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Autotopo : why so horrible result ?


Nephen
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I meant I would UV map it after doing a retopo. Not before.... Cheers

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Sprayer - Trying the latest version of 3DC that I have 4.9.27 DX 64 bit I did a retopo via decimation and it came out quite good. Much better then when I tried last year.

I may have re-investigate retopo via decimation. 

Cheers & many thanks 

Ken

Tower10.JPG

Tower10-UV.JPG

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Here's a quick lathe sculpt I did in Curvy3D ver 4. Aparently Curvy3D ver 4 uses voxels (kindly correct me if I'm wrong) I exported it as a OBJ.

And what the mesh looks like in Hexagon 2.5 and in 3D Coat

The exported voxel mesh from a Curvy 3D ver 4 looks a lot neater then when exporting from 3D Coat? Is there a reason for this?

Would it be possible to export a mesh from 3DC like the topology from Curvy?

Cheers & many thanks...

 

 

Curvy.JPG

Hex.JPG

3DC.JPG

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On 3/10/2020 at 11:03 PM, kenmo said:

But what's the point if the auto retopo fails or a manual retopo takes LONGER then it did to create the original model.

I guess this depends on your use-case scenarios. But typically auto-retopo tools are not going to produce professional quality work, they're not supposed to either.

As a games artist, any "auto" tool is seen as taboo, yeah we still use them from time to time but only on super low priority assets and only if there's just no time left to do anything else . Otherwise, it's business as usual, which is to create the best looking asset for as minimal resources as possible. There is no expectation that just because I spent a week on a sculpt that the low poly version should be done in 30 minutes.

I'm working on a character at the moment, currently at 3 days on the sculpt and will likely take another 3 to finish. It's mostly hard surface and I reckon maybe 2 - 3 days for a manual retopology. I think it's rare for me that the retopology would take even an equal amount of time to the sculpt, let alone longer. Perhaps you are just not comfortable with the retopo tools?

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38 minutes ago, Gary Dave said:

I guess this depends on your use-case scenarios. But typically auto-retopo tools are not going to produce professional quality work, they're not supposed to either.

As a games artist, any "auto" tool is seen as taboo, yeah we still use them from time to time but only on super low priority assets and only if there's just no time left to do anything else . Otherwise, it's business as usual, which is to create the best looking asset for as minimal resources as possible. There is no expectation that just because I spent a week on a sculpt that the low poly version should be done in 30 minutes.

I'm working on a character at the moment, currently at 3 days on the sculpt and will likely take another 3 to finish. It's mostly hard surface and I reckon maybe 2 - 3 days for a manual retopology. I think it's rare for me that the retopology would take even an equal amount of time to the sculpt, let alone longer. Perhaps you are just not comfortable with the retopo tools?

I've made many videos to show how to get good results from Auto-Retopo and in practice it works really well when you know how to use it. When people try to pump out a game-ready model in Auto-Retpo, by throwing a model at it, that requires 30k+ polys, and only give it 5-10K, that's when they have problems. Or they try to throw the kitchen sink at it, without applying any guides or without breaking their model up into logical parts. 

It's actually AWESOME with secondary parts that still would otherwise take a fair amount of time to retopo manually.

 

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Not sure if you're trying to defend against something I said, or the OP, but I would like to point out that I never said auto topo yields horrible results. The examples in the videos are nice, but again not something I would pass if a junior handed it off to me as final. For film or even realtime cinematics then fair enough, whatever gets the job done. But for in-game assets, auto-topo tools are not a good idea. Sometimes auto-topo + manual retopo is a good way to go, but I'm just letting the OP know that he shouldn't be relying on auto-topo tools as a solve-all solution.

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With hundreds/thousands of 30k "low poly" animating in the background, your system will take a serious beating. At the current state of autopo, even though it was better than before, is not good enough as a one click solution for retopo. A lot of massaging is still required.

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4 hours ago, pickers said:

With hundreds/thousands of 30k "low poly" animating in the background, your system will take a serious beating. At the current state of autopo, even though it was better than before, is not good enough as a one click solution for retopo. A lot of massaging is still required.

