Great review, and excellent retopology tips! Thanks! A few notes: - don't need to select the high-poly source mesh before starting. any mesh that is visible is considered as source. - to continue retopoing, switch into edit mode on the low-poly target mesh, then start RetopoFlow. - symmetry is actually fully done by a modifier (not baked in)! so, you're not stuck with the mirrored side if you work with symmetry enabled. - you can adjust the effect of the symmetry under display and symmetry options. - if the UI is distracting and you only use keyboard shortcuts, you can close windows and minimize the tools window, or F9 toggles visibility of all UI. - if you find a bug/issue, let us know! Cheers!
WTH! Why is it that every time I desperately NEED a very particular tutorial you guys are the ones that have the exact thing I need. HEROS! AAAAAAAAAA! REAL HEROS! For those like me that didn't know: To Decimate a sculpt use the decimate modifier first.... this lowers the polycount of your mesh without changing its shape to much.
I always recommend that the models are sculpted with eyes closed and mouth slightly open as this often helps prep a model for rigging and texturing. Particularly for styled characters. Also having matching verts for upper eyelid and lower and also matchig spans and verts for upper and lower lips.
It would be nice to hear your thoughts when problems arise and how do you solve them. I was hoping you would finish up the front of the face, because now the real problems start in this last stage. It would also be cool if you talked about topology for animation, which brings another layer of complexity. Guess I'm rooting for a intermediate tutorial next.. :) Good example would be if you have this model and you need topo to be able to blink, that is something not so straight forward and you have to get more creative with your tools.
hank you very much for explaining the principle of the add-on, now it has become much clearer. The main thing is not to rush and not start increasing the detail right away, thank you)
Woah! I like the Thumbnail! I’m pretty new to 3d and by coincidence I was doing my first retopology attempt on a character that looks a bit like this! Cool stuff!
It's so great that you can get with Blender all these great tools for free or a reasonable price. And I rather pay 20, 50 or 100 USD for a useful plugin than subscribing to a monthly usage fee for a commercial 3d program or paying a few thousand.
Id also love to see more about how to handle the issues that come up during retopology. I'm always getting to some point where I have a pentagon that I need to fill, or I have a pole that shows up in some really visible part of my mesh. How do you avoid those types of issues? Or, what do you do when one area needs more topology, so it has 10 cuts, and then it needs to connect to an area that has 6 or 8 cuts?
I’d love to see you guys take a look at retopologizing an arm or something similar. Also, what do you do with the original sculpt? Does it come into play later if you were to rig it, or is it just the new mesh?
Hello and first, thanks a lot! Your videos are among the most helpful for beginners like me. Really clear and not too fast. Love it. I have a couple questions about retopo and I'd be thankful if you could answer it. First, I was wondering if (and probably why) I need to retopo each objects (for ex, clothing, body, head) separately. And my seconde question is if we're allowed to use triangle sometimes and not quadrants, as I feel like 100% quadrants are making it way more complicated to craft.
With a lot of tools like this coming to the fore, have you ever considered doing a new vid regarding retop in Maya, to compare and contrast your thoughts on the original methods used for retop compared to the advances in plugins and such that have come out for blender? Was a thought that came to mind while going through personal revision on retop and seeing the dates of your maya retop tutorials and discussions.
I am stuck at tildi key, it is not showing the options for poly pen, Please help ! and Thankyou for such great help. I am doing my Final degree project !
I had to retopo for the first time a character. It took me a week or so. What a pain in the ass, so I see myself buying that addon the next time I have to retopo.
Hello! Thank you! And btw there are some issues on the Blender 2.93 versions (and 3.00 too) The Poly stripsф - you cannot use HAND instrument to modify the strip.
This is just a tool so It will make your life easier but it will not help you understand the technical aspects of retopo. If you are completely new, then I would recommend trying out speed retopo. It’s not as good but it’s free and you can build up foundation with this.
That's a nice video, guys! But i have a question though. What's a workflow for retoping a hardsurface model? I imagine it would me quite tedious to do this kind of workflow manualy for all the bits and bobs here and there. Thanks in advance - cheers!
