Retopo and Rectangles

Kessler

Hi guys, Is there a good technique to retopo mechanical sculpts? I can retopo dinosaurs and kittens all day long but the rectangular prism eludes me. I will just do it in max like normal person for now but I am curious if you can take quick and dirty zbrush mech stuff into 3d coat and turn out some magic.

redhonour

Hard surface retopo stymies me too. There don't seem to be as many tools to help that out as there are for organic shiz

3D Coat's released these guides to hard surface auto retopo. It looks like it's still very much a WIP to me, but it's the only game in town far as I know

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trTqnA2M9iE"]Quick Tip: Auto-Retopo for Hard Surface Models Pt.1 - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoMewuVdg74"]Quick Tip: Auto-Retopo for Hard Surface Models Pt.2 - YouTube[/ame]

Quack!

There isn't a whole lot of options. The main method is just brute force it.

I highly recommend when creating your high poly object, you make the base shapes as close to your low poly triangle density as you want in game. So give cylinders in the high poly the proper sides that will be in your low poly, so all you have to do is duplicate and remove edge loops. Of course you can't always get away with this, but if you plan ahead of time, this can help you save a bunch of time when you have to create low poly details.

Butthair

I have a tut on hard surface modeling. It really is about making the lo poly before jumping to the hi poly too soon. Staying low is better and a lot easier in the long run. Really it's just about adding them edge loops and floater geometry.

http://www.conradgarcia.com/uploads/1/7/1/7/17178532/sfc_buildingthebishophires.png

Michael Knubben

I've recently switched from 3dcoat to Blender for retopology, as it's just much easier to be able to use all poly-modeling tools and primitives. Particularly for hard surface stuff, being able to add a cylinder or sphere and snap it to your highpoly is much faster than attempting to do it by hand (or automatically).
Being able to select an edgeloop and flatten it along a surface, copy edgeloops from your highpoly into your lowpoly... that stuff just isn't easy (or possible) in a lot of other retopo solutions.

Plugins like F2 and Bsurfaces really help speed things up as well.

poopipe

Wrapit for max is the best solution ive found for when you want precision and snappy stuff

Kessler

Oh wow. Thanks for all the info guys. I will study the resources you have given.

CutePrity

m new to this,hope will learn from this

Kessler

You will learn cutepritty.