This is just a simple addon I made to make the whole process of exporting/importing to “Instant Meshes” a bit easier.
Be sure to always save before exporting your mesh.
Just download the addon from github as a zip-file and add it to Blender through the addons panel, as you usually would. The addon is called ‘instantmesher’.
edit: Looks like the the addon is unstable on Mac OS for the moment. I’m working on fixing that.
Note that you first have to set the path to the “Instant Meshes”-executable in the addon preferences, otherwise it won’t work! Setting the temporary path to store the objects in is not necessary. By default it will use your home(Linux) or user(Windows) directory.
Make sure to set the filepath to the binary.
On Mac os it’ll be under “…/Instant Meshes.app/Contents/MacOS/Instant Meshes”,
on Windows it’s simply the .exe file and on Linux the binary.
You can execute it by first selecting a mesh, hitting space and then searching for ‘instant meshes export’. After that (again, if you set up the path to instant-meshes properly) “Instant Meshes” should start with your object already loaded into it. Do your thing in “Instant Meshes” and at the end you must export the object to replace the temporary .obj that was created (the temp .obj is named after the object you selected in Blender + “.obj” at the end. You can find the temp .obj in either your ‘home’-directory (‘user’-directory on Windows) or the temp folder you specified in the addon preferences, otherwise it won’t import the newly remeshed obj.
update: You can now also find the addon on the tab “Retopology” (changed from the “Instant Mesher”-tab as per DaremoK3 's suggestion) in the tools-menu on the left. This also gives some limited functionality to convert the mesh directly in Blender. However, use of the Instant Meshes-GUI is still recommended, because it has a bunch of additional options and real-time feedback.
Feedback is much appreciated!
Here’s the addon:
You can find the application “Instant Meshes” here if you haven’t got it already.
Scroll down and select one of the pre-built binaries for your operating system.
update: Added support for Sketch-Retopo which you can download here:
http://igl.ethz.ch/projects/sketch-retopo/sketch-retopo-license.html
Made a quick video to show the process (switch over to vimeo to watch it in HD. The font isn’t very legible otherwise):
Update: The video is a bit outdated now, because it’s showing off an earlier version without the tab and less functionality. But I’ll leave it here for now and make a new one once the progress of the addon is more substantial.
Update: Sometimes it helps to triangulate the mesh in Blender first before remeshing it in Instant Meshes.
If you want to bind it to a shortcut, the addon’s name is “ops.instantmesher”. I put mine under the Screen > Screen(Global) category:
Happy blending!
Disclaimer: I’m not in any way associated with the developers of either “Sketch-Retopo” or “Instant Meshes”.