You mix stuff like this, with redoing the mesh from scratch and simplifying the high poly by removing and merging edges. Best is to keep it in mind when doing high poly so you can easyli duplicate prarts and just remove geo till you get a low poly model.
Its possible to change color of retopologies mesh from grey to something more visible? For example in maya there is really good looking blue color and its easier to see whats done.
@@kunemann its possible click on the retopo object activate edit mode click on retopoflow icon and select one of the tools to resume using that tool ofcourse u can change tool once in retopo mode
amazing tool, when exiting retopoflow how is it possible to keep working on it later? It seems once outside the tool the geometry cannot be updated further or am I mistaken
this looks great. how stable is it? can you loose work in it? ive setup basic blender to do retopo and found it pretty useful. last model i used 3d coat to retopo which this reminded me of. maya is good but i find its interface looking very ugly now compared to blenders. knowing max maya blender i like blenders interface the best now.
It's horribly optimized, only today I've lost multiple hours of work because of it crashing/freezing, and it somehow didn't save, twice. I found a reddit post form 2 years ago saying the same, so it seems it just won't get fixed. It sucks too because it's not hard to use, but as of now I find it nearly unusable.
anyone else noticing that it wont let them select points unless theyre zoomed out? Edit: Make sure your model is up to scale , even if your scene scale is set up
Hey guys, I regularly buy a lot of your stuff/recommendations but, I'm not convinced on retopoflow yet. What is your opinion, retopo vs topogun? Please and thanks guys!
I just need to know how to transfer the uv from my high poly to my new retopologized model. I found a really useful feature in 3dmax but would really like it if I could do the same or similar in blender
I am sure someone has said this before but I love how you guys "jaeger" 3d content by merging your minds together to defeat the "Kaiju" of 3d ignorance. It's interesting to see a duo working together to produce content. (Which is always great)
It is not necessary for the mesh tp be low poly. All mesh visible in the scene are targets. Create a source with less vertex like a plane or just a single vert. By having the single vert as selection if started Retopo mode, then it will work for even high dense model (As long as blender and the machine can handle)
I think it simplifies it in the background since there is no much reason to use a high-resolution mesh for retopology. Two millions of polygons take the same amount of memory in either program, an Modo viewport uses OpenGL too.
You can use it without purchasing it. Buying it helps support them. Just search "Retopoflow 3 GitHub" and after you find the GitHub page for it, there will be version(s) on the right-hand side of the page. Go there and find the Zip download link and save it. Open Blender, in preferences, go to add-ons and install the Zip of it. If you use it enough and like it, I would recommend buying a license so it can help support this great guys for their continued development of it.
@@exile55 thanks for the response. That’s great they released a free version but it makes me feel guilty using their program freely they worked so hard.
Played around with it a bit and ran into a problem. How do you "commit" symmetry? With Maya you can just turn it off and the quads remain so you can tweak each side independently. With RetopoFlow the mirrored topology just vanishes if you disable symmetry.
@@JonathanDenning Huh, well that's extremely lame. Went from looking exciting to being worse than every other retopo solution. Glad I didn't pay $86 for it!
@@JonathanDenning I'm sure it's useful software within its limitations. I'm just surprised that such a basic feature is not included. Perhaps I'm missing something and if so I'll be glad to be corrected. TopoGun, Maya, and Houdini all allow you to turn off symmetry at will. It's very useful in cases where there is slight asymmetry on the model and you want to conform the vertices on the mirrored side.
@@eternalsnows6071 i'm still confused about why you are surprised. this simply hasn't been suggested, yet. next time, please make a feature request rather than dismissing something as being "lame" just because it's missing a feature. i agree that there are cases where such a feature would be useful. i'm not arguing that. just please take a moment next time to do this correctly. github.com/CGCookie/retopoflow/commit/a2d7211913e04437b70204a9dd46f35510849810
Still can't see the high poly model underneath the low poly which is very important. Only topogun seems to have this right but yet it's got so many bugs and less options..
github.com/CGCookie/retopoflow You can also get it here. Check the releases page. Of course, you can and should buy the add on from Blender Market if you want to support the devs.
