Haha naw, it's pretty good I think but definitely not needed. The two free ones are pretty good considering they are entirely free, I used them for a long time before whipping out the wallet.
@@RussellMidfield I've done a LOT of manual retopo... then had ZBrush crash before save. Yeah. $60 is definitely worth it. Good to know there are other options though. Thanks. Great channel/content btw.
This information is collosal. Just waht I needed. I couldn't imagine myself manually "remodeling" a whole character after spending days sculpting it. So thanks a lot Rusell.
I’m pretty new to 3D modeling in general and earlier today I sculpted a quick character in nomad just for fun and I wanted to use it for an animation. I just finished remeshing the head, I’m so glad I found this video before going insane
It's even possible to get even better results with the Quad Remesher. You can mark areas for smaller or larger quads by Vertex painting. Red=smaller quads and Cyan=larger quads. No paint = mid size. Great video. Made me buy the Quad remesher. Fantastic time saver since I really dont enjoy the process of retopology.
Thanks Mats! Yeah the vertex painting is definitely an awesome feature to really dial it in even further. Haha yeah, I find I always forget to tick the box the first time and have to do it a second time :D
@@RussellMidfield It's a bit frustrating to have this great _free_ software-- And then discover all the nifty-keen addons that *_are not._* Gotta gripe about something--! And here it is Thanksgiving now, too! I'm such an ungrateful wretch! ;)
Hey Esteban! Yeah, sometimes I find it kind of relaxing and a nice challenge to make it all neat and tidy and flowing nicely, but a lot of the time it's something I do not look forward to at all haha. I hope this helps you find a way to get a good topology on your models quickly!
Honestly, I think Instant Mesh is an easy 9, and I don't know why you're acting like AutoRemesher is somehow better. Sure, it's technically a tiny bit slower, but it gives you so much extra control by letting you decide the edge flow of your model.
There is a control in Instantmesh to force quads in the topology. Triangles are ok, just need to make sure they are in the right spots, they can be useful in areas of deformation.
@@yungfailee What do you mean, not good for further production? Have you ever downloaded a ripped model from a game before? They're always filled with triangles. Triangles are often used in professional settings to help the mesh overall, and are a perfectly acceptable quick solution, the stigma against tris in modeling isn't needed. Sure, try not to use too many, but the way instant meshes uses them is perfectly fine.
Fantastic video yet again. I was just about to manually retopo a whole character, but I'll try this instead. Like you said, less time wasting, more fun stuff! Thank you for the valuable insight
It seems that quad remesher is the best? But for this extension, it is hard to figure out when the latest version of it published. I am afraid it is may be ... out of date for latest blender 3.6 or the coming 4.0.
Quad remesher - couldn't get this to install in Blender 4.1 unfortunately. Installed the add-on and nothing happens - no quadremesh tab appears in the panel. Installed with ease in 3DS Max but would prefer to use it in Blender with the workflow I'm using. Any ideas?
You said that auto-retopology is good for simple animation (but not complex, yah). What is an example of simple vs. complex? When do I need to roll up my sleeves and do it to it? Also, I saw you flash that Pose Library. Any chance you could show that off to us a little more?
Oh gosh good question haha, I suppose it's all subjective, but in my opinion, something simple where I have been satisfied with the results of automatic retopology in an animation is with like a walk or run or jump. Obviously you can have a very complex, nuanced walk, run, or jump animation though that may call for a more deliberate, manual retopology to be done. A more complex animation would be something with the hands, fingers, or the face. I did the facial poses in this video using the topology I got from the paid addon, Quad Remesher, and I think it did a half decent job, but if you wanted to do lip syncing I'm not sure the results would be the best.
@@RussellMidfield hi great video I know the work you do is a lot. Was wondering how you correct the topology from the automatic remesher to make it more useful for lip synch or other extreme animation. Do you add more loops or what?
Thanks SP. For lip synch animation I would probably redo the area around around mouth and nose, maybe around the eyes as well. Edge loops going around the mouth opening would be pretty important and none of the automatic retopology tools here did a great job at it.
HELP! I purchased the quad remesher and im ultra upset with the results. Using the default setting my head model looks like sh... tryed different setting like using vertex paint and its not working! parts of the mesh are broken, the lips of all fkd up and stretches, i dont understand what did i pay for!
Oh no! Yeah it's not perfect, sometimes I have to run it a few times at different poly counts to get what I want, and sometimes I redo small parts manually, really depends on the model! Sorry it's not giving you the desired results!
