3D Coat's new Auto-Retopo

spacemonkey · Aug 2010

http://www.3d-coat.com/files/stink_dragon.avi

http://www.3d-coat.com/files/orc_autoretopo.avi

Clearly its work in progress but its quite an exciting prospect at least for meshes that don't require a highly refined topology. The final post in this 3dcoat forum thread http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4372&st=260 has someone asking for density painting like Uvmaster. Neat ideas

Apparently its mostly based off a siggraph paper from last year
http://www.graphics.rwth-aachen.de/uploads/media/bommes_zimmer_2009_siggraph_01.pdf

Bibendum · Aug 2010

Looks really cool, never used 3D Coat before, maybe I should start

Also I look forward to the announcement of their acquisition by Autodesk.

Blaizer · Aug 2010

3d coat is giving bad perfomance with that orc, very slow

(and it's not the video cuz it goes at 200 fps 0.O)

Anyways, It's something interesting to see. The procress of retopologing should be fast, like to make edge flows and thats all. A pity that pentagons/triangles have not been taken into account.

This could be very handy for the low polys we need to make from sculpts.

felipefrango · Aug 2010

I'd like to see this being used in a game model but I doubt it would give satisfactory results, when you need to optimize stuff to the limit you pretty much have to do it by hand. I'd LOVE to be wrong though.

PolyHertz · Aug 2010

heh, actually posted this in the Awesomeness thread the other day.

Think it'll be a great way to get pieces done in Sculptris retopod fast for use in ZB/Mud.

Does anyone here use 3DCoat these days know if you can see a subdivision preview or make the vert order zb/mud compatible like in topogun?

ZacD · Aug 2010

3dcoat is still pretty cheap, isn't it? seems like its worth it for all the new features and retopo and UV's.

Andreas · Aug 2010

Holy Balls.

BlackulaDZ · Aug 2010

thats pretty sweet. it may not be perfect but it looks like a good starting point

PolyHertz · Aug 2010

spacemonkey wrote: »

The final post in this 3dcoat forum thread http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4372&st=260 has someone asking for density painting like Uvmaster.

http://twitter.com/andrewshpagin

"Now surface freeze is used to mark dense areas"

McGreed · Aug 2010

Bibendum wrote: »

Looks really cool, never used 3D Coat before, maybe I should start

Also I look forward to the announcement of their acquisition by Autodesk.

I really hope you meant that as a joke, because that would be bad IMO.

r_fletch_r · Aug 2010

Looks awesome. now if only Andrew would do some work on the paint room and stop chasing butterflys I might consider maintaining my license

Mark Dygert · Aug 2010

Bibendum wrote: »

Looks really cool, never used 3D Coat before, maybe I should start

Also I look forward to the announcement of their acquisition by Autodesk.

Just a little more innovation before its squashed completely... please.

Tom Ellis · Aug 2010

Doesn't 3DCoat support PTex too now?

I wonder how long it'll be before we see a 'UV-less' game workflow. I know both auto-UV's and PTex are not exactly production ready in their current state for a games based environment yet, but I'm sure looking forward to the prospect of shortening (or eliminating altogether) the UV'ing process.

Swizzle · Aug 2010

I have my doubts that UVs are going anywhere, at least for a very long time. While PTex might offer some distinct advantages, UVs have even more at this point. Being able to make large-scale changes to textures in Photoshop very quickly is the main reason I don't see PTex being as useful as UV mapping for the time being.

I know that my workflow with painting textures would be completely destroyed were I to use PTex because I do wacky things with selections and adjustment layers all the time that simply wouldn't be possible using PTex and current 3D texture painting tools.

Frump · Aug 2010

Wow, I was not expecting such a clean and accurate result from that. I was sitting there watching him lay down all those lines then waiting for him to hit the magic button, not expecting much. When he did hit it and that mesh popped out I audibly went, "whaaaaaat." Pretty awesome.:)

pior · Aug 2010

So, is it available in a specific version already ? As usual with 3DC its a bit confusing hehe

PolyHertz · Aug 2010

Think it's in 3.3.09 (newest version), but havn't tried yet.

Malus · Aug 2010

Yeah the biggest issue I noticed in the video was he didn't lay down enough key-lines to begin with.

A little more thought to the topology and it might be a winner.

McGreed · Aug 2010

Those two examples was with organic/character models, I wonder how it would work with a hardedge model such as a Sci. Fi. Wall piece or the classic road barrier. Will it optimize the model for planes or do you need to optimize it yourself, I wonder.

r_fletch_r · Aug 2010

needs work but not bad.

McGreed · Aug 2010

@r_fletch_r
It still looks like what I was worried about, a lot of polygons on a plane, but maybe if he can figure out a optimize tools that actually works, it would be great. Most of them is pretty crap, unless you get a standalone version and those are still not that great.

Calabi · Aug 2010

Theres no problem with those polygons, on the flat plane. Its a simple 30 second job of selecting them and deleting them.

The problem with r_fletch_r's examples is the drifting of the edges in places, its able to follow it partways but not all the ways.

r_fletch_r · Aug 2010

Just to clarify this is not my example. Im just posting images from the 3DC blog.

ZacD · Aug 2010

how well does it work with harsher polygon limits?

Neox · Aug 2010

its not made to reduce the monkey work lowpoly artists sometimes have to do, what it does is create a quadbased evenly spread homogenous mesh. Its saves a lot of time and i have no doubt it will save even more time once its done, remember its just the first version he published of that feature - but i have doubts it will help some lazy asses with creating the 5 polygons they need :P

Andrew is a super crazy guy, he implemented the new autoretopo and i talked with a friend about how to improve it and that auto always needs guides and that the splines would be awesome for this, he told andrew and a week later the first screenshots appeared :O
just crazy as hell, while it won't create you proper edgeloops yet it certainly does give you a cleaner result, which is a really awesome first step imho.

ZacD · Aug 2010

Yeah it looks like it just needs to be fine tuned a bit more, it'd be cool if there was some way to mark where you were going to put bones so it can generate the proper geometry for that to animate well.

McGreed · Aug 2010

@Neox
Yeah I know, that why I really would hate it if Autodesk would aquire him, because then all this new and exciting stuff he keeps coming up with will never happen, and a bloody view cube will appear instead.

achillesian · Aug 2010

word, this will save a fuckton of time no matter how good it turns out.

SpeCter · Aug 2010

lol that whitepaper is from the university i´m going to

trancerobot · Aug 2010

McGreed wrote: »

and a bloody view cube will appear instead.

HA!:poly142:

Seriously though...

I use 3DC and tried this new feature. It's ok, but if you're going to buy 3DC, get it for everything, not just this. Andrew's updates are always useful - from proxie modes that save ram, to UV unwrapping, to everything else.

This is how you keep the users happy and make money - frequent free updates and listening to user gripes. The only reason Autodesk makes any money is the fact that they bought all the mature 3D programs that everyone uses. I'd say perhaps the fact that Andrew is not in (or near) the US may save 3D Coat from suffering the same fate.

r_fletch_r · Aug 2010

Perhaps its time we put the viewcube issue to bed. It like some sort of coverall argument for hating Autodesk when you dont actually have anything meaningful to say. AD has a precense here and has actually been quite candid and helpfull.

It might be a good idea to keep this thread about 3DC.

Eric Chadwick · Aug 2010

Added a news item for this. Really great to see what Andrew's been up to!

http://www.polycount.com/

3D Coat's new Auto-Retopo

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