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..."retopolograohicification", sounds like something that happens inside Calvin's Transmogrifier.
If you took a conforming (non-dynamic) piece of clothing - and retopoed it - this new mesh is what? An .obj file? Can this new file be imported into Poser and clothified in the cloth room a dynamic Poser clothing?
I don't know Poser, but I think so...
I appreciate all this information! I have the old free version of Google SketchUp - Version 8.0.4810. I do see that exports as a COLLADA file .dae. Are you saying this old version of Sketchup is (was) the full program - the only difference was in the file export capability?
So this .dae file can be imported into Poser/Daz Studio/Blender? Or converted into a .obj in Blender?
So, in other words, I have the whole full SketchUp program for free? (minus the 2D Layout part of it)?
Not that I sell or distribute models (or would do anything illegal), but how does a retopo model made from a liscensed commercial model, which if I understand you, is the exact model with a new mesh, covered by copyright? Isn't it the actual mesh that it's copyrighted?
Based on older forum posts I believe that is called a derivative work and not allowed by the EULA, DAZ should probably clarify though
well I guess it is like shrinkwrapping is not allowed
You're right. It's a derivitive work, so it's covered by copyright by the owner of the original copyrgiht.
Yeah, shrinkwrapping is a no-no and so I would think that retopo wouldn't be allowed either, as during retopo you cover an existing model in polygons that snap to the exact surface of the mesh you are retopologizing. It's like taking a Hummel figurine and making a mold from it and then creating another ceramic object from that mold ;). Not exactly what I would consider legal. LOL For personal use tho...
Laurie
Right, retopologising doesn't break the licensing link with the original so you are still bound by ther terms of the original's license.
One other use of retopo that was hinted at, and one thing I really like about ZBrush, is the ability to take a nasty mesh with all kinds of terrible n-gons and poorly designed faces and convert that to something very nice and uniform and MUCH closer to what a cloth sim software needs to do a nice, fast simulation. And ZBrush does an amazing job. Though I hate just about everything else about ZBrush, I almost considered buying it for that one reason. Thankfully, my cooler head prevailed and I didn't.
Thanks sooo much for posting these - I'm working through the 2nd one at the moment and learning so much.
The narrator ums and ahs a bit but it's well explained what he's doing and why and how to use all the various tools.
If only the fbx export/import to DS could bring in a working rig LOL
On a side note, in terms of blender being non-intuitive, I've only just learned how to close a pane (the bottom timeline pane was driving me nuts when I didn't need it). This isn't from the tutorial, but rather than have a simple 'x' to close a pane, one has to drag the triangle in the corner of an adjacent window over the pane one wants to close.
Pleasure- glad it's helping. It's really an amazing program if you take the time to get to know its quirks.
I've been using the program for ten years and I didn't know that lol. I usually hover over the edge of the frame until the mouse changes to the split icon, then right click and select split area or join area. Your way is much quicker.
Carrara is worth it for the ton of extra content alone. I use Carrara as my main app, and only use Studio rarely as a plugin (so there's my bias stated).
I have no idea what the easiest/best modelling software is, and I wouldn't want to proselytize anyway, but since you've already taken the plunge and picked Carrara up on the cheap, I thought I might point out a few pros of Carrara to make you feel better about the purchase:
First, there's not just one modeler in Carrara, instead there are multiple different types of modelers built in:
- There's the Vertex modeler, which is the main one people think of, it's full-featured and I personally find it easy enough to use (and there are multiple threads in the Carrara forum on modelling in Carrara where you can get tips, ask questions and get answers), One big aspect that often might be overlooked is that you can actually model in the assembly room, meaning the room where you are setting up your scene. This is very useful, being able to model an object while also seeing other elements of the scene in their posed positions. For example, modeling clothing on a character that is in a posed position, maybe just fiddling a little bit to get things perfect before running a simulation with VWD to add dynamic cloth (I know you mentioned you weren't interested in modeling clothing, but just to give one example).
- There's also a full-featured spline modeler. I don't use this one as much, but there are lots of other Carrarists in the forums that use it all the time and swear by it, and you can get plenty of guidance for spline modeling both on the Carrara forum and also in various youtube vids.
- There's a metaball modeler. This one I don't use too much, but it gives some great (weird) capabilities.
- There's a tree modeler where you can make detailed plants that can be animated to sway in the wind (just input the direction and speed of the wind and it will animate)
- There's a Hair modeler where you can create dynamic hair. There's a physics sim for hair so you can easily animate it in Carrara, but now thanks to a free plugin from Philemot, you can now turn the dynamic strand hair into a mesh that can be exported and used in any other program, so making a new hairstyle can be as easy as growing the hair, brushing/cutting it into whatever style you like and then exporting it as a mesh to be used in other programs. Simply brush the same hair you created into a different style, then you can export that as a new morph for the hair you made. Just might be the easiest way to make conforming hair that exists.
- There's a modeler for creating 3d text in various fonts, which can be very handy depending on your needs.
- There's a modeler which uses formulas (frankly that one is far beyond me and I never touch it, but I've seen some french guy's page where he used it to generate a ton of weird wild stuff)
- There's particle modeler (lots of presets but also you easily generate your own specific particles using the particle modeler and animate using the scene forces and physics). You can make actual scene objects/mesh into particles too if needed.
- There's a volumetric cloud generator.
