Blender F2 addon: retopology workflow demonstration

7 responses

1. Ricardo Raimundo

   22 September 2015 at 23:47

   Thank you for f2 Paul.

   Without a doubt, the most useful Blender addon ever!
   Thanks for the time lapses too.

   Reply
2. Brian Lockett

   23 September 2015 at 03:01

   I use F2 sometimes, and this is a useful addon. I think it’s a top addon for Blender, and for it, you have my thanks. Though, in terms of re-topology, I just can’t help but feel that, even with F2’s help, the process of retopo in Blender is still, unfortunately, painful.

   I couldn’t help but think that, in the time it took you to retopo this one object, most artists could’ve retopo’d three objects in top-notch re-topology programs like TopoGun, or a mix of manual and auto-retopo in 3D-Coat.

   F2 retopo’ing is certainly useful, but it’s still a lot of work. I think this reason is perhaps why F2 isn’t as widely-used as it could be is that its fullest potential hasn’t yet been brought out. It’s helpful, but retopo’ing is still a fussy nightmare.

   My hope is that the Contours developers at CG Cookie will incorporate the best of F2 and BSurfaces, to create a new (or simply remodified) set of retopo toolset in Blender, and to even create a new Retopo Mode in Blender.

   I feel that F2 is a powerful ally, but it’s incomplete in regard to the time-consuming task of retopo’ing, only because it tackles one aspect of retopo in one way. I wish it’d play better with other existing tools.

   If you guys could find a way to seamlessly unite some of the more useful ways of retopology (F2, Contours, BSurfaces, Shrinkwrap modifier, traditional surface-snapping, Remesh modifier, etc.) as one interchangeable tool/Mode, that’d be astonishing, honestly.

   Even in the commercial software world, re-topology’s still one of those areas that’s pretty elusive. Even the mighty ZBrush needs better focus on re-topology tools that works smoothly, predictably and efficiently.

   It’d be wonderful if Blender saw an effort to turning one of the mundane and time-consuming of parts of 3D creation into something that takes minutes instead of hours. I think all the pieces for this potential already exist, for the most part–they just have to be unified and fit to make the workflow more efficient.

   Reply
   1. Brian Lockett

      23 September 2015 at 03:07

      But let me not leave this page without saying again:

      Thanks for F2.

      Reply
3. Paul

   23 September 2015 at 11:03

   Well said Brian! Totally agree with you!

   Reply
4. 1D_Inc

   23 September 2015 at 21:46

   Hello, guys!
   First thing first, I want to thank you for your comments, it very pleasant to read them =)

   Some words about F2.
   I use it almost every time I use Blender – in retopology, in organic and even in architectural modeling – I love quad topology in any kind of geometry.
   So, many many thanks for Bartius Crouch, who wrote it, and made as option of F key (I was previously asking for Q), and Alexander Nedovisin, who brought an AutoGrab mode via single decorator.
   They are just awesome =)

   Well, Brian, about retopology, I think it can be interesting.
   Basically, I (as kind a developer) asked for F2 for ability sketch topology fast to make organic surfaces (as a hobby – I’m an architect, so there are no organic surfaces can be found at my work) to develop algorythm for automatic retopology.
   That’s the way I compose my tools – I do manual work to determine what from it can be automated, finding algorythm, and order tool, or toolset (like 1D_Scripts or Bargool_1D_tools)
   That’s why most of my model can be found at Blenswap – I made them to figure out how it’s making process can be automated.
   So, this video – is one of my recorded attempts to get algorythm, that can be programmed functionaly =)
   And that’s how F2 was borned – it was inspired by Topogun, and it made Blender my favorit manual retopology editor.
   And, actually, here Topogun ends – I can’t remeber any stuff from it, that can make it sufficiently faster than Blender+F2. (I will be very pleasant, if you will show me some)

   After I’ve got F2, I was retopologising things to figure out automatic algorythm. And here comes trouble.
   There are no any kind of automatic algorythms yet, that can deal with surfaces like this one – with hard detalisation difference.
   Any autoretopo methods (from 3DCoat, Zremesher and Artmesh, that can autoretopo even CAD models) are good for pretty simple/linear surfaces, like characters or animals, and thier result is too dense, or needed to be fixed manually.
   (Artmesh – http://www.cgrecord.net/2015/06/download-artmesh-conversion-tool.html?m=1 )

   So, manual retopology is the only way to get nice predictable result in this case.
   Here were interesting papers about Interactive Quadrangulation – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8K5CyQB_kc , but it’s SIGGRAPH 2015 =)
   Retopoflow addon has got closer to this solution, but it also can’t be used on mesh like in my video.
   I was also thinking about workflow with “patches” – that’s why I splits model with topology stripes, and filling them with F2 – I was trying to determine patches and imagine how autoretopo program can behave to fill them.
   But it already has got too deep without any kind of clue ))

   But thank you for your comments, and thank for using F2 addon ;)

   Reply
5. Juan

   24 September 2015 at 12:07

   Great addon, thanks. one question though:
   Why would ever someone need to retopologize a baroque table? Except if you are going to animate it I guess…

   Reply
   1. 1D_Inc

      24 September 2015 at 18:40

      Thank you) As I said before, I made this to figure out methods of automatization of organic shapes.
      Why baroque? Well, I’m pretty oldscool, and I love any lind of easyweight models with nice topology)
      http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?277242-Blender-Baroque-(organic-modeling-and-retopology)&p=2940252&viewfull=1#post2940252

      Reply