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Polystrips Retopology Tool

25

Following the hugely popular Contours Retopology Tool, CG Cookie has now released their next add-on to aid in the retopology process.

The Polystrips Retopology tool is an addon for Blender that provides quick and easy ways create the key face loops needed to retopologize a complex model. Use cases include complex forms, such as human faces, creatures, and other organic & hard-surface objects.The most difficult part of retopology is getting the topology flow right around details.

The goal of Polystrips is to provide a fast and artist-friendly method of mapping out the crucial topology around complex forms, allowing the remaining areas to simply be filled in.

Combine Polystrips with Contours for an even better retopology workflow.

Polystrips Retopology Tool sells on the Blender Market for $45

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

25 Comments

  1. Giving even Topogun a run for its money. Great promise in this.

    With the acknowledgement that committing an existing polystrip setup into an editable mesh is equivalent (and rightly so) to applying a modifier -- that is to say, a one-way process -- I assume this means polystrips only connect with other unapplied polystrips, not with mesh polygons. Is it a reasonable idea to attempt to code a process that allows for the generation of polystrips from existing mesh data? That would increase the flexibility of the tool, unless it were difficult and/or programmatically impossible to implement.

    • This add-on can be downloaded for free if you want and as I recall, the plan is that eventually it will be free.
      Blender cookie charge a fee so that they can afford to develop tools like this.

      • dude, all i´m saying is that there have been a lot of posts that almost look like an advertisement, if blendernation wants to continue doing this they should do it in the proper way, create a section for paid content or a banner or something to separate the ads from the real content, i´m not saying that the developers shouldnt earn money from their work, i´m saying that, the $ sign is against the opensource philosophy of sharing, it isn´t inmoral or something, but it is in direct contradiction to the sorrounding culture that makes blender unique

  2. SaltatorMortis on

    hmm nice tool and it seems to be great..
    and dont forget even if this is a free software the devs need to live too
    @webmaster can we get a (sub) category for blendermarket tools?

    keep developing

  3. Alexey Kopyshev on

    "Since you have purchased Contours, you get a free copy of version 1.0.0 of Polystrips, which normally sells for $45" :)

  4. There seems to be a mix-up of 'free' and 'open source'. They are mutually exclusive.

    The issue with the Blender Market as opposed to Blender is one of accessibility and fairness.
    Blender is not only open source, but relies on donations, which means the deepest pockets can contribute more while others (with less means, such as students, start ups, beginners, etc.) can benefit regardless. In that sense Blender Market is not or should not be part of the Blender ecosystem. I've purchased quite a bit of software and donated to many projects, but if I would add up the cost of the products currently on the Blender Market, it would exceed $1500. Not a small sum for many. It reminds me of the strategy of Daz3D, where great free 3D software (closed source) allows many things, but assets need to be purchased. Smart move by CG Cookie.
    It will be a matter of time before someone comes up with something comparable to what's already on the Blender Market and offer it for free. I wonder what will happen then...

    @Brian Lockett
    Just because you don't agree with someone and you post a lot doesn't mean you have to, or give you the right to, treat others with less respect. Your cartoon isn't funny, it's childish.

    • i´m starting to think that the problem with blender market is that they implented a system based on a propietary software philosopy, that they didnt take into account the stablished blender philosophy, perhaps this could be fix somehow, if the vendors in blendermarket could be able to set a top amount that they could earn with their sales, and after that the code should be released automatically, so they will get paid for the development and they will develop something according to the blender philosophy, (something similar to the first open release of blender), question: is blender market the only "blender market" out there?,

      • I believe there's a serious problem with your comment @belofilms:disqus, namely this bit:
        "...after that the code should be released automatically, so they will get paid for the development and they will develop something according to the blender philosophy."

        That's basically saying that open source developers (yes all add-ons on the market are open source) don't deserve to be paid for their continuing time and that their efforts are somehow less valuable than proprietary development.

        This once again comes back to the crucial difference between free as in beer and free as in freedom.

        Just in case it isn't clear, I should note that all add-ons on the market, and thus all code, is GPL and open source. Meaning it can legally be re-used, redistributed, and even adapted to other projects with no financial obligation. You are not paying for the code. You are paying for the developers time, effort, and support.

        As for your question, yes, at this time the Blender Market is the only marketplace available for the Blender community. I suspect we won't be the only one for long, though.

        My apologies if this comes off a bit agitated, but I am. I believe this blender philosophy argument is a very poor one, and one that has caused more harm than good in the past.

        • dude, i´m not saying that it is less valuable, au contraire, i´m saying that a great deal of the richness of blender is human, blender has human value because of the philosophy behind it, money has no human value, because is just the middleobject in a transaction, so if you are putting the $ sign on a blender relating thingy you are somehow decreasing the human value of blender and the community around it, and that gets noted.

          i wasn´t aware that they were opensource, i look for it on the blender market web, but, that info is not on the requirements to be a vendor.

          my suggestion, i think still has a valid point. namely this, if you want to put a $ on a blender related thingy, ok, but then, you should determine to what extent the $ can be considered a fear earning, and to what extent you can damage the unique value of blender. I think that most people will agree that, as we lived on an economic system, a fear earning is fear, but to what extent it is fear, thus my suggestion (just a suggestion).

          btw, english is very much my second language, so something may get lost on the cultural exchange, my apologies if something sounds offensive, or you get agitated again, i´m sorry, i´m not, at all, trying to do that.

          • Ah my apologies for the misunderstanding. Seems to me we just have different opinions of what constitutes and lends to the "human value" of Blender and it's community.

            I agree that money has no human value inherently, however the reality of this world is that it takes money to live comfortably in most parts of the world. So while money does not hold human value it's self, money can absolutely help improve the human value by allowing people to better care for themselves and their family.

            I prefer not to put a $ value on Blender, but I absolutely put value on the time of the people using Blender and making things for Blender.

            My goal, and the goal of my team, with the Blender Market, is to help enable Blender users and developers to create a more comfortable, sustainable ecosystem around themselves so that they may continue doing what they love. Simple as that.

          • And that sounds fine to some extent, but again, there should be a limit, a limit that determines the fearness of the thing, my first post was something like: too much $ related posts on a blender related site, because blender by itself has a philosofical stand, and to some extent you are denying that richness by adding too much $ into the mix, because $ by itself doesn´t have that richness... and i stand by it.
            Aristotle once said something like (i´m translating): the virtue is the middle point between two vicious extremes.... and there have been a lot of Blender market on the pasts months on this site, too much in my opinion, so much that it was starting to look like advertising, and that is just wrong, it was starting to look like placement marketing (an example of placement marketing is an actor drinking a specific soda brand during a movie), and that is wrong, if you want to do advertising, fine, do it, but do it in the proper way.
            thats all.

          • FluxCapacitance on

            Hola Belo, I grew up in Chile. Chile still tops my list out of the four I've lived in. I've been following Bart since Blender fit on a floppy disk, and I can assure you that he has kept a good level of integrity on his site. Get to know the guys doing this work (from a shallow internet level, ha) and where they're from. You might find that they're pretty cool after all. I benefit professionally from Williamson's tutorials -free and commercial - to this day. I assure you that he and the hard working devs are not trying to rip you off.

          • i never said they were trying to rip someone off, as far as i know placement is not illegal or something is just annoying, and i´m not saiyn that it was placement, i´m saying that it almost look like it and, that it was starting to get annoying, thats it, no more, no less.

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