How do you use Additional Extrusion in Retopo

[crispalomino]

Hi,

I have been retopologizing with 3DC's wonderful tools. The manual mentions there is Additional Extrusion in the Retopo tool bar, which I see. It states, This is a great way to make clothing. But I do not understand how to use it, how much to apply and what it means about merging.

Could someone explain, please?

Thank you,

Cris

[The Candy-floss Kid]

Hi Cris, with the select tool, select some edges (shift +left click) on your retopo that you wish to continue over the form then switch to the extrude tool - now you can sweep the extrusion over and across the form. It can speed up certain tasks for sure. You'll see the options for selection in the top menu bar - vertices, edges, faces

The merging bit may be a reference to the fact that you can use your retopo to create voxels back in the voxel window. In other words you can go to the standard voxel room select your retopo in the merge tool and merge/create voxels with thickness from your retopo groups. In other words you can use your initial voxel form in the retopo room to help your build other voxel components as well as creating mesh geometry for export or texturing in 3DCoat.

[crispalomino]

Ok, Kid (would that be your shortened nick?), thank you, that would make sense on the retopo. I guess I understood that the Additional Extrustion, which is on the menu bar with a number input field, would do an all over extrusion on a retopo piece to lift it away from the original surface.

[The Candy-floss Kid]

Kid'll do just fine :-) Yes, height from surface is more accurate I suppose than thinking of it as an extrusion in the common parlance.

But height from surface as far as I'm aware is it's purpose i.e to avoid burying merged retopo forms over which they've been traced back into the voxel environment.

Once the retopo is merged into the voxel scene with a skin thickness - then does it become an effective extrusion or when you export it to an external polygonal editor and apply an inner thickness extrusion there.

Of course it would have helped if I'd actually read your initial question with a little less speed :-) Additional extrusion and not merely extrusion.

I do apologize .

[crispalomino]

No problem, kid. Yeah, I'm looking to have the retopo lift from the surface as it is clothing. Do you know what the measure units are on that?

Thanks,

Cris

[The Candy-floss Kid]

haven't got a clue is the honest answer :-)

[crispalomino]

BTW, it turns out I just needed to look much closer than I was to see that it really was extruding. Worked great.

[liok]

The secret is that the opacity value next to it has to be changed to see the additional extrusion display update. I think it's good to add a bit on all manual retopo so there's a bit more volume conservation from the high poly.