Don't know if you found the answer or not but if not here it is. RetopoFlow is an addon from Blender Market that you pay for. Worth the money tbh and they update it pretty frequently ^_^
Great review, and excellent retopology tips! Thanks!
A few notes:
- don't need to select the high-poly source mesh before starting. any mesh that is visible is considered as source.
- to continue retopoing, switch into edit mode on the low-poly target mesh, then start RetopoFlow.
- symmetry is actually fully done by a modifier (not baked in)! so, you're not stuck with the mirrored side if you work with symmetry enabled.
- you can adjust the effect of the symmetry under display and symmetry options.
- if the UI is distracting and you only use keyboard shortcuts, you can close windows and minimize the tools window, or F9 toggles visibility of all UI.
- if you find a bug/issue, let us know!
Cheers!
CG cookie Developer is here. ✌️😀
There is a problem that retopoflow becomes very slow from the moment the 2000 polygon is exceeded. high mesh polygon is 900,000
Can you edit the high poly source a bit after your retopo?
@@maddinlicious yes. the low poly target will not auto update to those changes, but there is a button in RF to snap all target verts to source.
@@JonathanDenning also there is no selecting tool? I have to switch to polypen and select every single vert?
Oh my god, I spent a whole day yesterday doing the retopology manually. This was my first time. I thought this is what hell looks like.
RetopoFlow is such a must 😭
This really needs to be a feature not an addon in my opinion. That'll make blender retopo king with all these features.
All that present in maya, thats why maya was beast of reto.
@@vladyslavsvyryd5315 I agree. I love maya!
@@PrimordialStrange How can anyone possible love that heap of buggs ?
@@nictanghe98 to be precise... Which one? and Which version?
@@vladyslavsvyryd5315 Maya costs like $1000 a year mate
WTH! Why is it that every time I desperately NEED a very particular tutorial you guys are the ones that have the exact thing I need. HEROS! AAAAAAAAAA! REAL HEROS!
For those like me that didn't know: To Decimate a sculpt use the decimate modifier first.... this lowers the polycount of your mesh without changing its shape to much.
Happy to help Caroline! :D
I always recommend that the models are sculpted with eyes closed and mouth slightly open as this often helps prep a model for rigging and texturing. Particularly for styled characters. Also having matching verts for upper eyelid and lower and also matchig spans and verts for upper and lower lips.
How do you sculpt the eye lids over the eyes?
Excellent point. I realised I should have done that after my most recent sculpt was finished :-).
For clarification, the above point was in reply to Christian.
hey man, thanks for this tip, by any chance do you have more tips regarding the whole workflow of stylised characters ?
i think it easier to sculpt the eyelids like this right?
It would be nice to hear your thoughts when problems arise and how do you solve them. I was hoping you would finish up the front of the face, because now the real problems start in this last stage. It would also be cool if you talked about topology for animation, which brings another layer of complexity. Guess I'm rooting for a intermediate tutorial next.. :) Good example would be if you have this model and you need topo to be able to blink, that is something not so straight forward and you have to get more creative with your tools.
More, a full head would be amazing. The addon looks great I picked up in a sale a while ago and can't wait to use the new version !
Don't know if you know but Retopo is also available for free on Github. Of course, you can and should buy the add on if you want to support the devs.
they have a course on offer where they did the whole head , its on sale and amazing !!
They also do the horn and inside on eyes ,nose and mouth
hank you very much for explaining the principle of the add-on, now it has become much clearer. The main thing is not to rush and not start increasing the detail right away, thank you)
Thanks! Retopoflow helped a lot with an object I was just working on. I'm also thinking of flipping a few normals.
OML YOU GUYS SAVED MY LIFE
This was SOOO GOOD. THANK YOU!
Woah! I like the Thumbnail! I’m pretty new to 3d and by coincidence I was doing my first retopology attempt on a character that looks a bit like this! Cool stuff!
you guys are the best to introduce new tools ...thx guys
It's so great that you can get with Blender all these great tools for free or a reasonable price. And I rather pay 20, 50 or 100 USD for a useful plugin than subscribing to a monthly usage fee for a commercial 3d program or paying a few thousand.
