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QuadRemesher tool released for Max, Maya and Modo
Jul 24, 2019 by CGPress Staff
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Exoside has released QuadRemesher, a new auto-retopology tool that produces clean quads compatible with Max, Maya and Modo. Features include the ability to set a target quad count; adaptive size settings including the ability to use Vertex Colours to set quad density; the ability to control edge loops using smoothing groups, normals creasing, material ID or an algorithm to detect hard edges; and more. The website is still being updated but the plugin and a free trial are available now. Prices start at $59.90 for an Indie license, $109.90 for a Pro license or subscription at $15.99 for 3 months (currently reduced to $9.99). Find out more, including tutorials, on Exoside’s website.
Unfortunately still falls for proper re-topo for low-res models to be used in games especially hard surface models.
To this date there is not a single software out there including the new Zremesher (IMHO falsely advertised to death) that can do proper retopo for relatively lower res hardsurface relatively clean models.
None that ever works and i’ve tried them all including the trial of this software.
They never detect the edges correctly and force you to increase polycount to make up for detail instead of shuffling between triangles and quads to compensate cleverly for the angle and edge. At this stage it seems nothing is substitute for manual long hard hand labor of cleaning up booleaned meshes.
You sound whiny
Spare me man, I was working on a crazy topo job for 4 days non stop and someone asked me, “Did you know machine learning is going to land us on mars in a few years?”, I thought it was Ellon musk smoking hash again, I turned around to tell him that “Machine learning can’t even work proper UVs or re-topos for us yet, our workflow hasn’t changed since the 90’s on the only two aspects of the production that desperately requires proper solid automation and you expect it to take us to mars!?
The mars analogy is both wrong and right at the same time. If someone actually created a training environment for AI that is able to learn from good re-topology/uv examples. it would most probably be perfect.
If we eventually land on mars or not has very little to do with software progress in the CGI world. Your point/answer makes no sense at all here. AI is already used in small parts of the mars rover namely PIXL… so yes AI is already on mars. Even if it does not have much to do with landing and getting there.
The problem with the internet Nick is that it takes everything written too literally, the power of metaphors Nick the power of metaphors, nuance and subtlety.
The mars analogy is a metaphor.
I think a plugin like the above takes about 80% of Retopology work out of your hands. The result can be edited where you don’t like it. And for non-hero objects this is more than good enough.
For animated hero objects where topology is crucial the plugin might be less helpful i agree.
This is my thinking, as opposed to ‘Guest’. Similar tools get you a large part of the way there and saves time (at least for me). Then there’s the scanning community which is getting larger and larger all the time — especially since photogrammetry has become so popular in the last 6 years.
Sadly this isn’t a magic wand – the algorithms just don’t seem to be smart enough to do what I think you’re asking for.
For low poly you usually need to vary poly density over the mesh – maybe a tool that would create a poly density ‘heatmap’ from the high poly and allow you to paint density in and out in areas, and also steer edge flow in a similar way would be cool, but I’m not aware of anything that does that yet.
The best tool I’ve found for low poly retopology is Topologic which allows much more control but its a manual tool of course.
ps: On the plus side, I was surprised to find this tool works on my stone age version of Max, and registration/installation was easier than some. Thumbs up 🙂
3D Coat does this. During the auto-retopo process the user has the option to paint areas of higher density poly and also draw splines for edge flow. It’s pretty good! It doesn’t do it in real-time though, so there is usually a few back-and-forth attempts before getting a satisfactory retopo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC7QOEedTz0
Looks nice, I really don’t know why I have a blind spot for 3dCoat, and a new version out now so a good time to grab the demo..
According to the description:
“use Vertex Colours to set quad density”
So it seems it’s possible to set quad density with this plugin, so far is the best auto-retopo and the best remesher I’ve seen out there, I would love to know if it’s based on some paper or is pure new technology from the developer.
If it’s pure new technology not based in a single paper out there, I must say it’s an astonishing work, if it’s based in some paper… it’s also an astonishing work but I want to see the paper hahaha
Totally missed this last night – I need to spend more than 5 mins with it when the docs are out (looks like red vert colours increase density and blue seem to reduce).
For low resolution models, it’s not advertised to do that, and I never would expect it to. You’ll have a hard time finding software that can keep this much detail when creating quads without generating a ton of poles. Game engines don’t use quads anyways, they triangulate everything, so unless it is skinned there’s no real reason to keep edge flow. For hard surface models, most built in optimizers get the count down while keeping the look (but not the quads) for game engines; ProOptimizer in 3ds Max for example, which keeps UVs for the most part. Otherwise, it’s up to talented artists to model those super low resolution triangulated models for mobile use.
In 3ds Max I did a test with imported CAD models using nPower Translators, which applies smoothing groups for each trimmed surface. This is the first plugin I’ve ever used that actually kept the edge details when I set it to use smoothing groups and materials. There were a good number of holes for bolts, extrusions, and bridges, and it found them all. And it actually reapplied the smoothing groups and materials in the proper locations with only a couple of errors that were easy to fix. The only main thing it is missing, in my opinion, is to project the UVs from the higher mesh to the retopo. I probably would have gotten better results too if I used the vertex color weighting.
Please create this plugin for 3ds max as Modifier!
Here, here! The Quadify modifier needs a replacement that actually makes useable quads, non destructively. I realize we would need to limit input size, but doing this on top of a simple Boolean is relatively quick, about the same speed as quadify is now. For Text, this would be great.
Too expensive for indie license
Wrong Title
This Plugin is not available for Cinema 4d. As far as i saw it on the Publisher site
You’re right – we mixed up Cinema4D and Modo somehow. Corrected
Wrote with the publisher… it will be released for cinema 4d around late fall.
Sorry for the redundancy, I posted a similar comment on YouTube and easier to just paste it here. The gist of it is that I am aware of the issue that there is no “out of the box super intelligent retopology tool for game characters that require higher density polys in certain areas than others”. But still this tool looks like it can get you to 90% which is better ( probably ? ) than most. My core comments are below …..
Extremely excited about this. Like many others, I am doing low poly retopology meshes for game characters.
I just purchased TopologiK, and, while it’s an amazing free form tool, I have a hunch that this tool may be a lot faster. I do understand that I may have to make the retopology a little higher poly at first to get high poly in certain areas and lower poly in others. I’m fine with that. Workflow wise I still think this tool will be faster than Max’s built-in tools and faster than TopologiK because this seems to make pretty clean uniform geometry throughout which I can then later tweak rather than having to do manual surface retopology everywhere.