3D-Coat Retopology Tool
I don’t often post about non-Blender tools, but I found this one quite amazing. 3D-Coat’s retopology tool uses user-defined guides for edge loop creation. Maybe it can inspire a Blender developer out there? (via Jakchit)
Cycles Material Studies (Volume 9)
I’m going to talk out of my behind here, since I’m no pro-modeler and have never re-topoed anything(only have a theoretical understanding of it), but as cool as that autopo tool seems, I don’t think retopology is such an arduous task nowadays, with the wonderful snapping tools in 2.5 and scripts like surface sketching. Besides, I’m betting that it is not as easy as it seems on those vids.
Speaking from a noob pov it is that easy… Also very fast if you compare it with snapping tools or surface sketching. I don’t like the feel of 3D coat but their autoretopo is a dream… .
I’m a user of 3D-Coat and can only recommend it! For me 3D-Coat is the perfect companion to Blender, it does things well that Blender is weak in and vise versa.
It’s not only the amazing auto-retopologizing it’s the whole package that will most likely change the way you think and work in 3D.
And: Yes! The retopo and auto-retopo tools are the best around and its easy and fun to use them! Same goes for the painting and voxel sculpting! Don’t miss to try all of this!
The price is a steal. Don’t hesitate to compare 3D-Coat with Mudbox or Z-Brush, you’ll not only find that its cheaper it’s also better to work with and has unique features like voxel sculpting and auto-retopo, which is invented by the 3D-Coat developer itself.
@differentsmoke The thing is that the more automated tools you have to work with the more work you can get done in the same amount of time. Doing what this video shows happening in a few minutes by hand would take hours.
I’ve seen this tool mentioned more than once on BAF. My take on it is to use other peoples tools and find the good and the bad and create a completely different tool that works better based on what you’ve learned. That keeps us from having patent or copyright problems, and makes our tools that much better.
Hey, guys and girls!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doJo-HCg3_A&NR=1
What do you think about this? I’m not a big fan of ZBrush but it’s “shadow box” feature making me a bit nervous because I can’t understand what it does! :)) And there is no clear vision of poly-flows and it’s quantities…
I’ve used 3D-Coat and its AWESOME. I love modeling with Blender but on organic models you just can’t top 3D Coat, especially with the superb retopo tool mentioned in the post. And yes, it actually works. 3D Coat is not competition for Blender or anything like that, its just a piece of awesome software you can use with Blender to create 3D. With non-organic models I would still go straight to Blender.
I definitely would use 3D Coat to model all my organics but unfortunately it doesn’t work on my computer at the moment (I believe ATI is to blame, gonna switch to NVidia soon).
whats with the whole 3D Coat jesus thing. I like the development but that whole aspect kind of turns me off, and i was raised catholic. Not opposed to it as much as a bit creeped out by it.
Wasn’t one of the Google Summer of Code projects about doing something like this in Blander?
What happened to that?
In fact how do you find out where all of the GSoC Blender projects got to? I haven’t been able to find a status page that I could use to track the efforts
I was under the impression someone was already working on this in Blender quite a while back now. Not sure if it was in combination with grease pencil…
I just saw this about a week ago. I was going to suggest that this should be looked at by the developers. Looks like you found it too.
@Mutantkamel: What are your system specs? I use ATI with 3D-Coat too, without problems. Just dont use the CUDA version, it does not tell you that your card is not supported.
@Fabs
Well, there’s this. It’s sort of the same thing, but not quite as easy. Work-flow needs to be improved, in my opinion.
http://www.blendernation.com/2010/04/08/new-script-surface-sketching/
Wow, that demo videos are awesome!
Surface Sketching script is a good place to start further development towards this retopo features. I like that you can adjust the desired output polycount and that you can paint in areas where you need more polygons…
Sounds like we need to mix Surface Sketching Script + Unlimited Clay (Tesselation Variation ability) + Multires (to adjust the output polygon count).
@fabs yes there was a summer of code project this year but it seems to be abandoned… . There has been any commits for some time now.
My understand is that the programmer of 3d Coat based this retopology tool on this paper-
http://www.graphics.rwth-aachen.de/uploads/media/bommes_zimmer_2009_siggraph_01.pdf
this would be a great addition for Blender.
@A saurus1: Yes I think that’s the one I had seen! thanks :)
Yeh i was just looking at that the other day 3d coat owns at retopolgy right now.
Never tried using 3dcoat before but its interface is very spacious… I like it. The retopology tool is also a very great time saver. Very cool!
3d coat is a great program to use with Blender – (mesh painting, normal map painting, volume sculpting and retopolgy). I never used 3d coats uv tools. If your thinking about buying 3d coat – “” Buy it Buy it now “” VOLUME SCULPTING and mesh painting kicks ass
From 3d coat:
“As 3D-Coat creators we ask you not to use the program for making pictures which would increase vices, especially pictures that would provoke dissolute thoughts. We all have responsibility before God and before mankind for everything we’re doing. Do we make this world better?”
i’ll stick with zbrush for sculpting (and hope for blender improving the sculpt system in the future), as a artist you can not accept your tools manufacturer to tell you what you are allowed to model. A lot of my models start with a naked girl which might provoke dissolute thoughts – who knows i can’t ask their god, so i can’t use it.
“A lot of my models start with a naked girl which might provoke dissolute thoughts – ”
… I’ve got dissolute thoughts just thinking about it!
@differentsmoke I actually find retopologising harder in 2.5 than in the older builds. Its the one thing thats worse in it.
Snapping replaced the old retopo mode and the key difference is that Ctrl + Left Click created verticies snapped to surfaces in retopo mode but NOT in snapping mode. Because of this you can no longer click out verts along a surface which was a key part in retoplogy.