duplicating geometry when retopologizing a mesh

[gswartz]

I'm working on retopologizing this star fish mesh.  In the image you can see where I have started.  I wondered if there's any way to copy those polys to the other legs (highlighted in magenta) of it instead of having to recreate all of them?  Thanks.

[digman]

A little hard to answer because of not seeing your symmetry position of the model or if your model is symmetrical. I also do not know how the model was constructed along symmetry planes. The below might not work because if this.

First, if your model is symmetrical, delete the current polygons, it is not that many to recreate.

Turn on Radial Mirror in the Symmetry panel. If your model is symmetrical but is off it's symmetry axis, Choose "Pick" in the symmetry panel to correct it. Depending upon how the model was made you might have to fix more than one axis.

Recreate the polygons and the polygons will be mirrored on the radial axis. Virtual Mirror mode does not have to be turned on for this to work. I will not address Virtual Mirror, that is another topic not needed here.

The above would be the fastest way but there are others but somewhat more manual.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Method when creating these type of creatures if I want them to be symmetrical, say for animation.

Look to my picture, I created the voxel protrusions by choosing Radial Mirror in the Symmetry panel in the sculpt room

Now it is easy with symmetry radial mirror still on to create the mirror polygons in the retopo room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2017 by digman

[gswartz]

No it was a scanned model so it's not perfectly symmetrical.   But maybe it's close enough to make your method get me most of the way there.  I'll give it a try.  Thanks.

[digman]

If you are not worried about edge flow...  In beta 4.7.29 you can decimate for retopo... The location is right under Autopo. Right click on the model or the layer it is in and choose "Retopo via Decimation".

 Once the retopo mesh is made, I use relax once or twice to ease the tension of the triangles.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since your model is non-symmetry you can run autopo.

Two ways:

First run fill voids if in voxel mode. Interior voids will cause Autopo to fail in a number of cases. The location is the same menu as autopo. 

Choose your polygon count and other settings. I included a picture of my start from general settings. You of course can try your own settings.

Paint density, seems not to function always correctly. I tend not to use it. Your experience might vary.

Do not use the strokes tool but let 3DC handle curvature flow.

Or:

Run autopo and place some guide strokes to help the curvature flow. Be sure to the read available autopo wizard tips in the tool's panel.

Here is a quick autopo... Painted density (5) Hey it worked, maybe Andrew has been working on it. Place some guide strokes...  Now you will have some spiral loops but if looking for just rendering and not efficient edge flow, this would be ok. I did not spend time on it to see if I could get better flow. 5,700 polygons

Edited May 12, 2017 by digman