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Re-topology is there anything on the horizon?

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ExcessiveZero polycounter lvl 6
So much has changed but seemingly re-topology has stayed relatively the same for the past several years, perhaps it is just more noticeable for me as its a part of the process I find tedious, some people I notice have had similar gripes with creating uvs.

for ideal optimized geo retopoligizing by hand seems the only way to go (doubly so for non organic surfaces) as auto retopology tends to fall painfully short in my experience and is usually as far as I can tell just being used as a cleaner base to retopo from, doubly so when it comes to hard surface.

 I was just curious towards the rest of your thoughts on it do you think it is "stuck in the stone age" compared to most other advancements in workflows and processes, do you see some kind of a major advancement on the horizon? or have you seen one already lol in which case please share!

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  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    I was just curious towards the rest of your thoughts on it do you think it is "stuck in the stone age" compared to most other advancements in workflows and processes
    I'd say so. A fair number of people still use Topogun, which is really saying something since it got abandoned about 5 years ago. ZBrush in particular is just criminally bad at retopology.
  • Burpee
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    Burpee polycounter lvl 9


    Still waiting for an update but I think retopo will be in the futur 100% automatic ( I hope so :d )
  • ExcessiveZero
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    ExcessiveZero polycounter lvl 6
    Burpee said:


    Still waiting for an update but I think retopo will be in the futur 100% automatic ( I hope so :d )
    Wow :open_mouth: that looks amazing for characters I only hope it is reasonably priced and works, could be a game changer in some regards
  • Blond
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    Blond polycounter lvl 9
    I remember Blender having truckoad  of awesome reptopology methods..

    Just check this video out around 3:30..

    https://youtu.be/5RR06wjt2rs?t=3m30s
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    That tool definitely looks like some of the best I've seen. It's already two or three years old though, and I don't think they've been doing much if anything to advance on it.
    Also, it's in Blender, which balances out that high-poly to low-poly workflow by having some of the worst UV mapping tools and no plug-ins to improve it...
  • myclay
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    myclay polycounter lvl 10
    Retopoflow 2.0 is currently actively being developed, no release date/pricing is out yet.
    And there are hints that there might be some Retopoflow demos at Siggraph this year.

    Regarding Blenders UV tools;
    watch this video called;
    UV unwrapping gets an overhaul
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLUoLQUK3-s

    there is also a UV packing addon for Blender available
    https://gumroad.com/l/UVShotPacker#

    and some nifty custom optimizations for the UV editor;
    https://gumroad.com/l/Smart_uv#

    Grimwolf  
    please be more specific on what you would like to get improved in Blender.
    The Blender Community is open and listening and improving Blender on a daily basis.

  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    I use the freeform tools in Max along with the topoproject script. I also get decent results from zremesher with guidelines drawn in, usually by slicing my mesh and then using frame mesh to quickly put loops where I want them. For prototyping I just zremesh and then autorig in Mixamo to have a character in game as fast as possible that I'll replace later with a cleaner mesh.
  • Chimp
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    Chimp interpolator
    retopo is ripe for machine learning. 

    my current workflow though is generally zremesh with guides for the broad areas, then take that into 3d coat and delete all the joint areas / face and do them manually for anything deformable that isn't a hero asset (which would get done fully manually). Static objects just get decimated unless there's a good reason not to.
  • MrHobo
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    MrHobo polycounter lvl 13
    I don't really trust leaving the entire process to automation, but I do think 99% of it could be automated. Ideally I would want a system where I load my mesh and then click on the finger joints, knuckles, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, chin, jaw corners, nostrils, nose tip, lips, mouth corners, check bones, brow, eyes, hips, groin, knees, feet, toe joints and then the software would use those points to build the correct topology.

    Currently what I have is a very solid base mesh that I can use at subd 1 or 2 depending on polycount and call it a day. I haven't had to  build hand or face topology from scratch in a while. Just finish sculpting and export out the parts I need.

  • carter2422
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    carter2422 polycounter lvl 6
    Grimwolf said:
    That tool definitely looks like some of the best I've seen. It's already two or three years old though, and I don't think they've been doing much if anything to advance on it.
    Also, it's in Blender, which balances out that high-poly to low-poly workflow by having some of the worst UV mapping tools and no plug-ins to improve it...
    Hey! Designer of RetopoFlow here. Like @myclay said we're working on RetopoFlow 2.0 right now. It'll be a free upgrade for all 1.x customers and will continue to be available via the Blender Market: https://www.blendermarket.com/products/retopoflow

    We're hoping to demo an early alpha version at SIGGRAPH next month. The main thing we're doing is unifying all tools into a cohesive retopology mode, making retopology work more like sculpting than edge modeling. 

    We've never stopped working on it; progress is just slow as it's a side project.

  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    still takes flipping forever, then if you want to make major changes then aggh
  • myclay
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    myclay polycounter lvl 10
    @carter2422
    cool to know those details :)

    Some features where able to keep already unwrapped areas, is it still possible to keep already unwrapped areas when using the unified retopo functions?

    Another question;
    Any chances to see Edge patches gets added or is included in it?




