retopo tools for Max?

wannabeartist

Hi,

As much fun as it is pushing vertices around to conform your low poly mesh to high poly, sometimes I find myself missing for a tool that would do it for me. Any suggestions?

I found this and it looks pretty promising based on the web page - and reasonably priced too - any experiences using it? Alternatives?

Thanks!

airbrush

Max re-topo works fairly well for a free script.

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/max-retopo

If you have a few bucks to spend, this is pretty good...

http://www.thepixelhive.com/wrapit

wannabeartist

Hi,

Call me impatient, but I already went for wrap-it (the same you mentioned). I tried the free one earlier today - it looks promising, but it gave me some errors, so I tough, sod it, I can invest a few euros to get this to work.

Mark Dygert

wannabeartist wrote: »

I found this and it looks pretty promising based on the web page - and reasonably priced too - any experiences using it? Alternatives? Thanks!

Yep, love it, well worth the price.

wannabeartist

Indeed, seems pretty awesome after the first 15 minutes! Can't wait to learn all the goodies in it.

arcandio

I got wrappit the other day too, and I had a head retop'd in a few hours. It works great, and I've had no problems with it at all.

wannabeartist

Only thing that bugs me a little is the relax-feature. It doesn't seem to actually stick with the hi poly, when you use it? The low poly seems to shrink inside the high poly.

Well, just a beginner's mistake obviously, must see all of those videos and practice a little more.

Ruz

i use max's graphite modelling tools or zbrush. takes a little longer but i find it does the job

r_fletch_r

the thing that bugs me about wrapit is the accuracy. i find getting in close and tweaking is a total pain. the verts never settle where i want them to. It seems max's ray casting isnt accurate enough

wannabeartist

I agree.

It's not totally automatic, but it gives you pretty good starting point for the low poly mesh. I find that the relax is a bit more useful, if you first lock the vertices you don't want to relax - If you do it for the whole thing, it won't stick to the hipoly - at least I haven't managed to make it do that.

@Ruz,

Do you use decimation master to get a starting point for the low poly mesh? I've tried that approach a couple of times, but I find the resulting topology pretty messy.

airbrush

3D coat also has some nice retopo tools and very easy and straight forward to use.

wannabeartist

Indeed, just watched the video on their site today. Made me almost regret that I just bought ZBrush Oh well, I guess there are many ways to do this.

r_fletch_r

i wasnt talking about the auto retopo. I have 3DCoat for that. Its the way that moving a vert with wrapping turned on can be quite unpredictable. I find they quite regularly jump from where i place them. its very annoying

Ruz

wannabeartist - I do mainly characters. on the whole I use the base level mesh as my bake mesh, but sometimes retopo on top of that if necessary.
At the very least I will make sure the lowest level matches the silhoutte of the higher pretty closer, using 'cage' as a start

I will use the level 3 to retopo over.

I think if I was doing say rocks I would use decimation master. the main reason for me using it for characters is so I can use it decimate to a level where I can bake my normal maps in max.

wannabeartist

Thanks for the tips!

I'm just shaping my workflow, as I'm new to ZBrush. I'm guessing my biggest mistake is using too dense meshes to start with (when I get from Max to ZBrush), thus forcing unnecessary rework when it's time to do the in-game version.

I just reworked a piece of cloth, that I simulated in Max and took to ZBrush for refining - since the simulated mesh was already pretty dense, I had to do the game mesh from scratch - bad idea - it took 2 days! Without "Wrap it!" I would be still doing it.

Oh well, practice makes perfect

cw

Wrapit is great, graphite tools/polyboost are great too, and they interoperate well.

Best thing about wrapit is that you can use any of your usual max modeling methods and it will constrain to the surface. It's definitely a neat tool. Well worth the cost if you have a bunch of retopo to do.