Hey man amazing video i have been trying to use qudremesher but when i add the shrink wrap modifier i get loads of flipped normals any idea how to easily fix this?
Thanks man! Oh hmm, can you select everything in Edit Mode and then press Shift+N to recalculate the normals? That usually fixes it for me. You may also need to press Alt+N to flip normals if that doesn't work.
It looks like these programs all worked well when starting with a well-topologized mesh. Any feedback when the initial mesh has lousy topology? I mostly work with mesh exports from CAD programs like Rhino 3D and the models produced from these sorts of programs typically have terrible topology (triangulated, non-uniform, etc.) since the export settings can be quite limited.
HARD surface CAD geometry is far superior to polygonmeshes and has infinite resolution with accurate form. Ask yourself exactely why would you what this? Try using Vred, Deltagen, Unreal datasmith och just or any program built on the Open Cascade library, for example the small program CAD assistant.
@@bjornstrandberg8146 Do any of the programs you mentioned retopologize polygon meshes? You discuss the benefits of working with CAD, but I don't work with CAD, I work with the exports of CAD, which are polygon meshes.
@@bjornstrandberg8146 no sir, how about you ask yourself exactely why would you what this? and then you tell me, with a straight face, would you what this exactly yourslef?
How do you keep your textures when using quad remesher? Iam really looking for a program which retopos automatically like quadremesher and keeps the UV maps, that would he a dream.
@@RussellMidfield so what you do is you quad Remesh, then make the vertexes and uv map? Or you have the vertex paint on it, remesh and then unwrap, cuz when I got vertex paint on it, the quadremesh removes the vertex paint, do you know how to fix this issue? :)
as someone who uses quadremesher, you seriously need to spend more time explaining how the options work. Just telling people that the tool works fine without any input like this gives off the impression that it'll give you great work-ready topology every time (it doesn't, it has a difficult time understanding when to put loops around important animation crease areas such as arm/shoulder, and requires you to fiddle with the vertex painting option in order to get the best results)
Yeah for sure thanks! I've been thinking about doing a more in-depth tutorial on Instantmesh and Quad Remesher since you can tap into their power if you use some of the other features, I like the Vertex Paint feature of Quad Remesher for instance, but I thought I'd keep this video a little more surface level so it wouldn't be too long. Thanks again!
May I ask you a noob question? I just started to learn 3d and will focus on texturing only, at least for now. I will start using quadremesher for it. If in the future I need to animate my objects and find these issues you talk about, will I need to repeat the retopology and fix the texture as well? I got a bit worried now. Thanks
@@joanafrc Your UVs are connected to your topology, so if you decide to retopologize due to issues then yes you might have to do some work on the textures too. You might need to bake your maps again with the new low poly. You could also keep the same textures if you handpainted them and manually move the UVs into place so it all fits again. It really depends on your workflow! 3D is really complex and there is often no correct answer that works in all cases.
Why the amount of vertices jumps up and down, even between modes (edit, object)?. on voxel remesh part, around minute 5, the old vertices is 1,1million, down to 380k after remesh, then jumps to 2,2 million after subdivide. yet, before you use exoside remesh it counts 157k, not 1,1 million and down to 7k after remesh... which one is the true or final total vertices? sorry if this make no sense or i might missed something.
Oh yes the Status Bar shows different things depending on mode, modifiers, what's selected, what's visible, etc. When you subdivide with the multi-resolution modifier, it will show the vertices of the subdivision, not just the base mesh. The 157k is because I used the Decimate modifier, which took it down from 800k.
I don't get why you don't just use a modifier stack like triangulate weld it and mark sharp and add a subdivide, decimate in game engine based on distance for performance increase
blender also has a select menu that has select sharp edges so you can mark sharp quick, {yes the mod stack looks jank in wirefraim mode but its really clean and smooth and sharp in the right places} in most game engines most people will probably use HLOD or decimation, on it anyways better to just decimate seeing its easy and fast. Also have has people tell me you can't make edge loops as if the knife tool dose not exists and marking vertexes and box select / circle select or it's also possible to Mark seems for UV unwrapping using the select sharp edges hover over the section and hit the L key in face mode and boom you selected the faces regardless of the jank geometry. yes I know I'm based and a menace to society
Thanks Storm! For animation/games I recommend manually retoplogizing, making sure to maintain edge loops in key deformation areas Iike the shoulders, hands, hips, crotch, knees, ankles. Anywhere there is lots of bending!