That’s awesome. Blender’s now got one of Cinema 4D’s best modelling tools now. The Polly Pen.
Native Blender has that for quite some time now. It is the Quick poly tool in the edit mode.
It's always has been
This one is indeed probably visually closer.
You can also try the free Instant Meshes (in case you didn't cover that yet).
For a character clearly not , maybe for a random stone or whatever but even then retopoflow is better and faster in my opinion
this was extremely useful, thank you!
Id also love to see more about how to handle the issues that come up during retopology. I'm always getting to some point where I have a pentagon that I need to fill, or I have a pole that shows up in some really visible part of my mesh. How do you avoid those types of issues? Or, what do you do when one area needs more topology, so it has 10 cuts, and then it needs to connect to an area that has 6 or 8 cuts?
A better version of what Modo offered I did not think was possible. But they done did it!
I’d love to see you guys take a look at retopologizing an arm or something similar. Also, what do you do with the original sculpt? Does it come into play later if you were to rig it, or is it just the new mesh?
You bake the normals and cavity maps on to the low poly model. It'll make it look like the high poly model
Hey guys, would be interesting to show what work you guys showed to land your first jobs. Could be a cool video idea.
they did it already
@@pao7390 Which video is it ?
this is so nice and easy to use. highly recommend it. thanks !
After this update the add-on got amazing!
Hello and first, thanks a lot! Your videos are among the most helpful for beginners like me. Really clear and not too fast. Love it. I have a couple questions about retopo and I'd be thankful if you could answer it. First, I was wondering if (and probably why) I need to retopo each objects (for ex, clothing, body, head) separately. And my seconde question is if we're allowed to use triangle sometimes and not quadrants, as I feel like 100% quadrants are making it way more complicated to craft.
Retopo 3.41 seemed to remove CTRL-(Tilda) at 11:15 the pie menu after a Tilda press still works. Just, if you were also watching this.
With a lot of tools like this coming to the fore, have you ever considered doing a new vid regarding retop in Maya, to compare and contrast your thoughts on the original methods used for retop compared to the advances in plugins and such that have come out for blender? Was a thought that came to mind while going through personal revision on retop and seeing the dates of your maya retop tutorials and discussions.
Great video guys.
It would have been awesome checking also how to retopo a maybe trickier part of the face like nose or ears.
Anyway great tut.
Thanks for the great tutorial it helped me a lot :)
Thank you so much for this lesson!
Very cool dude... Have option backface?
I just picked this up for my project, I would like to be able to select multiple verts or lines and deleat them. like a lasso select.
Great tutorial! Maybe not the "Ultimate" tutorial on the subject but great non the less.
very helpful, thanks!
I am stuck at tildi key, it is not showing the options for poly pen, Please help ! and Thankyou for such great help. I am doing my Final degree project !
it worked! thank you so much!!
Awesome tool! Thanks for the video
would be nice to see how you guys solves a closed mouth with both retop and baking. If the mouth will be using animations where it opens.
Thanks for the video it was very helpful. The part I always seem to get stuck on are things like ears. mesh that is tinner and two-sided. Any tips?
Can you make a comparison video between Retopoflow vs Quad Remesher please?
And what's the best semi-auto UV unwrapping tool?
I had to retopo for the first time a character. It took me a week or so. What a pain in the ass, so I see myself buying that addon the next time I have to retopo.
You can get it for free from github
@@davids3282 do u have a link? I couldnt find it..
Hello! Thank you! And btw there are some issues on the Blender 2.93 versions (and 3.00 too) The Poly stripsф - you cannot use HAND instrument to modify the strip.
For somebody starting to learn retopology, would this be a good option?
This is just a tool so It will make your life easier but it will not help you understand the technical aspects of retopo.
If you are completely new, then I would recommend trying out speed retopo. It’s not as good but it’s free and you can build up foundation with this.
