Retopology Flow Tool

Something similar to the Retopoflow Tool add on for blender. A tool that will allow the creator to draw a new topology over the sculpted mesh. Goving the creator the ability to create a clean mesh for models to be used for an animation program.
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These is a thousand steps ahead. Before, a more advanced remesher is necessary than actual voxel remeshing. Stephomi made it clear very often, that this won’t happen in any kind of near future. Maybe never. It would block other development for a long time. Even Pixologic outsourced zRemesher those days.
Else, poly tools are not existing.
NomadSculpt is a mobile wonder with it’s limitations.
But hope dies last.

They don’t really serve the same purposes, dynamesh in zbrush is heavily used.
And actually… I’m not sure zremesher is used * that much *.
It gives a good topology but if you need to improve it manually (for example animation), it’s often better to simply do it from scratch (I’m simply repeating what I’ve heard though, I’m not an artist).

That being said, why do you think clean topology is interesting for Nomad?
We don’t do clean topology for the sake of beauty, there’s a reason behind it.
One reason is low poly animation (not Nomad scope).
Another one is game asset creation, notably baking normalmap from high to low poly (outside Nomad scope again).

Then the last one that I can think of is the modeling purpose, but it’s usually achieved through manual topology with carefully placed edge flows, not zremesher (maybe I’m wrong but my understanding is most of the time zremesher is used as the last step in zbrush workflow, before heading to blender/substance/3ds, etc).

In my opinion I think the biggest issue with voxel remesher is not the topology, not the uniform size of quads but the sharp edge being destroyed (and it can and probably should be improved).

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A clean retopology for modeling is very useful because you can play with the subdivision levels so that you don’t destroy your level of detail on big shape changes. For hard surface modeling is also very useful. Finally a clean topo for texturing is well suited if you want to couple it with other software on iPad (Procreate, Photoshop, affinityphoto ect and soon Armorpaint). And last positive point to such a tool, (the retopo) is that the iPad is an extraordinarily transportable tool and in fact the ungrateful task like manual retopology would be very pleasant on such a tool, in my opinion. Otherwise your work is extraordinary, thank you :wink:

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Yeah there is no way this comes before proper UV support. And we’d have a much better chance of getting something open source like Instant Meshes integrated before this. Which on its own would be a huge advantage… Instant meshes isn’t AS good as Zremesher but its certainly a vast improvement over the absolute garbage retopo solutions they have in something like forger.

Also in regards to @stephomi, i use zremesher all the time. When dealing with static objects its almost always decimation master or Zremesher, and despite what some people might say it IS capable of animation ready topology… Although it requires quite a bit of trial and error, and can be very finnicky and sometimes using the zremesher guides at high strength can actually result in worse geometry than the auto algorithm, it really requires a high degree of familiarity with the algorithm to actually pull off, but if you know where to selectively put loops you can get some really impressive results.

Well Nomad has decimation, that keeps hard edges intact.
It also supports masking.

However it converts everything into triangles (maybe one day I should at least keep quads on masked area).

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There is a huge advantage to “zremesher” type of auto-retopo, even if your goal is not to make an “animation ready” model: the ability to work with different subd levels, which brings flexibility. Let me try to explain further:

If I want to keep detailing my model in nomad with finer details, sharp lines, etc. I have to increase the density of the voxel grid A LOT. then, if I want to change proportions, the pose of a character, smooth efficiently/evenly a large detail… I’m stuck with that super high tesselation which makes these tasks overly difficult and will require a lot of touch up. If I re-voxel with a lower density, I will simply lose all my details.

That is why, for me, a remesher would be super useful (but would also need to come with a reproject function to be able to project all the details from the voxel high res mesh to the remeshed/multiple subd level one.

If there was a remesher/reproject function in Nomad, I would use it for pretty much all my projects, for sure :slight_smile:

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You loose everything with quad remeshing as well.

If you want multires with voxel remesher, you can use the “rebuild multires” option.

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Correct, you lose everything unless you reproject. Retopo without the ability to reproject wouldn’t be that useful. But with both… BOOM! :slight_smile:

I will try the rebuild multires option, thanks!

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I think retopo is EXTREMELY useful and needed in Nomad. Nomad, and sculpting in general is not just for organic shapes. It’s a VERY fast way to move polys around, even low polys. Or to simply get a very smooth curved with hard edges mesh. I had to, many times, export from nomad, retopo on my desktop, and import back into nomad for easy reshaping. It’s worked quite well each time but it would be great if it was built in to Nomad….

OR made into a stand alone app. I’m sure a lot of people who don’t use Nomad would still use a retopology app.

I’m thinking Instamesh. Let it figure out the poly flow, then easily adjust the flow with the Apple Pencil. It could be the best retopo tool ever.

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Retopo and direct modeling would be great. It could also be then just a step away from being able to mark edges as seams for nomad UV unwrapping.

Quad based meshes aren’t just for low poly optimization. These meshes are subD friendly so cad applications that can handle subD can then convert them straight to nurbs for further detailing and trimming.

So you can start with nomad hard surface automotive sculpt and end up with a cad surface ready for production while spending most of the time on iPad.

I really wonder though why isn’t there a single usable app for subd modeling. Nomad feels like a great fit for the toolset as an addition to sculpting because it already has a nice and intuitive interaction design. But it also may be a bit too much to ask from a single app.

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If he ever implemented retopo and basic poly modeling…. Oh my goodness.

I’d pay bucks. I’m sure everyone would.

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Something like zremesher would probably be difficult to implement but maybe something like Maya’s quad draw wouldn’t be too difficult? It’s a more effective tool (in my opinion) than the topology brush, and it gives you the ability to place vertexes exactly where you need them. If this was combined with a projection feature you could feasibly create animation or hero level models in Nomad. I don’t know anything about creating software though so a projection algorithm and a tool like quad draw might be much more complex than they seem.

I think there are actually few tools required for retopology and proper full asset creation in nomad.

First you need the ability to control vertices, edges and polygons themselves with direct modeling tools so that you can have a way of drawing polygons on top on a mesh.

Then once a new optimized mesh is done you need a way of unwrapping mesh based on pre-selected seams

And once you have new clean model with uv’s you can subdivide it and then you need a function to reproject back the detail of the original sculpt.

And not even mentioning that after all this is done you now need to go to texturing, projecting normal maps etc… But that’s another topic and I would say it’s a bit less important or maybe more suitable for a dedicated 3d texture painting software.