We know RetopoFlow is on its way and is likely to get done soon or late.
And there’s this thread going on about improving blender’s retopo capabilities, possibly a polemic topic about creating a completely new mode for retopology (to be clear, I dont think its a good idea).
I was wishing to create a retopo addon but to be honest, I dont think its going to be any better than retopoflow, so Instead I am working on a way to transfer and reuse topology, Its hard but I’m getting there.
As far as I can tell there are some guys here trying to create a decent addon for retopology, I wonder if the comunity should join forces somehow and create a free addon to solve those issues.
There’s Tesselator, but I’m honestly incredibly disappointed with it so far. It works nowhere near as well as advertised (surprise). Candidly, the developer should pull it down. It’s noted that the 2.8 version is still being refined, but it works so badly that it seems dishonest that money is being made. Anyway, the point of all that is I agree, there’s a sad lack of good options for this.
I am the developer of tesselator, I know it isnt as good, it was the best I could get it to work and hope you are not using it for character retopo, I specifically stated that its not meant for that purpose. Could you show the results you are getting? I am curious to see.
I’m glad I found you here, because as I was going to take screenshots of what I meant, I realized I spoke in haste and owe you an apology. For some reason I can’t begin to imagine, it’s suddenly working The strange part is, I just tried it on a model that I tried literally yesterday. Yesterday, I got a weird deformation that split a cube in half and made a royal mess… today, I get flawless results. I think the universe is telling me not to be a prick Either way, I apologize! I was wrong, I’ll freely admit it.
It was a modified cube, but the vertice count was only about 12K. What’s the minimum recommended vertice count for successful Tesselation? So far, the only time I’ve had good results was just now, but I also was trying on 80K+ vertices (same model as the 12K, just with a couple other pieces.) In retrospect, it may be that I’m just foolishly trying on a vertice count that is too low, and there’s nothing wrong but user error Anyway, sorry to derail your original topic. Thanks for working your magic somehow, your addon seems to have fixed itself
If someone was able to reproduce the quality of zremesher i would happily buy it! I know the developer of zremesher will eventually release his Blender version of Quadremesher here the thread on polycount;
His tool looks amazing, but we know how dangerous is to retopo characters with automatic remeshers.
I was thinking more of a user assisted tool for manually drawing the polygons, Mesh F2 tends to be enough for me but it doesn’t seem to be the consensus.
I really like your approach for fitting pre-built topology, that’s definitely something Blender is missing.
I think we need to distinguish between 3 types of retopology, as they get mixed up way too often in conversations like these.
Automatic, which can be used for mid/background models not requiring a sophisticated topology. Zremesher/ the upcoming Quadremesher is about as good as it can get currently.
Manual, like Retopoflow, Topogun, 3DCoat, Nex/Maya tools etc. Can have fun tools. Mostly used for important models requiring a specific edgeflow/topology for good deformations, shape keys. I personally prefer something simple. PolyQuilt would be a good start, one tool to create quads, add cuts, loops, extrude edges, edgeloops, tweak and relax without the need to switch tools.
Wrapped - like R3DS Wrap, deforming pre-built topology onto different scans. Got 100 character scans, need to use the same topology, weights, UV’s etc.? This is the way to go most times in production.
All of the above are used in production on a daily basis, currently Blender 2.80/2.81 doesn’t have any of them, so again, thank you for all your effort!
That’s the kind I think would be great to explore in depth, I think it would be cool to have a smart shortcut-driven retopo tool that can do things faster than the regular toolbar workflow.
I like to call them remeshers rather than retopologizers, but looks like people dont really see the difference.
Definitely. For complicated things there are no shortcuts as of now - if I need to retopo lips, eyelids, inner mouth, fingernails, or more complicated things I only use a few tools.
There are a lot of cool gimmicks for filling in patches, creating topo onto cylindrical forms, drawing a grid, etc., but these are not the things that take longest or are the most tricky in production.
I’d prefer a single tool - click to place a vert, click twice to make a line, 3 times to make a tri, 4 times to make a quad. Ctrl-drag an edge to extrude it, ctrl-alt drag to extrude a loop, ctrl drag a vert to extrude a tri or quad from it, depending on the number of edges connected to it. Drag a vert to tweak, drag it onto another vert to merge, shift click hold to relax, mouse wheel for falloff size. Click an edge to cut, right click to confirm, ctrl-alt click to loop cut.
Just an example, but for manual retopo I could work with this very well during production.
Nah, people need to pay the bills. BF can’t hire everyone. As long as an addon helps me to get the job done faster I’m happy to pay for it, and I for one am happy we have many addon developers who put a lot of work and effort into their products. Not sure if I’d be able to use vanilla Blender for work, probably not.
Interesting, I wasn’t following his posts.
It sort of funny because back in 2018 I had made a prototype of almost exactly the same tool but never went forward to turn in to a usable format.
And there was another failed attempt I did.
It was actually after I realized that it was too hard to control a particle system for retopo.
Having ZRemesher in Blender would be awesome, but it will never be a replacement to fully manual retopology in its current state. It is however very good for sculpting when you want to reduce poly count without sacrificing detail in the later stages. High poly sculpting in Blender would get some extra boost for sure.
The strange part is, I just tried it on a model that I tried literally yesterday. Yesterday, I got a weird deformation that split a cube in half and made a royal mess… today, I get flawless results. I think the universe is telling me not to be a prick 
Either way, I apologize! I was wrong, I’ll freely admit it.