@@RussellMidfield I found the exe file but it just says... "Running in GUI mode, start with -h for instructions on batch mode." I've no idea what that means
@Russell Midfield thanks for this video tutorial. It pointed out an important question, I had which is. Is retopology good for animation? And your simple and easy answer is YES! I am so glad, I found this tutorial. And wish you more subscribers and views and sponsors. You are the best.
I almost feel like on top of giving you a fast means to retopologise your mesh, these tools can also be great for at least giving you an idea of what you should do if you want to try manually doing it. I’m still very early in my journey of learning blender, so something that can give me guidelines to both trace and correct would be hella useful.
I saw people saying the opposite, saying you should start with manual first so you can learn what you need to do for good topology. I've been doing it and all it's doing is killing my brain and turning my mesh into a mess, so I'm going to try using automatic tools instead.
Haha yeah, manual first to learn the fundamentals for sure, but depending on your use case, automatic can be fine. If you're end goal is to make video games and animations, you'll probably want to really understand quality topology and that just takes study and practice.
Oh yeah it's for baking purposes if you'd like to use a model in an animation or game, and texture paint. You keep a low poly version and a high poly version!
Hey! I make characters that I need game ready and I was wondering if the difference between Instant Mesh and Quad Meshes are that big of a difference in order for me to spend 60 dollars on it? Thanks!
:v ''You may NOT use The Software with a Single-User-Indie-License for COMMERCIAL, PROFESSIONAL and other for-profit purposes. A Single-User-Indie-License may not be used to create content for a third party that will use such content in connection with a Commercial activity.'' quad remesher put this on his license, but how would they know that
Yeah you're right, it's not perfect for sure, I just personally really like the results I get with Quad Remesher when I consider it's an automatic tool and how quickly and easily it works. Nothing's perfect of course, 10/10 was maybe a little generous, but for an automatic tool it's the best I have seen!
I don't understand how Quad Remesher can be so perfect for you and so bad for me. I got artifact, no good shape at all for the eyes, the noze and the mounth ...
Yeah I know, admittedly I don't always get those results. The reason I think for this video it worked so well was because the sculpt was very angular and stylized. My slightly more realistic and smoother sculpts don't have such perfect results.
wich one is better for hard surface model?? i made one with 15mil. active points in zbrush and i want to retopology. maybe in that case manual is better?
With advancements in AI, I really hope manual retopology becomes a thing of the past. I love sculpting, but retopology just feels tedious and unnecessary really. I get people may enjoy it but, personally, I just want to create beautifully eldritch characters without having to redo it all if I want these characters to be animated or put in games. edit: and after seeing that last one, I think we're already here, or at least very close thanks for sharing! I'll definitely try these out 👍
I agree, sometimes I can find a small level of "enjoyment" if you can call it that, but it's usually somewhat fleeting. After an hour or two it always starts to wear on me haha. Hopefully one day it'll be an archaic thing of the past!
I'm a blender beginner and this whole remeshing thing is becoming so overwhelming. Nothing seems to be working for me. Like I try the quad remesh as shown in this video, and though I have a much less detailed face, I end up getting more vertex count compared to this and I see the lips are gone and it just doesn't look good.
Yeah it's definitely not perfect, I usually try it multiple times with different settings. Sometimes I manually redo some parts as well depending on the sculpt. Others it works incredibly well, usually the sculpts that are more stylized and angular it works best.
For a model like this, wouldn't it make more sense to split it bilaterally before retopology, and the mirror and recombine it afterwards? Seems like you'd want symmetrical edge loops, and I noticed quite a bit of asymmetry in most of the results.
I've been learning blender for a couple months now, first i focused on objects and then i started to do characters and now i want to try animate stuff but Retopology was not something i wanted to get in to right now so ive waited, If i would get that 60$ quad remesh addon would my sculpted models have good enough retopology to do face animations etc? :)
Yeah it's possible, but I'll be honest, there is a high probability that it won't be the best for the complexities that facial animation presents. You might get away with it for simple animations though! Best thing is to download the trial and see if it works for your use case. Good luck!
Yeah it can be hit or miss. Works the best with simpler models, if you happen to have a super detailed realistic model it won't work as well. Sometimes I do a little bit of manual clean up after.
