Quad Optimize?

Mark Dygert

Are there any tools, 3rd party apps, scripts or tricks that can optimize meshes not on triangles but on quads?

The ProOptimize modifier in max (formerly PolyCruncher from MooTools) is amazingly helpful and I would really like for it to respect quads but it doesn't. Does anyone know if there is anything out there that optimized like it does but operates on quads. I don't mind paying for it, if its reasonable.

Dataday

It might be worth looking into the new Qremesher that Pixologic put into the latest R4 update. If I am not mistaken it can optimize a mesh in quads. It might be wrong though, havent had time to look into the new features yet.

Also I have heard Meshlab might be capable of quad based optimization as well.

Blaizer

I think there's an script for max that may help you, it "unsubdivides" meshes preserving the curvature of the subdivided model.

here is: http://www.mariussilaghi.com/products/subdivision-reversion

cptSwing

I second Softimage. Best reduction tool I've seen.

ZacD

You can always try the softimage free trial from autodesk, it works well but I haven't used other reduction tools.

throttlekitty

I recently discovered that Maya's Reduce actually works again. My input was a character outfit in quads for sub-d, but it worked surprisingly clean.

Ace-Angel

Sad thing is, I'm not sure if Max has ANY plugins that work with that method.

Almost all the ones I tried either triangulate it right off the bat, or reverse the division levels, but in all cases, they will only work properly on very picky meshes, not making them ideal.

XSI and Maya do offer a solution, but I'm not sure how much of an option they are to you.

gray

@Mark Dygert

there are actually quite a few quad mesh simplification techniques. can you be a little more specific what your looking for. is it just simplification in general?

equil

meshlab is, for all it's quirks, fairly strong in this area.

gray

^ yes meshlab is a good place to start for all things mesh reduction

also there is a fairly simple option, blender :poly127:...

in 2.62 they introduced a remesh modifier based on dual contouring remeshing. it does 100% quad remeshing with sharpness preservation.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.62/Remesh_Modifier

ZacD

That blender one looks horrible, why would you want a constant quad density?

gray

ZacD wrote: »

That blender one looks horrible, why would you want a constant quad density?

there are many uses for a uniform quad reduction. for starters such a mesh will subdivide cleanly with a subdivision scheme like Catmull-Clark etc. also variations of this type of subdivision are used for things like dynamesh. there are many other uses.

triangle and quad reduction/resurfacing algorithms in general do just that. they don't give you a nice animation cage from a bunch of polygons. they are not intended for that.

Renaud Galand

It might sounds silly and maybe not something you'd go for instantly but I found that a combination of Qremesher (introduced in Zbrush 4R4) and reproject all works actually quite well even at pretty low polycount.

Also, as mentioned above, I heard a lot of good things about the quad reduce from maya.

cptSwing

Question for the Meshlab users, how do you reduce to quads? While I haven't fiddled with it a lot (crashes often), I usually only get a triangulated result.

Neox

ZacD wrote: »

That blender one looks horrible, why would you want a constant quad density?

it looks pretty much exactly like remesh or dynamesh in zbrush and it really is usefull, i rarely build any basemeshes these days, this speeds up the form creation process sooooo much

Ace-Angel

Dude, are you kidding me, if you could implement that tech in real-time, you could create 8 bit bakes, a la voxel iteration.

So no, it's not useless, it's how they currently left it out that makes it useless.

ZacD

I meant from a lod perspective, like the example program listed in the original post, they are 2 separate ways of transforming a mesh.

Ace-Angel

For lods, it would work, but only limited to static models, it will look terrible on deformable models, not matter the distance...unless you;re making Slenderman, in which case, kudos!

gray

once you have some form of tessellation and map based pseudo limit surface such as a displacement map or vector displacement map things start to change quite a bit. as your poly count goes up you conform closer to the pseudo limit surface. then the tessellation takes you as close as the system will allow. at some density the 'cage' mesh edge flow really is inconsequential in most cases. so good looking deformation is totally possible. the real issue is to develop an adequate skin solver and deformation pipeline. i don't think that is possible at the moment but looking at some of the displacement research with directx and opengl the potential is definitely there.

