Twitter discussion: What Andrew is currently doing.

[polyxo]

Tried a higher poly count? when I did this model:

It didn't do the fingers but a higher poly count got more of them. I also haven't touched that other setting yet.

I'd suggest to have another close look in the Retopo room - I with some imported models at first also thought there was no result.

But actually there was a quad-mesh created - it was just scaled down to tiny size...

[ifxs]

cant wait to test with the mac build!

[splodge]

[splodge]

Now surface freeze is used to mark dense areas

[ifxs]

and you KNOW this is cool. Andrew, please reference as many of the "UV Master" concepts as can apply. this is like UV-Master for retopo, with density painting and hinting lines. THANK YOU ANDREW!

[ifxs]

This actually looks like retopo I perform by hand, impressive!

an even better auto-retopo, WOW. and apparently without any guides! Cant wait to try an OSX build. Thank you Andrew!!

[haikalle]

Really impressive picture. Looks really promising for hard-surface modelling.

[polyxo]

Wow!

[splodge]

[Javis]

No joke... That looks pretty amazing. I hope Tinker will be happy with these results.

[kay_Eva]

very exciting!

I look forward to when you can use this on poly objects as well as voxel ones

[philnolan3d]

very exciting!

I look forward to when you can use this on poly objects as well as voxel ones

Yeah that's very confusing for new users who got excited about this function and want to try it. I guess the Quadrangulate button will have to be moved to the Retopo room.

[philnolan3d]

Well then you would need to list OBJ / LWO objects in the Vox Tree. I think both would be best.

[Javis]

Just to add my voice to the chorus; Having all quadrangulation and any other (auto) retopology tool accessible to meshes and voxels alike is the best way to go. Exclusive tools like that can be a PITA.

[philnolan3d]

Well you can retopo non-voxel meshes, just not with the auto-retopo tool.

[Javis]

Yes please! I would really love to have this in 3DC.

[splodge]

I vote Quadrangulate is moved into Retopo mode. People can then import meshes when in retopo mode bypassing the voxel mode altogether.

[Javis]

Well you can retopo non-voxel meshes, just not with the auto-retopo tool.

Right, but all of the auto-retopo should be for meshes too. It feels limiting to me that we can only do this on voxels.

Of course you can convert meshes to voxels, then auto retopo, then have your new mesh. But that's a pointless time consuming step that should be removed if all you want to do is auto retopo an existing mesh.

[philnolan3d]

It's also very difficult if your object has smooth + hard edges. You have to use the subdivide option for the smooth bits, but first add extra geometry at the sharp edges to keep them sharp. Plus dealing with open edges.

[ifxs]

It's also very difficult if your object has smooth + hard edges. You have to use the subdivide option for the smooth bits, but first add extra geometry at the sharp edges to keep them sharp. Plus dealing with open edges.

Another option: in Maya, Blender, etc you can just mark the edges as SHARP(or crease depending on the app), and 3D Coat could intelligently handle the subdivision smoothing, all the while the edges stay sharp without needing to add extra loops/geometry for definition, like ZBrush, Maya, blender and many other apps handle it. I would appreciate such a feature in 3D Coat if we are going to be able to auto-retopo polys(in addition to voxels)

[philnolan3d]

Yeah Edge Weighting, as it's known in LightWave, might be a good option.

[philnolan3d]

I brought auto-retopology to easily usable stage. It looks like wizard with several stages to draw guides, paint dense areas.

Also I made possibility to autoretopo external objects right from File->Import menu. It will automatically close holes, convert to voxels...

... and perform autoretopology. On this stage I will make short pause (several days) to fix bugs and solve urgent issues from the forum.

I hope we're not locked into this wizard format. If I do the strokes stage, then move on to the defining density stage, I would like to be able to go back and change the strokes if I change my mind.

Also it should be noted that automatically closing holes on a poly mesh isn't ideal for every mesh.

For example a game environment like this one. Trying to automatically close this would make a mess.

[haikalle]

New option in baking dialog - "Don't snap subdivided vertices" to get very smooth mesh on layer 0 and good displacement on other layers.

If this is what I think it is, then I'm more than happy.

[Taros]

AndrewShpagin: UV room got correct support of non-square UV maps

Great!

[philnolan3d]

painting with strokes will distort surface immediately (not when stroke ended)

This is something people have been asking about for years, I'll be very excited to try it out.

[Digital777]

If this means like when you paint it changes the height/depth when you release the mouse then this will fix a issue i have had with it for a while. I found that makes things harder to work with when painting details so it is good to know this will be sorted now

[philnolan3d]

Neat!

I made possibility to upload turnables automatically, very easy- see example - http://bit.ly/d3H3rc

it was easy because 90% of work was done by webmaster.

[dirtrobot]

One small feature I'd like to see Andrew add to the Retopo tools, would greatly facilitate the reduction of polygons/edgeloops that currently are added when using the auto-retopo tool, is a Dot Loop/Ring selection. It's at the 1:35 mark. This could make clean-up ridiculously fast.

Select a given set of edges along a loop > Dot Ring > delete key

Right now, the way this auto-retopo routine works, it will hang or crash if you try to go the low poly route. So, anything to make cleanup easier should be a high priority, in my view.

One thing that's related to this is I'd like to specify a collapse ring limit. Right now if you use Collapse and hold CTRL, the ring selection is pretty agressive, it will loop around the model 2-3x in worse cases. I like how in Silo you can click on the first edge, then double-click on the 'end of selection' edge, whether loop or ring, and it selects everything between the two selections.

Late edit: this is what a spiraling edgeloop does to select edge ring for collapse...

http://www.screencast.com/users/dirtrobot/folders/Jing/media/ab7f690d-8903-4dc3-a3b7-9520b0430dbd

[Digital777]

When Andrew says "upload turnables automatically" i am guessing this means to the forum or some online media hosting site as a video, or does this mean something else. In the posts it doesn't say to which websites though which is why i ask.

[philnolan3d]

It seems like a safe bet that he means the 3DC server since that how it currently works with still screenshots.