- There's a realistic sky/atmosphere generator. You can also render out spherical renders so theoretically could make a sky preset to be used as a background in another app.
- There's creators for fire, fog, fountains (all of which are animatable).
- There's an ocean modeler. Set the wind and direction and the wave heights and easily animate (like pretty much everything else in Carrara, everything's animatable including even textures).
- There's a landscape/terrain modeler, which lets you create and modify mountains, valleys, canyons, plains, craters etc. One of my favorite Carrarists even used it to make caves (Dartanbeck, who's a big contributor in the Carrara forums and also a PA in the store).
Every object can have modifiers added to it which allow for all kinds of deformations. It's fun to play with all the various modifiers, to make things shatter, explode, dissolve, get sucked into a black hole, as well as more mundane effects/deformations like bulge, stretch, bounce, bend and twist, add waves, etc etc. All of these are animatable as well, and can be very handy in adding to modeling in terms of subtle deformations.
Carrara also includes 3d painting tools and brushes, and while that might not seem to have that much to do with modeling, I just watched a very cool video of someone modeling by painting displacement into/onto the mesh.
Of course added to all the various creation tools, Carrara also has hard and soft body physics, a large host of animation tools and capabilities, a large number of post-work and rendering effects and modifiers that can be added to any light or object in the scene, and a very good biased renderer engine (and also very fast), but probably none of that matters much if you're only using it as a modeling resource.
There are also a number of plugins for Carrara but one in particular that might be of interest (since you mentioned specifically you were interested in modeling buildings) is Architools, which is specifically a plugin to add a modeler to Carrara which is solely for creating buildings. I've had a lot of fun with it, in fact it's one of my top 5 favorite plugins, and available here in the Daz store (actually Inagoni is the vendor name and was recently listed in the mega fastgrab at 65% or more off, and might appear there again, so you could pick it up very inexpensively). Inagoni also has a plugin called Shaper which allows for freeform deformation, could also be very useful addition to your modeling toolkit, depending on what you need. BTW just for the sake of completeness, my other top 5 carrara plugins: Virtual World Dynamics/VWD for carrara (for dynamic cloth), Octane for Carrara, LightX (a free plugin for lights that are distance-squared falloff), Shader Power Tools by Fenric, Posing Pack 3 by Fenric)
Thanks for all the information. It's somewhat overwhelming. I think I'll have to approach it by deciding what one thing I want to do most - and then figuring out how to do it - and ignore all the rest of it until I master it. Then move on to another focus. I'll check out the forum.
Jonstark, do you have a link to that hair converter plugin? My google skills have failed me.
Retopoing is only good for baking purposes. It is used to bake fine details from a high poly mesh down to a low poly version, which results in maps like normals, ambient occlusion, curvature, etc. The retopo would be the low poly. If you just want to take a conforming Poser clothing and use it as dynamic, just import the obj from the geometries folder, unless pulling the conforming clothing into the cloth room is enough to convert it to dynamic (been a long time since I've used Poser). Unlike DS, Poser's method allows direct access to the obj file without having to export one out first.
(tl;dr)
...Sculptris? Meshes are, well, messy, and you need to keep an eye on the vertex count -- easy job anyway with the decimate brush. Plus it has its own chaotic UVmapping system and lets you paint your textures, so messy meshes aint that bad. Plus (PLUS!) it's free. As ZBrush, its mainly, or rather only, for organic shapes. It's currently working currently as some sort of free, lite version of ZBrush (which is actually not, the app has its history), as both programs are owned by Pixologic.
And yeah, I believe is the EASIEST ever.
(And FREE!)
I couldn't believe it, but I didn't bookmark the page. Fortunately there was a recent thread in the Carrara forum asking the same thing:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/197821/philemo-plugin-dynamic-hair-to-mesh#latest
Looks like the link is:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/carrara-time-savers/
(I definitely bookmarked it this time :)
I should mention this is also included free as part of Philemot's VWD for Carrara plugin too, so if you have that already you might found out you already have it. Philemot also said that he's going to focusing on improving this plugin in the near future, so it will likely be updated soon too.
I have VWD, but I mostly work with Dax Studio.
But I also do a lot of Daz stuff in Carrara, so more options would be great.
I have LAMH, which is great, but it lacks some of the dynamic elements I'd like.
Not to derail the thread, but that's certainly not the only reason for retopologizing a model.
A lot of people like to sculpt their models, especially organic forms, in Zbrush, Blender, Sculptris, etc. rather than polygon model them because it's freer and lets you explore forms more easily and quickly. The results are sometimes in the millions of polygons and need to be retopologized into something more reasonable (for example a large flat section might end up with a couple hundred or even a few thousand polygons from sculpting, but really only requires a couple polygons; or a sculpted knee might have terrible topology for bending) for posing or animation.
As MDO2010 said, um, no. It changes the topology of the mesh. Hence the name "re-topology". Put the nastiest looking mesh with n-gons and triangle faces and terrible "flow" into a good retopo software, and what you'll get is a world of difference. I gave up on ZBrush, but if I still had it I'd post a before and after image. Like I said, one area it's especially beneficial for me is converting nasty mesh that might explode in a cloth sim into something that works wonderfully.
Easy example:
My free Iray shaders include procedurally generated displacement (boulders, for example)
If I do that with a sphere, the mesh is going to create a distinct polar bias.
But if I put it through Instant Meshes, I end up with a faceted jewel with mostly even quads, and the displacement is uniform.