Very informative instructional video. Huge thanks to Theon Greyjoy and Varys for making this👍🏻
That's a nice video, guys! But i have a question though. What's a workflow for retoping a hardsurface model? I imagine it would me quite tedious to do this kind of workflow manualy for all the bits and bobs here and there. Thanks in advance - cheers!
You mix stuff like this, with redoing the mesh from scratch and simplifying the high poly by removing and merging edges.
Best is to keep it in mind when doing high poly so you can easyli duplicate prarts and just remove geo till you get a low poly model.
@@googleslocik Thanks!
Its possible to change color of retopologies mesh from grey to something more visible? For example in maya there is really good looking blue color and its easier to see whats done.
Is there a way to continue the work or is this impossible once you've left the workspace?
resume*
@@kunemann its possible
click on the retopo object
activate edit mode
click on retopoflow icon and select one of the tools to resume using that tool
ofcourse u can change tool once in retopo mode
amazing tool, when exiting retopoflow how is it possible to keep working on it later? It seems once outside the tool the geometry cannot be updated further or am I mistaken
I have to try this. I still havent found a workflow I like, maby this will be it.
Thank you! Really excelent tutorial))
this looks great. how stable is it? can you loose work in it? ive setup basic blender to do retopo and found it pretty useful. last model i used 3d coat to retopo which this reminded me of. maya is good but i find its interface looking very ugly now compared to blenders. knowing max maya blender i like blenders interface the best now.
It's horribly optimized, only today I've lost multiple hours of work because of it crashing/freezing, and it somehow didn't save, twice. I found a reddit post form 2 years ago saying the same, so it seems it just won't get fixed. It sucks too because it's not hard to use, but as of now I find it nearly unusable.
Very good! thanks for the video! I have a question: Can I subdivide my retopo after it's done? Thanks again!
yes.
thank you guys, it really helpfull
Incredible tool
anyone else noticing that it wont let them select points unless theyre zoomed out?
Edit: Make sure your model is up to scale , even if your scene scale is set up
great tutorial thanks, does any one know how to simply join 2 vertacies ? thanks!
Great video!!
Glad you enjoyed it
Hey guys, I regularly buy a lot of your stuff/recommendations but, I'm not convinced on retopoflow yet. What is your opinion, retopo vs topogun? Please and thanks guys!
fyi retopoflow is free
@@CosmicShuriken where can I download it from? I can't find it anywhere
I kinda enjoy it ^^
your videos are good can you go with goleam and bifrost
Would this be useful for hard surface modeling? (Machines and so forth)
how do ucontrol the snapping distance to the source object? also is it possible to focus the camera in a specific area? pressing ` doesnt work here.
Hey guys is there a way to add multiple loops like in normal modeling toolkit? or do I have to add one by one ?
Very useful!
if you left the creation of the retopology and did not finish, how to start again without creating a new topology?
Excellent !
Could you also try this on a hardsurface asset
yeah, 100%.
I'm in blender right now, and it works fine on hard surface models
@@element1111 great
For retopology- how would you compare RetopoFlow3 to Maya's Quaddraw?
I just need to know how to transfer the uv from my high poly to my new retopologized model.
I found a really useful feature in 3dmax but would really like it if I could do the same or similar in blender
You bake a normal map
@@gower1973 and cavity maps
Awesome tool
Finally out!?
Does it preserves uv structure?
I am sure someone has said this before but I love how you guys "jaeger" 3d content by merging your minds together to defeat the "Kaiju" of 3d ignorance. It's interesting to see a duo working together to produce content. (Which is always great)
Awesome, as usual
It is not necessary for the mesh tp be low poly. All mesh visible in the scene are targets. Create a source with less vertex like a plane or just a single vert. By having the single vert as selection if started Retopo mode, then it will work for even high dense model (As long as blender and the machine can handle)
Hey can't you make the head avaiable so we can follow along?
is there a way to create straight lines with the stroke tool?
amazing!
Blender represent
Now we need Topogun 3 tutorial too :D
How stable is it? It's only available as a beta right now, I think.
