Improving auto quadrangulation

[stevecullum]

While having auto quadrangulate can be useful, most of the time is doesn't really create shapes efficiently or using the correct loops etc... I was thinking about how you could improve this and was wondering if you had a database of known shape types - faces, arms, legs, tubes, etc... could you use those to create a base? So I would envisage going to a panel and selecting the nearest type shape to my sculpture. This would be broken down into areas that are marked/painted. Arms and Head for example, and then 3D Coat would try to use this extra data to create a lores base, but with the loops and poly flows it knows in the database.

I'm probably just rambling here, but it would be great to see some improvements to this feature.

[Mix Mash]

I think that one good way of improving it is you can provide guides to give general flow. For example, you would have something like retopology menu that gives you a tool to draw lines on your model (just like the stroke tool in retopo). Once you draw a few of these guide lines, the new quadrangulate tool would create a quad mesh which flows based on the guides you provides it.

OR

You could have something like Zspheres where you create a skeleton inside your model that would be used to determine the new quad flow.

Saying that, however, this could be a good way of auto retopologising models. Use you have an automatically retopologised model, you can just edit it later.

Cheers,

Paul