Retopology Tools?
polycounter lvl 10
So I am wondering if there are retoplogy tools that are faster now especially for topology when it comes to animation for 3d characters. The last time I tried it, it was a time consuming process..very time consuming. So I am wondering in a production environment, are there tools that speed this up, I have heard of zmesher in ZBrush, Topogun and auto retopology tools. How effective are these softwares/ tools to creating animation friendly topology for sculpted characters? What about very complex sculpts as well? or manual retopology is still the best way to go? or these tools are used and then u manually correct certain areas?
Or its just better to model from a 2d reference manually in maya/ 3dsmax as u create the character while maintaining good topology in one go and add details in a sculpting software afterwards.
I gather that in most production houses, high res sculpts are required by directors for them to visualize and approve the characters and then the approved sculpts are made animation friendly so does this do away with using 2d concept art and modeling the old fashioned way which enables good topology and animation friendly models with no time consuming retopology.
Just wondering..
Or its just better to model from a 2d reference manually in maya/ 3dsmax as u create the character while maintaining good topology in one go and add details in a sculpting software afterwards.
I gather that in most production houses, high res sculpts are required by directors for them to visualize and approve the characters and then the approved sculpts are made animation friendly so does this do away with using 2d concept art and modeling the old fashioned way which enables good topology and animation friendly models with no time consuming retopology.
Just wondering..
Replies
I have very little experience in Topogun from years ago, but I've used both 3D Coat and Maya for manually retopoing a character. 3D coat works very well with some minor annoyances, but in Maya 2018 and 2019, Autodesk fixed most of the critical issues that made retopoing in Maya with Quad Draw a pain (gone are issues like the horrible lag, and now your mesh is transparent while working with quad draw, making it tons easier to see what you're doing).
This is the approach I take some times, modeling the low poly with good topology from the start, exporting that to Zbrush, and sculpting all the small details in Zbrush. The greatest limitation I've found so far though is that you can't add any extreme detail that would break the form much, since you'll be baking all of that high poly detail back down onto your original low poly. Worst case scenario, if you do need to make big changes to the form of the character in ZBrush, you could always go back and modify your low poly's form in Maya a bit to match your high poly though.
But anyway, my workflow is basically this: if you need to retopo a prop that won't be animated and topology isn't a big concern, decimation master works well. If you want to auto retopo a high poly sculpt with good edge flow that won't deform too much, ZRemesher works very well. And if you want to retopo a character that needs excellent edge flow and will deform a lot, I'd go for manual - Quad Draw in Maya is my go-to these days. The process is much, much faster than it was years ago.
Curious to hear what others have to say!
Guys, How do u model in smooth mode like this in 3dsmax while moving verts in low poly mode:
Or i do a volume sculpt and a fast really low retopo and go from there.
@musashidan Thanks for the info
EDIT: Check out this retopology addon for Blender:
Then you can use this for every head you create and never have to retop. This can be used wirh the Wrap3 workflow for all future heads.
@gnoop I will ty out 3dsmax then for retopo and see how well it works. Thanks.
The actual retopo tools are very slow (including the newest ones), it's a nightmare for me, a time consuming process i don't want to see all the days. That thing of painting polys on a surface, poly by poly, or a tiny loop of polys, one by one, is a Hell. Retopo is very slow.
It's faster to start modelling your concept/model with a simple low poly subdivision model and add all the details/shapes/forms in a progressive way (i mean, subdivision lvl 0 > lvl 1 > lvl 2). Later, we can add all the fine details we can't add with polygonal topology in apps such as Mudbox or Zbrush.
This example is from 2009, and i still do the same, but faster. I can control where i add the edge loop for the UV seam or the amount of polygons needed for deformation. The best, i don't need to work with high resolution meshes and i can fix proportions and shapes moving a few points.
When i need to use repotoly tools, when i can, i use Zbrush with Zremesher and i paint the loops i want (i go for lower details). The result is not good at all, but enough for GOZ + edit in Max.
Forms and topology, all in one go.
https://hippydrome.com/
After further research, sculpting is still the way to go especially in a production environment since these characters need approval first before they are made production ready so retopology is here to stay whether we like it or not.
It would be silly to spend time modeling from a box with all the right topology intact only for the character design to be rejected or huge changes need to be made.
This interview offers some useful info:
https://www.riggingdojo.com/2016/02/13/disney-character-artist-shares-his-story/
Like i did on this zombie here. On this one i used auto retopo and deleted the parts that would need to be done by hand. Eye sockets and nose.
https://vimeo.com/271554026
Depending on the pipeline or the use of the head i end up in a diffrent workflow.
But if im free and can do what i want i would go for a volume sculpt.
@EGGO I remember Topogun. But there are faster tools now for retopology.
Have you guys heard of this:
https://www.keentools.io/facebuilder
TopoGun 3 beta starts in October!
It took so long because TopoGun had to be rewritten from scratch, to make room for the new features.
Stay tuned, in the following period a series of presentation videos will be posted.
@musashidan I agree. Most of them are not there yet but u know these softwares won't put all their features in at one go since they want to save some for their next release.
Defintely a better way to create a base mesh locking down proportions then refine with sculpting.
Would be nice if u could do this with the body as well.
A combination of Speedretopo and RetopoMT(purely for the contours feature) seems the best solution, and both free.
Topogun 3 beta is supposedly out now, but trying to find information on it is like blood from a stone.
http://vimeo.com/403023432
It really has to be good because in all those years it took him to dev 3.0 he's now competing with Wrap 3.