Low Poly Hard Surface AUTOTOPO...any tips.

[Grimmy]

Hi all, are there any tips for creating low poly meshes using autotopo, or should I just stick to manual retopo?

For example, lets say I want to simply make a cube with 6 faces, is there an autotopo technique that will give me the correct result from a voxel cube?

I have tried a few settings and adding splines etc but I always get rounded edges/a mess.

Thanks

[PolyHertz]

Auto-retopo is really meant just for organic surfaces, and assuming this is for games you want to make every polygon count which isn't going to be possible unless done manually.

[Grimmy]

Cheers, I thought so. Just trying my luck really, as this program seems to do everything else for me

[AbnRanger]

Auto-retopo is really meant just for organic surfaces, and assuming this is for games you want to make every polygon count which isn't going to be possible unless done manually.

That's not quite accurate. 3D Coat will do a splendid job on hard-surface objects, if the object has a relatively primitive shape (ie, Sphere, cone, Box, cylinder, tube. etc.). It does such a good job, often times, it might make you giggle like a school girl

It's when you add more complexity to it, that it has to do a lot of guessing on it's own. That's where the stroke guides come in and even then, it's not always going to give you a 100% desirable result. I like to use AutoRetopology whenever I have a lot of secondary objects in the scene. Objects like Buttons, buckles, bracelets, shoelaces, face-masks on a helmet, screws, bolts, etc. Those things take a lot of time and they are very tedious. Auto can knock those out in a a few clicks. So, just because it might not do your whole spaceship for you in one go...it doesn't mean it's not very useful...even on hard surface objects.

If you want to reinforce and edge, add an extra strike guide alongside it.

I use AutoRetopo on the rest of the model, starting at the halfway point in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LvzNql1_UM&feature=youtu.be

[Grimmy]

Cool video. But that Hockey mask is a fairly organic surface. Can autotopo really do a six sided cube accurately? When you say add an extra strike guide do you mean draw multiple guides on top of each other?

Cheers

[AbnRanger]

Cool video. But that Hockey mask is a fairly organic surface. Can autotopo really do a six sided cube accurately? When you say add an extra strike guide do you mean draw multiple guides on top of each other?

Cheers

I meant just adding an extra stroke near one you may have on an edge. It's usually not necessary, as relatively primitive shapes are no problem at all for the algorithm to detect.

Here is a video that you might find interesting as often times, just quickly bringing in a similarly shaped primitive can be faster/cleaner than AutoRetopo.