not tried it myself but worth a shot .

Thing is people seem to forget that everyone has blender available to them which have these tools at their disposal and with the app link it's a single click operation .i know it's nice to stay in one application but Andrew is just one guy ,I think it would make his life easier so he can focus more of his time on features and improvements that are not available in most other packages.

And you have max which has the most robust modeling tool box of any package ....

Don't mean to cause offence btw

[Tser]

Its really good that Andrew is working on Auto re topology (autopo) as spiralling geometry made this unworkable for me and the lack of edge flow meant many hours of trial and error with placing curves or just simply doing the whole retopoing manually.

zremesher in ZBrush is very good, I can create a sculpt with dynamesh (as triangles), then, when finished with all the finer details, I duplicate it, run zremesher on it, then increase its subdivisions high enough so that it can use the finer details and re-project the original sculpts details over the new retopoed mesh. Then I generate the UV map with UV Master and export the required disp etc maps and low poly mesh with MultiMapExporter.  This work flow is VERY good and easy and works every time and the resulting lo poly mesh with its maps animate very well in Softimage/Maya and Modo. Also, this work flow is stress free so I can be an artist and not keep putting on my technicians hat every step of the way.

[BeatKitano]

Raaaah calm down... it's not him AbnRanger. I do agree I don't understand manticor's reasoning but that doesn't mean we should get angry (Funny coming from me).

[Tony Nemo]

Thanks for the grins, guys!