It’s not really retopology it’s remeshing. Retopology is to get good mesh deformation for animation. Here there is no loop create around the mouth or eyes to deform with bones.
very nice video very cool channel you're putting together here, Russell; you deserve more subs not sure where the figure of $60 for exoside remesher is coming from latest from their website is $16 per quarter for subscription, so $64 for first year (excluding VAT which is 20% here in UK) or buy perpetual licence for $110 (excluding VAT)
Thanks Sam! Oh sorry haha yeah the $60 is for the perpetual indie, non-commercial license which is where my head space is at since I am a terrible artist haha 😄
Hello Man! Sorry to ask such a trivial question, but should we apply those two or is it just fine to keep multires and shrinkwrap on the bar, still rather new with those things, asking in case that let's say I need to import the character in a game engine it will keep multires and shrinkwrap settings on the character even though I did not apply them, cause when I applied multires it was just counter intuitive taking in regard the fact that it increased the poly count to 1.7 mil when we want to lower the poly count, thank you very much for your time and video!
Yeah no worries! You have one high-poly instance of the model with the modifiers applied, and one low-poly instance with no modifiers at all. You then "bake" the details from the high-poly version onto the low poly. The low poly goes to the game engine. You can't import the version with modifiers unapplied, or if you could, it wouldn't be advisable.
@@RussellMidfield Thank you for the explanation! Do you have suggestions for tutorials regarding the process you explained regarding baking ? Right now I mainly know just how to sculpt in blender so I'm not too accustomed with the rest of the program details, Thank you very much!
This was so INCREDIBLY helpful, thank you! I am still coming a crossed an issue though as I try to render my object. I have a simple, sculpted object created in Nomad which I then fixed the topology and brought down vertex count with Instant Mesh. I have it rotating and bobbing in blender. My confusion is that in adding the different modifiers, my vertex count goes up again, therefore I'm assuming making it still incredibly tedious and time consuming to render. What am I missing here?? My vertex count with the mods is almost (albeit slightly smaller) than before. I'm still a beginner so appreciate the help if this is a very obvious answer, thanks!
I have a problem with my model, it's quite complicated and when I try to auto-retopology either I get a huge amount of vertex or the character's teeth are completely destroyed. As I understand, Quad Remesher has the ability to set more detailed places, so I have no way to deal with it without this program?
@@RussellMidfield Hey thx for answer, I got Trial version (you didn't mentioned it) and I clicked remesh it and effect is wonderfull, it even dealt with the problem with the teeth... by removing them completely! :-O My model looks very cute now, but I would prefer it to have teeth, can you recommend some tutorial to help me deal with it?
If QuadMesher had that comb tool IGL has to give you more control over how they flow, it'd probably be a 20/10 cause it was kind of scuffed looking around the upper eyelids on what it had produced for you
Haha yeah its true, the comb is absolutely deadly, I'm surprised it doesn't have something better to control edge loops but I'm pretty happy with it nonetheless!
@@RussellMidfield Honestly seeing that really showed to me what has been so terribly lacking in automated 3d tools in general, just that lack of any influence you have over it. Like combine that comb tool to control the flow and vertex groups for polygon density, and you'd have the king of automated retopology. Something being entirely automated just won't ever really produce the sort of results you want with something like 3d model making, from the weights, UV,s and of course, the topology. Automation needs guidance.
IGL's looks fine to me, at least superior to anything I've been able to do manually so far. IF I decide to get into Blender for real, Quadremesher looks well worth the price, although for me it'll be something like 248 PLN
Yeah IGL is pretty good, hard to beat free. Yeah it's true, it's a little bit of a commitment to Blender with Quad as it isn't cheap. I usually end up doing a bit of manual adjustment now even with Quad so in hindsight maybe not as good as I originally thought.
I'm trying to get my 195k poly down to a 20k. Not easy. But I have no idea what I'm doing. I think I started messing around with blender less than 2 weeks ago. Lmao
@@RussellMidfield My laptop might be a little pent up. I mean have a Pentium. 😭 So every dot counts if I want to make him move one day. Lmao. And thanks. I got into it because I want to make games if can. But that might just be a dream. But I'm enjoying it in the meantime 😁
great tutorial, but when using quad remesher after i "remesh it" and have "use materials" checked i can't seem to see the materials on my model, just black, am i missing a step? any help would be appreicated
It's not unusual for me to do a little bit of manual retopology in intricate areas like that. For models like the one in the video it worked out nicely since the areas have large flat areas with clean edges. Good luck!
