3D Coat 3.5 Auto-retopology is great!

sande · Sep 2010

3D Coat 3.5 Auto-retopology and other new features

Just noticed that new Automatic tool for retopology - christmas came early this year!

I've been doing my retopo in 3D Coat for awhile, but this new system is just god send - this will save countless hours for our team.

Works just like shown in the video. You get very clean meshes which either work straight away or are a great starting point to optimize even further by hand in 3D Coat. Works nicely with Sculptris - basic shape in Sculptris, then few clicks and you have a nice quad mesh to sculpt further in ZBrush/Mudbox...

I haven't been this excited since I first tried pelt mapping years ago!

Highly recommended for everyone who has to do retopo for sculpted highres models.

Xoliul · Sep 2010

That does look amazing. They have that really cool spaceship hardsurface video a bit further down; I wonder if the auto-retopo works with something that... That would really interest me.

Ged · Sep 2010

The autoretopo is excellent, Im using it for creating basemeshes for sculpting.

My workflow is to create a voxel concept shape then autoretopo then sculpt then autoretopo and clean at the end of the process to get your lowpoly. works great so far

PolyHertz · Sep 2010

I finally gave auto-retopo a go yesterday, can see this speeding up the process a lot. Its not without problems though: It creates n-gons and tris here and there, and seems to have to convert imported meshes to voxels before it can work. You also have to be very careful with the density painting, as the areas directly surrounding the paint will often be the least dense throughout the mesh (with the denisity getting higher and more even further away).

MagicSugar · Sep 2010

PolyHertz wrote: »

Its not without problems though: It creates n-gons and tris here and there,

True. But 3dc's other retopo tools are still available to clean up, i.e. blow the n-gons & tris and simply stroke or rebuild new loops or quads. I don't think auto-retopo was meant as an end all feature.

leslievdb · Sep 2010

saw a preview of this a while back, already loved 3dcoat for its retopping tools but this is just awesome. gonna give it a go lateron

PolyHertz · Sep 2010

MagicSugar wrote: »

True. But 3dc's other retopo tools are still available to clean up, i.e. blow the n-gons & tris and simply stroke or rebuild new loops or quads. I don't think auto-retopo was meant as an end all feature.

Yea am not expecting it to be a be-all end-all solution, but can always still hope for improvements in some areas

ScoobyDoofus · Sep 2010

If you plan out your guide strokes well, you can derive a pretty great game-ready mesh straight out of auto-retopo. I did a couple tests just yesterday, and the results are very compelling.

Calabi · Sep 2010

Yeah its pretty good did a few tests recently.

First one is without guides which is a mess but I guess ok for static stuff.

But the last one with guides is that not close to being usable for animation?

konstruct · Sep 2010

mudbox and zbrush best be shakin their boots. Unless they start working on voxel tech ASAP 3d coat could be the game changer.

[Deleted User] · Sep 2010

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Kewop Decam · Sep 2010

that is pimp

bugo · Sep 2010

I would say 3dcoat is a middleware. Why? Simple, it doesnt have the brushes you are used to use in Zbrush or Mudbox, it does has some limitations and lots of bugs, but if you are looking to paint, uv fast and retopology fast, its the best software in the market for that. It's also very useful for 3d sketching if you want to fast design a character or a prop with voxels.

McGreed · Sep 2010

What I always find very fascinating is that fact that its just one guy making this, compared to all the people on other applications...Kinda makes them lazy and bad

ZacD · Sep 2010

Calabi wrote: »

Yeah its pretty good did a few tests recently.

First one is without guides which is a mess but I guess ok for static stuff.

But the last one with guides is that not close to being usable for animation?

Needs better guides, IMO.

r_fletch_r · Sep 2010

McGreed: Yes but Mudbox's/Zbrushs workflows and tools are much more polished and production ready. lots of stuff in 3DC feels awkward and thrown together by comparison.
I personally think 3DC isnt going to change any games until the development focuses on making the existing features cohesive and stable. At the moment you cant even see a smooth shaded subD preview in the retopo room and there is no support for multiple materials in the paint room..

Blaizer · Sep 2010

This is what i could call "auto-retopology with bad results". Seriously, it could has potential, but the results are not so good imho.

What it would be nice, is to have total control of what we do, defining the rings/loops and watching the results in realtime, and at least, working with different levels of detail and not with very dense meshes that need too much work of tweaking.

Calabi · Sep 2010

Your right Blazier its probably the worst topology in the history of topologys, you could probably do it twice as fast manually, the developer completely wasted his time with this, following the scientific papers, and getting the complex theory into reality. He should have done just what you said.

MagicSugar · Sep 2010

Calabi wrote: »

the developer completely wasted his time with this, following the scientific papers, and getting the complex theory into reality. He should have done just what you said.

Wuuutttt??? "Wasted"?

You retopologized machine parts hard surface before? It's not just characters or creatures that you can retopo you know.

And 3dcoat has already other retopo tools similar to those in Topogun. This is just icing on the cake, a huge time saver....if you have it.

Marine · Sep 2010

Your sarcasm detector is broken, Magic

MagicSugar · Sep 2010

Marine wrote: »

Your sarcasm detector is broken, Magic

I've battled too much versus teens in Starcraft 2....with the voice chat off.

3D Coat 3.5 Auto-retopology is great!

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