  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    if retopo is needed for organic shapes then i either have a workable basemesh as my sculpt level 0,  or project the topology i want over the highres. and for hard surface assets there's usually a sub-d cage available to serve as a starting point.

    the auto-retopo solutions i've tried don't satisfy my clean-mesh-OCD and quad-draw over surfaces seems inferior to projecting proven topology so i'm not even looking at fixing retopo.

    the only solution i use very occasionally is 'instant meshes' for quickies.

  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    @thomasp same for me. Projecting clean topo onto cleaned up scans is so easy in ZB.
  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    for projecting geo onto a new highress i would go with the russian scanner...
    http://www.russian3dscanner.com/
  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    @oglu wrapx is nearly 400 quid though. ZB most people already use.
  • CreativeSheep
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    CreativeSheep polycounter lvl 8
    It's seems as if they're re-inventing the wheel.  
  • Octo
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    Octo polycounter lvl 17
    Zbrush can't do what Wrapx does.
  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    Octo said:z
    Zbrush can't do what Wrapx does.
    Well, of course it can't.  Wrapx is a dedicated tool for this specific purpose. But with a little manual work (oh, that dreaded expression these days) and knowledge, ZB is more than capable in this regard. And doesn't cost an extra 400.

    Obviously it makes sense for studios to use Wrap but lone artists who already have ZB and are only doing this work every so often?
  • Aabel
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    Aabel polycounter lvl 6
    You can do the wrapX technique in Houdini apprentice for free http://forums.odforce.net/topic/28907-wrapping-geo-like-wrap3/#comment-164288
     
     And you won't just be limited to 'wrapping' polygons :wink:
  • myclay
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    myclay polycounter lvl 10
    Bummer that Houdini Apprentice is only for non commercial work.

    I regularly use Wrap and WrapX and can only recommend them.
    Combining Wrap/WrapX with Retopoflow and other plugins/programs is a sure way of finishing the Retopo step much faster.

    Here is an extreme case I did recently with Wrap. (please excuse all the spinning)

    Some manual clean-up for relaxing stressed areas is still needed but any program which has a brush and re-projection function available should be able to do it. For that task I tend to use Topogun or one of the first versions of Wrap which had a Brush function.
  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    @myclay I installed the wrap 3 trial last night as I was Impressed with the vids. The experience, however, was far from impressive. 

    First I tried wrapping a headscan of my own(1mill tris) to their default head basemesh. The sim ran so long that I had to leave it overnight and this morn it had crashed.

    So I went to a simpler example and used their neutral hand scan and base mesh. The sim ran about 3 hours and had only gotten half way through the 3rd (final) subdiv pass. At this point my enthusiasm had dwindled and I shut it down (through task manager as apparently it is an uninterruptable process)

    Wrapping node settings at default. I can't find any info on min sys requirements on the site or google. My workstation is not available so I'm using a latest gen i7 laptop with 16 gigs ram on win10. I thought this machine could surely handle the most basic sim using their own assets?

    Can you relay your own experiences on this? Cheers. 
  • myclay
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    myclay polycounter lvl 10
    Have you checked, that the basemesh is added into the first socket of your Wrapping node?

    It is recommended for quick computations, that your basemesh has not more than ~30k polygons since the more polygons your Basemesh has, the longer the computation time is.
    According to the developer, a 100k basemesh might take up to half an hour of computation time.
    Your scan/sculpted mesh should have around max 3-5 million polygons.

    Wrap/WrapX makes heavy usage of the CPU,the GPU is used when you have Nodes for Texture transfer.
    The Rigid Alignment Node is needed when your Scan /Sculpted Mesh is to small or in a strange Angle and allows the shortening of computation time once your Meshes are aligned.
    Using the Select Points Node wisely can massively shorten the computational time.

    It usually takes only a couple minutes of computing time on a desktop i7-3770.


  • carter2422
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    carter2422 polycounter lvl 6
    myclay said:
    @carter2422
    cool to know those details :)

    Some features where able to keep already unwrapped areas, is it still possible to keep already unwrapped areas when using the unified retopo functions?

    Another question;
    Any chances to see Edge patches gets added or is included in it?
    Whoops, I never got a reply notification. 

    Existing UVs will be maintained, no worries there. In 2.0 we're writing directly to Blender's edit mesh, using the BMesh API. The one thing that likely won't be supported is translating Vertex location changes over to the UVs while modifying via RetopoFlow. It's likely possible but way out of our scope. 

    Edge Patches in it's current form likely won't make it in but we're aiming to take the basic idea and integrate it within the 2.0 architecture. So you should see something like it, to a degree! 

    If you're interested in 2.0 then check out my twitter feed, I'm posting GIFs as we make progress. I may make a dedicated thread for it once we're a bit further along. 
  • Butthair
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    Butthair polycounter lvl 11
    You have a couple shrink wrap tools in Maya that you can use (best when doing components of a model - arms, fingers, leg, foot, chest - then bridge the transitions. There is also a plugin called Wrap-It (people use this?).

    Maya also has quad draw which you can use on a live surface (your decimation zbrush sculpt).

    You can also topo using Zremsher lines (it's a brush) to control zremesher better. And for working on hard surfaces, the workflow preference is breaking up sections where possible (seam lines, extrem angle changes) and zremeshing that part of the mesh.
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