That's because it's NEVER been intended to be a "Make Game Ready Model" button. I can generate a good starting point for game meshes, but would require some clean up/optimizations of the mesh. However, there is a huge market out there not related to Games. Those markets can certainly benefit from Auto-Retopo. Z-Remesher isn't designed for game models, either.

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7 hours ago, pickers said:

With hundreds/thousands of 30k "low poly" animating in the background, your system will take a serious beating. At the current state of autopo, even though it was better than before, is not good enough as a one click solution for retopo. A lot of massaging is still required.

That's fine for the pros who work on animations for Marvel, Disney or Pixar. But I'm just a hobbyist who will use a 3D model once or maybe a couple of times. May give it away free at sites like ShareCG. Some times I will texture a voxel model in 3DCs paint room, do a render in 3DC and take the image into Photoshop or Painter. However I would prefer to have a uv mapped model so I can render it in Vue Creator and apply either photo images or Vue materials. Vue now supports pbr materials. Something it did not do.

3D is only a hobby. I am nowhere near the skill set of the majority here. I also dabble in digital photography. I use too many digital apps to be a master of any.  3DCoat is only one of many - Hexagon3D 2.5, Silo 3D, Vue Creator, DAZ Studio, Curvy3D, Poser Pro 11, Corel Painter, Photoshop CC, Lightroom Classic, ArtRage 5.0,  Moi3D,  Groboo3D, Wings3D. Now throw in looking after a 89 year old father and finding time to spend on my 50+ year old Corvette. 

Presently trying to teach myself Quixer Mixer, Blender 2.8 and Chip Walter's KitOps addon.

I spend 80% of my computer time in Lightroom, Photoshop & NIK / Topaz plugins. So the time I spend on 3D is limited.

Cheers and many thanks to those that took the time to reply. I do not mean to be confrontational or rude. That is not my intent. Love 3DC. Just hate the manual topo process even though the 3DC tools make it fairly easy. I just do not have the time and find it takes a long time. At my age closing in on 70, one tends to get impatient quite easily. At least that is my experience.

Edited by kenmo
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Having some down time I did a manual retopo of my space ship. I actually found it much easier to do a manual retopo of the complete ship and not sliced into multiple pieces.

The voxel sculpt. Object completed 100% in 3DC and I did not use MOI3D, Silo3D, Hexagon 2.5, etc, All in 3DC.

Sculpt.JPG

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However when I bring the decimated retopo & baked object into the paint room I get this after applying the same material I used on the manual retopo & baked object.

Why does the paint look so odd on the decimated mesh and nothing like the manual retopo?

Cheers & many thanks

 

AutoDecimateBakeJPG.JPG

Edited by kenmo
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I did manual UV mapping on the manual retopos. But on the decimated retopo I did an auto UV.

I tried a second bake and this is what the model looks like in Hexagon. It has 122,000 faces. Not sure if that' amount of faces is good or bad? Bad for a game engine. But I want it for a prop in Vue or Daz 3D. Can anyone advice me if that's a good face count?

I may bring it into Blender 2.8 and use the decimate modifier.

Cheers & many thanks....

 

Hexagon.JPG

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It depend of your PC and scene, if you still can render and image resolution is enough for you, you may render even without retopo model straight from 3dcoat, if you in hurry for example. Optimization needed for heavy scene or keeping scene light weight

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Vue Creator struggles with high density mesh on my I7-4700 32 gb DDR3 RAM & GTX 1060 6GB card.

I recently built a new computer - Ryzen 7 3700 32 gb DDR4 RAM with an Intel660p Series M.2 2280 1TB PCIe NVMe drive. I'm a Gigabye bigot when it comes to motherboards but I could not find a Gigabyte board I like. So I opted for a MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus. My first MSI mobo in ten years. Using a older Nvidia GTX 750 TI and will order a newer card. Perhaps a GTX 2060 6 or 8GB once the virus scare settles.

Not looking forward to moving over my large digital photos I've taken over the past 15-20 years. My Lightroom catalog is huge.

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