Ace-Angel

gray wrote: »

once you have some form of tessellation and map based pseudo limit surface such as a displacement map or vector displacement map things start to change quite a bit. as your poly count goes up you conform closer to the pseudo limit surface. then the tessellation takes you as close as the system will allow. at some density the 'cage' mesh edge flow really is inconsequential in most cases. so good looking deformation is totally possible. the real issue is to develop an adequate skin solver and deformation pipeline. i don't think that is possible at the moment but looking at some of the displacement research with directx and opengl the potential is definitely there.

Slow down buddy! We still haven't solved the issue of good looking normal maps on animated models ;P

sogun

Dataday wrote: »

It might be worth looking into the new Qremesher that Pixologic put into the latest R4 update. If I am not mistaken it can optimize a mesh in quads. It might be wrong though, havent had time to look into the new features yet.
Also I have heard Meshlab might be capable of quad based optimization as well.

I found QRemesher the be best for creating an equal size quad surface, which is best for sculpting in Mudbox. I retopoed a lowpoly tank-top over my female model, but realized it did not have the perfect Equally Sized Equally Distributed - ESED - quad structure everywhere on the model. ESED structure can be created in Zbrush from initialized primitives - by using Unified Skin - to get a perfectly tiled tesselated slab for example. But on organic models - having curved contours - both Unified Skin and Dynamesh produces weird edge-loops, triangles & irregular stuff.

QRemesher however (on a custom edge-looped lowpoly model created by retopo) creates a perfect ESED quad mesh by clicking the DOUBLE button in the tool. Made the perfect low-poly surface, exactly what i wanted. Mudbox is very happy with it.

TorQue[MoD]

Not to necro a long dead post, but 3D Coat is an absolutely amazing tool with its Auto Retopo function. Seriously flawless meshes from that tool.

Also, personally I've never been able to get good results from MeshLab. At first the program seemed amazing until I realized it absolutely ruins the mesh topology and smoothing and creates some absolutely horrid geometry. I strongly DO NOT recommend that program.

Neox

Neox wrote: »

it looks pretty much exactly like remesh or dynamesh in zbrush and it really is usefull, i rarely build any basemeshes these days, this speeds up the form creation process sooooo much

lol shut the fuck up noob!

haha that quote from me, today i do almost anything with quick basemeshes in production as they are so much more flexible to clients wishes in many cases.


@TorQue: i just recently tried to use it and the meshes are pretty much as useless as zremesher meshes, even with guides they only follow the shapes on pretty simple meshes. i dunno, when it comes to animatable meshes nothing beats hand retopo or modelling right now. Sadly i would love to get rid of this.
Maybe i'm able to show some examples from one of our productions at one point but after testing automatic solutions from zbrush and 3dcoat on some meshes i just did the retopo from scratch in less time.
Still its tedious work, i would love to replace with a automatic solution.

JacqueChoi

Bring into Zbrush, and recreate Subdivisions.

Bam!

(NIzza taught me taht sweet ass shizzle)

TorQue[MoD]

Neox - might be because I only use it for environment meshes. The auto unwrap without any guidelines is absolutely beautiful for rock meshes (what I've used it for most recently). Characters is another ordeal entirely :P

Mask_Salesman

Simplygon is a pretty good tool for unreal lodding and has a quads function. I haven't tried any extensive topo tests with it tho.

TorQue[MoD]

Simply gone is great for use with UDK but sadly it doesn't work for anything else. And I'm also not sure at the topology it creates, but it all looks good inside of UDK so I'd imagine its fine.

Neox

the topology looks good for a distance, its by no means topology an artist would approve. but it works and takes the shitty job of doing LODs by hand away from us.