How promising is this retopo workflow? (3dCoat -> modeling package to clean up)

jiggywattart

after spending 4 hours manually retopo'ing every poly into a 3k+ poly mesh, I vowed never to put myself through that pain again!

I spent the past couple days trying to find the laziest/most efficient way to retopo and this was the most promising method I could find (but instead of "Zbrush sketch", it'd be the decimated high poly):


I messaged the artist in hopes that he could elaborate on this workflow but does anyone else use a similarly dirty automatic retopo strategy? (hopefully that doesn't require 3dcoat)

oglu

Four hours is to much?
We spend here days to retopo hero assets. Auto retopo can help in some cases. But most of the time you need todo it by hand.

Linko

I hate retopology too, I hate that so much that I have built my own tool with someone else based on the decimation modifier of Blender called AssetGen (I show it bellow).

After doing many tests with it on downloaded models, I have discovered that the manual retopology is overrated, there is no point of having a good looking edge flow on a static mesh even if it looks organic, what matters is the amount of details and the silhouette preserved at the polycount limit and for that nothing is better than a decimation.

So the laziest way to retopologize is to use an asset generator tool (we should say static asset generator, because they are bad for animation). They also do the UV Mapping (sometimes generate too much islands) and packing, AssetGen can generate stylized textures too.

They aren't for "lazy" artists, but for artists that want to become much more productive by letting those intermediate and annoying tasks to the computer. You save around 10 hours per asset, this allows to experiment designs because you can generate your LP quickly and see it in a game engine. Each time you want to update it, you do 2-3 clicks in those tools to generate a new game asset from the high poly and you export your mesh to overwrite your game files.

The tools to choose from:

AssetGen for Blender (free), it does the stylized texturing but the UV Map is bad and it doesn't work well with a lot of tiny meshes. It allows to go from the high poly to the game asset in less than a minute. It will be redo for Blender 2.8 and will have new tools to make the workflow even faster:

https://youtu.be/-Fy7g3g6uCI

InstaLOD Studio XL 2018, it is the most advanced tool to go from an high poly to a game asset in around 10 minutes, it can work with complex high polys (not for sale yet, only for testers):

https://youtu.be/3g6j53x1YqA

InstaLOD for Maya (not for sale yet, only for testers):

https://youtu.be/lff34qPDo0E

InstaLOD for Unreal Engine 4 (not for sale yet, only for testers):

https://youtu.be/Cn82CzYi9go

Houdini Game Dev Toolset, it has a non destructive node system workflow (it is officially developed by SideFX and available for free):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxpImb2tGII&list=PLkzopwqcFevZLnQIIU8GTGwg4o7RaarZU

InstaLOD does a remeshing until it is around 12 millions tris, it removes the intersections at the same time, then it performs a decimation. It is possible to do that in ZBrush like you can see here:

https://youtu.be/WYtPYrTbQfs

InstaLOD also performs an high bit-depth normal map baking and does a dithering automatically.

If you want to do that manually, the semi-lazy step is to use the limited dissolve of Blender, it removes every geometry on flat surfaces then a decimation. On the decimation modifier, hold shift on the slider and reduce the polycount and stop it just before a deformation. Then you can use the BoolTool addon of Blender to boolean Union everything to remove every intersections, but sometimes it doesn't work properly. This is what AssetGen does automatically.

You can also automate a quick rigging.

sprunghunt

If you're going to have a cleanup step in 3dsmax then it doesn't matter much how you get a retopo mesh. I would personally use zremesh as it would cut out having to use another program. 

Certain affinity has used a workflow that's completely automated that's pretty interesting. 

https://youtu.be/072HkIJ_DMs