Thank you so So SO much for this! ♥️ SUBSCRIBED! ♥️ Just started using Blender last night and one tutorial told me "How To Make A Character In 15 Minutes" using MANUAL RETOPOLOGY?! I felt like I was losing my mind! 🤯😖😵
Oh I'm not sure sorry, I'm still in the 2.93 dark ages, I haven't upgraded to 3.0 yet. I wouldn't be surprised if the addon needs to be updated as a few others I have needed updating to be compatible with 3.0.
I am starting a personal project and I am trying to figure out how to do this. I do have a few questions though if anyone can answer. The remesh is linked to the original sculpture but both are still in the project. Which one do you use to do the rigging and texturing? Can I delete the sculpt that the remesh came from and use that in a new project?
You use the remesh version for rigging and texturing. The high poly sculpt can be discarded or saved in a separate file once you have UV unwrapped the low poly and baked the details from the high poly to the low poly remesh.
It seems that quad remesher is the best? But for this extension, it is hard to figure out when the latest version of it published. I am afraid it is may be ... out of date for latest blender 3.6 or the coming 4.0.
Yeah quad remesher the paid one is the best in my opinion, but it's still far from perfect. Yeah not sure how it will work with 4.0 if there are huge changes, the website isn't super lively.
@@RussellMidfield I know it is far from perfect but currently the best. That's why I want to know the update logs, which I can't find on the official site.
I actually like manual retopology, it gives me more control over my characters. Since I don't work in the industry, time is not a factor since I'm just a hobbyist. Bsurfaces can speed it up some.
I'm just starting to get really into modeling/sculpting so this was amazing. My first project for my school is a chess set with custom designs so making low poly pieces that look good is crucial so my computer won't lag lol. Ill probably buy the 60$ it seems worth it
@@RussellMidfield Just as a side note $60 is for "This is a perpetual license, NOT usable for commercial purpose". Incase that matters to anyone. Also absolutely love your vids, this was awesome! Thanx
Yeah that's a tough one, makes UV unwrapping a little more difficult. Sometimes I'll do a little bit of manual adjustments in key areas to fix those but not sure on how to control quad remesher like that.
This is so helpful Russell, thank you. Like you, I am more interested in the "fun stuff" not the tedious stuff. Question though: (forgive my ignorance) is the idea with the whole multi-res + shrink-wrap that you will bake a normal map for the low poly from the multi-res? Is that how you will have the detail but low poly count on the new model? Thanks!
Yeah no worries Chris! I'm glad if helped! Yup that's right, the high poly version is used to "bake" the details onto the low poly version. After you have you normal map with all the high poly details you don't need the high poly model anymore.
In the long run I find this addon useless, as the model I get from it always overlaps with the High Poly version in many places which causes lots of artifacts on baked normal map
@@RussellMidfield it works sort of, but there is a new problem, seams/edges of the islands are very visible on the baked normal map (yes, I set to non color), I can't understand it, I read on the web that it's always visible a bit, but in the previous model over which I was working similar to the current one has no such problem even though the topology is terrible and I used auto unwrap.
@@RussellMidfield So, I enlarged the islands in UVMap, it made the visible seams a bit smaller, then I used xNormal instead of blender to bake it, it has external cage file option, and the effect is perfect, seams are almost invisible even up close.
The Quad Remesher doesn't feel to be 10/10 for a lack of feature: setting different resolutions for areas, like in your model I probably would like to have the body quads bigger than the face, saving more vertices in this process. If this tool could do this easily plus being able the define some flow like Instamesh, $60 would be a bargain. I'm not saying it is bad, it is really good and I'm willing to buy it. But, at the end, different resolution and specific flow still needed for our workflow. Great video, BTW. Thanks!!
Yeah good point. Quad Remesher has a density feature that you can define through vertex painting, i just didn't show it in this video although now that I think of it, I totally should have! I think you can define flow as well by setting materials, but I haven't tried it before to be honest. Instantmesh's combing feature is awesome, if Quad Remesher had that it would be mind blowing.
Quad remesher have vertex paint density feature. It also have loop mark feature, auto detect angle. This is best auto retopo addon. Plus it works same in max and maya with same algoritm
One thing I learned, plugins for Blender and DAZ are SOOO much cheaper and give so much more bang for the buck than Audio Plugins. This is a much less expensive hobby. Not the case if i was using Photoshop or Maya but why would I be doing that when the free alternatives are almost or just as good?