How are you staying low-poly without the faces sinking into the source mesh? Mine are, that's why I'm asking. Thanks!
You set the view of the mesh in the viewport as “in front”. Uh sorry I’m like a year late.
@@zixea3318 haha that's cool, thank you!
In Modo, you can load the 2million+ poly model as a non-editable reference object, without needing to decimate.
I think it simplifies it in the background since there is no much reason to use a high-resolution mesh for retopology. Two millions of polygons take the same amount of memory in either program, an Modo viewport uses OpenGL too.
Would you use this tool over maya quad draw tool?
Such a cool add-on! It’s a pity I don’t have enough money to buy it 😢
You can use it without purchasing it. Buying it helps support them. Just search "Retopoflow 3 GitHub" and after you find the GitHub page for it, there will be version(s) on the right-hand side of the page. Go there and find the Zip download link and save it. Open Blender, in preferences, go to add-ons and install the Zip of it. If you use it enough and like it, I would recommend buying a license so it can help support this great guys for their continued development of it.
@@exile55 thanks for the response. That’s great they released a free version but it makes me feel guilty using their program freely they worked so hard.
Does retepoflow work with Blender 3.5
Fantastic.
Played around with it a bit and ran into a problem. How do you "commit" symmetry? With Maya you can just turn it off and the quads remain so you can tweak each side independently. With RetopoFlow the mirrored topology just vanishes if you disable symmetry.
apply mirror modifier in blender. no way to apply symmetry in RetopoFlow at the moment.
@@JonathanDenning Huh, well that's extremely lame. Went from looking exciting to being worse than every other retopo solution. Glad I didn't pay $86 for it!
@@eternalsnows6071 that's a feature that hasn't been suggested yet. not sure why that makes it lame.
@@JonathanDenning I'm sure it's useful software within its limitations. I'm just surprised that such a basic feature is not included. Perhaps I'm missing something and if so I'll be glad to be corrected. TopoGun, Maya, and Houdini all allow you to turn off symmetry at will. It's very useful in cases where there is slight asymmetry on the model and you want to conform the vertices on the mirrored side.
@@eternalsnows6071 i'm still confused about why you are surprised. this simply hasn't been suggested, yet. next time, please make a feature request rather than dismissing something as being "lame" just because it's missing a feature. i agree that there are cases where such a feature would be useful. i'm not arguing that. just please take a moment next time to do this correctly. github.com/CGCookie/retopoflow/commit/a2d7211913e04437b70204a9dd46f35510849810
I cant adjust the scales or how many edges I want. dragging with shift and plus minus doesn't work as well.
Still can't see the high poly model underneath the low poly which is very important. Only topogun seems to have this right but yet it's got so many bugs and less options..
Does it start lagging like quad-draw or not... commenting in the middle of the video sry if u mentioned it already.
Awesome! Daz is a great software for these kind of things
@@FlippedNormals lol what did I ask hahaha
yeah the key above the tab is referred as the tilda key
No. Tilda is a girl’s name. Tilde is the little squiggle mark above the tab key.
How do you have transparent retopo mesh?
why my strokes tool doesn't work as yours? when I use it,it just flows in a very stange way , i cant't explain well in english, but please help me
The madmans brought back Right click to select.
How do you use the knife tool while in this?
Can you do retopo on textured mesh?
Probably using projection and baking, but I’m not completely sure, just a hypothetical.
how do I turn off x-ray mode in RetopoFlow mode? cant we turn off back face culling
Nice ! Where can I acquire it ? :)
github.com/CGCookie/retopoflow You can also get it here. Check the releases page. Of course, you can and should buy the add on from Blender Market if you want to support the devs.
+ and - keys aren't working for me when trying to reduce or increase segments :(
try shift + middle mouse button
Looks really good. but a bit too pricey. someone is working on new retopotools and cost less than this :/
is this for blender 3+?
i have blender 2.9 i dont have thid retopo flow thing.
Don't know if you found the answer or not but if not here it is. RetopoFlow is an addon from Blender Market that you pay for. Worth the money tbh and they update it pretty frequently ^_^