Retopology Workflow/Tips

Here you go dudes. Retopo is a pain, but I’ve had to do a LOT at work. I’ve gotten very comfortable in blender and demonstrate some solid tips.

I also give a few pointers with Grease Pencil Retopo, shrinkwrap, projection, looptools, bsurfaces, and a few other pointers that should make your life a lot easier.

Hope you enjoy :slight_smile:

Good tips, love the dry sense of humor too!

Especially found your workaround for locking verts by adding to a group and hiding them. Thanks for the rundown!

Very nice tut! I learned a lot!

I really liked the tut! Nice job showing realistic workflow… but I couldn’t follow some of the keystrokes you were short-cutting with… it would be nice to have a quick primer on that… or a cheat sheet…

ya no problem ill add a cheat sheet on the info.

off the top of my head ones that i probably used are

G for grab/move.
right click is to select.
holding CTRL is either magnet on or magnet off depending on current mode.
Ctrl + left click to extrude to a point
e to extrude
alt m to merge
ctrl r to loop cut.

i’ll tell you if i think of any more

Hi
I Liked the tutorial but I cant find the mesh: Grease Pencil Retopology add-on
I’ve looked in blender.org e.g Blender 2.5 Scripts Catalog and did a search on google but I just can’t find it could someone pls help me?

Nice! Thanks for sharing your workflow, very interesting. I’ll definitely keep this one for the future :slight_smile:

thanks. ya now that i checked, the grease pencil retopology is not available on the trunk blender yet. you can go to graphicall.org and find a good build that should include it. any that says addons + contrib should have it. assuming you use a 64 bit windows, this should have everything you need:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33417300/win64-patched.exe

@ ralusek

Thanks for helping me out though I will have to look for a 32bit windows since my computer is ancient :slight_smile:

Anyway time to head out to graphicall.org and as it worth mentioning again I really appreciate your help :slight_smile:

Thanks for the tutorial, Blender’s Retopo tools are much more powerful than I thought.

Take care

Hi. I am new to Blender. I use the 2.5.8 version I have seen a lot about retopo but I just can’t begin with it :frowning: First of all, I can’t find the retopo button :o

Do I need add-on ?

Here is my screen :
https://img.skitch.com/20110707-f2fe8idmgtyspgwf72fknre6br.preview.jpg

I have followed some tutorials :

  • have a mesh to retopo
  • create a plane
  • tab for edit mode
  • then delete the vertices of the plane and just keep its poo
  • activate magnet
  • activate snap to face
  • activate “project individual element…”
  • then can’t find the retopo button…

Thank you for your help.

there is no retopo button…you just have to ctrl + leftclick where you want the first vertice and you should be going. If you still have trouble just watch the first two minutes of the video in this thread that actually shows you how to do it, even if he chooses not to delete the plane that is used to retopo…you deleted it and that is why you need to ctrl + left click to create a new vertice.

Anyways if you dont get my explanation just watch the video in this very thread as it explains retopo in blender.

Uh ? That’s right there is no retopo button.
I saw it so often in previous tutorials that I imagined that ralusek uses it at a moment.
I had also an error with the “project individual…” button. I though it was activated when on light gray backround but it is the opposite.
I must also confess that ralusek speaks a little too fast for my knowledge of english :eek: :eyebrowlift2:

Hi all,

This retopo tutorial is really amazing, thanks for sharing it!

I know the grease pencil retopo tool is an add-on that isn’t in trunk yet, and I do indeed see the link above to the exe file. But, is there anywhere to just download the add-on by itself? I don’t want all the extra stuff that comes packed into the downloads from graphicall, at this stage, I’m still most comfortable adding in extras as I learn about them and want them. (I’m still pretty new to Blender)

I’ve tried googling for it, but can’t find it. Anyone know where I can find the grease pencil retopo add-on by itself?

Thanks!

It’s actually in the trunk but has been renamed B-surfaces and it’s still kinda buggy. You have to activate it in the addons.

I activated it, and it does indeed have some surface tools, but yes, it’s REALLY buggy, or maybe I’m just using it wrong. Is this really what that retopo tool has become? Just having a nice slick button seems like it was perfect.

grease pencil retopology is not the same as b-surfaces. i demo both in my video. i think they’ve added a few features to b-surfaces since i last used it, and they show it off in this video:

it’s pretty great o.o

but to clarify again, that retopo button is NOT from b-surfaces. in order to get that you need to get a build from graphicall.org, as it’s not in the trunk as far as i know.

it’s called “Grease Pencil Retopology.”

Yeah, that’s a great video for B-surfaces. Not as simple and straightforward as just one-click to turn strokes into mesh, but still cool.

Ok, so basically, there’s nowhere to download the grease pencil retopo add-on by itself.

Thanks all! :slight_smile:

https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-extensions/contrib/py/scripts/addons/gpencil_retopo/

How to: Save both the files on that page and put it in a folder named gpencil_retopo and copy that folder at Blender’s addon location (that should be //Blender\2.58\scripts\addons)