I used 3D-Coat version 4.8, and ZBrush 4R8. 3D-Coat Autopo versus ZBrush ZRemesherĪfter speed-sculpting the above-pictured happy dog I decided to do a little test to get an impression which auto-retopology tool yields the most satisfactory result, 3D-Coat's Autopo or ZBrush's ZRemesher. The Instant Meshes quad-retopology algorithm or a variation is used by The Foundry's Modo.īlender 3D does not yet include an automatic quad-retopology function, only a generic, voxel-based quad-poly projection method in the shape of the Remesh modifier, which doesn't orient the polygon flow to the surface features. Instant Meshes is fast and free, but did not make it into this test, because it generates too many triangular dead-ends amidst the resulting quad-polygons, resulting in visible artifacts after subdivision. It's called Instant Meshes, and deserves an honourable mention. There is another automatic retopology tool. 3D-Coat's auto-retopology tool is called Autopo, and ZBrush features ZRemesher.
To ease the process of retopology, 3D-Coat and ZBrush offer a way to automatically generate a nicely flowing all-quad surface for your sculpture. Dyntopo is short for dynamic topology, and I love to use it for conceptual sculpting, as polygons are generated in realtime while you sculpt, enabling you to freely focus on shaping your model without having to worry about its polygon structure.Īt the time I write this, the most popular 3D sculpting tools are Blender 3D, Pilgway's 3D-Coat, and Pixologic's ZBrush. But even if no posing or animation is required, the semi-random polygon structure often causes visible surface irregularities, especially if you sculpt with triangular polygons, like when using Blender 3D's Dyntopo sculpting. This quad-polygon structuring and restructuring can be time-consuming and sometimes frustrating, and often takes away the spontaneous part of 3D model creation.Ī downside of freeform digital sculpting is that it usually results in a messy polygon structure, making the 3D model unsuitable for deformation, such as for posing or animating a character. The workflow of digital sculpting feels very much like traditional sculpting, adding daubs of digital clay and dynamically shaping them into a sculpture, while polygon subdivision modeling requires careful construction and adjustment of a quadrangular polygon cage in order to successfully subdivide it to a smooth result. I love the technique of freeform digital sculpting, as an alternative to polygon subdivision modeling.
We bring to you in the following section some of his work.
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I couldn’t find any tutorials on how to create paws but I did find a sped up version of a sculpt in progress.Metin Seven a 3D designer, illustrator and animator has done a comparative study on the two best 3D auto-retopology algorithms available today - 3D Coat's Autopo and ZBrush's ZRemesher. I decided when creating new separate parts such as paws and feet, I will keep them as separate subtools to avoid any messes with dynamesh. Keeping the dynamesh option ticked is essential if you want your new mesh to merge to the old one and keep the polygon flow.Īt this stage I decided it will be best to scrap these ugly feet and begin from scratch. You’re able to add extra mesh such as limbs to your character. The first tutorial that introduced me to basics covered a brush called curve tube. I also noticed a couple of holes in my mesh that I never noticed in Maya when blocking out the model so I had to export the file from ZBrush and merge the vertices in Maya then export back again for ZBrush. The spacing between the fingers closed up so I looked into other ways of creating paws. The downside of using these is that your mesh will eventually morph into itself which is evident in my feet. I kept using zremesher or dynamesh every once in a while even though some detail gets lost, the topology at least was kept correct and you can keep going back and filling in the details again.
This was a final basic shape I came up with.