Very poor results from Autopo; how to improve?

[ryebot]

I'm absolutely puzzled by Autopo. I read the guide and tried multiple settings, but the results I keep getting are jumbled polygonal garbage. Based on what I'm seeing and reading about Autopo and how it works for others, I'm convinced I've got to be doing something wrong, because the results I'm getting are terrible.

This was the result I got when asking for a 4k(!) poly mesh:

Here is my original mesh, for comparison:

The results I've seen from others are much, much better than this.

What could I be doing wrong here? Any suggestions?

[Carlosan]

Sadly your model have lot of detail for that low polycount.

With manual retopo you could get superior topology

[ryebot]

Thanks Carlosan,

I decided to retopo using the manual tools. I'm not very good at it, and it's taking me a long time, but hopefully I will get better.

[Ghastly]

What you can also do is autopo with a very high resolution then delete edge loops until you get the model down to a lower polygon version. Just don't forget to remove the N-gons when you're finished.

[AbnRanger]

Yeah, Auto-Retopo throws in the towel when you attempt to give it an unreasonably low polycount. One thing it is not is a "Generate a super-optimized, uber-low poly game model" tool.   It generates more of an evenly distributed poly mesh, and thus typically requires more polygons than what you might think. I wouldn't try any less than 20-25k on that model. You can always go back and delete entire edgeloops by using the DELETE EDGES TOOL while holding down the CTRL key.