Advanced Member Paint Guy Posted July 11, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 11, 2009 No it's not Spideyman but it might be just as cool! If your like me you may enjoy sculpting a lot more than doing things like retopology, so I was thinking how could I make something I don't particularly like doing more enjoyable and QUICKER! Well I was on another website recently and one of the guys draws out his UV's first to get a good topology. When I was retopologizing today I thought why couldn't this method be applied to retopologizing a model. There would be a lot of advantages, one being that you could draw out your topology and get it looking exactly as you wanted it rather than creating it along the way. Here's how I envision this working! 1) Sculpt you mesh (Voxels, Per-Pixel or Microvertex) 2) Go into the Retopology area. 3) Take the newly created pen tool and "Draw" your topology directly on the model. Hold "Shift" to erase lines. 4) After your topology was just perfect you press the "Convert to Mesh" button and Presto! the perfect topology with less work! If needed you could use the current retopology tools to adjust the mesh if desired. Q: What about line thickness? A: You could choose the thickness/color of your lines. Q: How would the "Convert to Mesh" button create the final mesh from a thick line? A: The final mesh would be taken from the exact center of the line being drawn. Adobe illustrator and Photoshop use "Bezier" lines to outline vector art all the time, so this would be similar. Even crooked or jagged lines could be programmed to be made straight quite easily. I don't know if this is a good idea or not but I thought I'd share it anyways! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member kay_Eva Posted July 12, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 but can't you already do that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taros Posted July 12, 2009 Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 @Paint Guy: Did you never used "strokes" in the retopo mode? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member cuffins Posted July 12, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 I'm also thinking, you can achieve this workflow by using strokes. With a view benefits compared to "painting". You can edit the strokes after you layed them down...they behave like splines. Very comfortable in my opinion... greez, Rene Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Paint Guy Posted July 12, 2009 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 Yes I like the Strokes tool and I used them today in fact! I agree the ability to edit the lines is great! The only problem I find is the lines are so light and thin they are sometimes hard to see and it is difficult to edit a portion of a line without the whole line going south. If you could draw lines with a pen then you could easily "erase" a line with "Shift". When using Strokes I tried to "erase or delete" only a small part of a line but it was very difficult and the whole line disappeared and had to be redrawn. An option to "Draw" a black (or any color) line and using shift to erase only a part of the line would be a nice option. Maybe a couple of small improvements would help with the current tool Stroke Line Thickness 1. Allow the stroke line to be a few points thicker and allow a person to be able to change the stroke color so it is visible on different colored models. Editing Stroke Lines 2. Allow a person to edit a small portion of a line without the whole line messing up. 3. Improve the "joining" of stroke lines to allow the ends of stroke lines to "Snap" to one another so joining them would be easier. (The advantage of painting lines is that the computer could calculate their center after the lines were drawn. The problem with "Spline" lines is that they snap and sometimes move unpredictably.) IMO it would be nice if there were an option when you entered the Topology area to have the model turn white, then you could draw your topology with black lines using some kind of brush but if this were not possible I would be happy if the current tool could at least have some changes to make it easier to work with. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member cuffins Posted July 12, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 3. Improve the "joining" of stroke lines to allow the ends of stroke lines to "Snap" to one another so joining them would be easier. (The advantage of painting lines is that the computer could calculate their center after the lines were drawn. The problem with "Spline" lines is that they snap and sometimes move unpredictably.) In PC Version there is a snapping functionality when you press STRG while hovering over the end of a stroke. You can extend the stroke easily...or delete single knots...Not sure it works the same way on Mac... Rene Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor Tony Nemo Posted July 12, 2009 Contributor Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 In PC Version there is a snapping functionality when you press STRG while hovering over the end of a stroke. You can extend the stroke easily...or delete single knots...Not sure it works the same way on Mac... Rene I/m not familiar with "STRG". I am hip to SFT or SHFT and CNTL or maybe CTRL. Also, I'm down with LMB and RMB. I think snapping 'strokes' end to end is to useful not to confess my ignorance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member cuffins Posted July 12, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 STRG means CTRL...sorry, having a german Keyboard... Rene Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Paint Guy Posted July 12, 2009 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 In PC Version there is a snapping functionality when you press STRG while hovering over the end of a stroke. You can extend the stroke easily...or delete single knots...Not sure it works the same way on Mac... Rene Thanks Rene! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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