Are retoplogy tools like Blender's retopoflow 4 worth it for non characters
Hi,
For some context I do environment design (hobby) mainly, but I am starting to do more and more modelling instead of depending on others for models or purchased kits. I have been delving into making rocks both realistic ish (with brushes) and stylised with the base Blender brushes. I saw a Mark Kingsnorth retopo addon and I can get an upgrade discount to retopoflow 4. As I really dont have much to do with characters I am curious how useful retopo addons like the mentioned ones would be for optimising any assets I make espically sculpted ones (I know about baking details and I do plan to do that too). Im curious on peoples thoughts
Replies
These retopo tools usually focus on trying to create nice edge flow, which helps improve subdivision surfaces, makes uvs easier to edit, and makes skinning to bones easier.
But most of those things don’t matter much for rocks. You could try it out though and see if it helps with your specific workflow.
Thanks for the reply, To clarify, the rocks I make fall into two camps: sculpted using Blender's base brushes (Scrape, Inflate, Smooth, etc.) to get a blocky/flat look. Otherwise I use brush packs on a denser mesh for something more realistic. For the brush pack ones I'd just decimate rather than retopo. Where I could see retopo being useful though is on the blockier sculpts and any kitbashed or downloaded models I work with, I don't really touch rocks from asset packs at all.
The step you're on, the one where you're curious about what tools people use to retopo means you need to practice retopo.
If you lean hard on tools (I've been there, big time), you'll slow down your learning, and spend more time trying to get the tools to give you what you want than how much you'd have to spend learning to get effective at retopo.
At some point you'll realize that the tool can't carry you through this, and you'll have to do it yourself.
If you're lucky, you'll waste months instead of years.
I spent years on this.
If you wanna get better at doing rocks, watch YT vids on geology on how mountains become rocks, while pondering how you'd model that.
Make some rocks.
Watch more vidz.
Make more rocks.
Retopo them.
Practice.
You'll get so good at making rocks that you'll want nothing more than get better at something else.
I've spent years trying to get tools to do my bidding, and they never deliver.
In the product there's always something I want to do better, and that want always reveals a weakness in my knowledge.
If I had spent that time learning, I wouldn't be wanting so badly for a script to do my work for me.
I wanted a tool to retopo my highpoly into a lowpoly easily, and after a decade I gave up, instead invented the midpoly and introduced it to my workflow.
What I was missing was knowledge through practice.