Retopology in Blender - Retopoflow Addon

[@annelisefreund3908]

I really appreciate this video! Just got the plugin for a work project and have never used Blender before - so it was an awesome addon that you showed us how to download the plugin and load it into Blender.

[@JamieDunbar]

Thanks Annelise! Glad you’re enjoying the addon and I’m glad I could help you learn how to use it 😁

[@retroeshop1681]

Amazing add-on, for some reason I missed the release of this video, I was following the whole retopology series, but thing I remembered I wanted to know a little more about retopoflow, amazing, I think I'll use retopoflow, looks like fun, thank you a lot! :D

[@JamieDunbar]

If you're doing enough retopology, Retopoflow is certainly worth investing in. It's quite powerful.

[@EliaForce1984ita]

The PolyStrips brush is actually quite useful for quickly block out the edge loops and have the edge flow right off the bat, obviously with some proper tweaking and cleaning afterwards, as it tends to get messy if the faces are too big.

[@AndyTanguay]

Alright...the 'Return of the King' of retopo videos! What an amazing addon...been using it the last two weeks and it makes retopo (dare I say) fun.

[@JamieDunbar]

Haha, I know right!?

[@CASMANWHAT]

O wow this is better than the other tool you mentioned. definitely using this instead! and here I was trying to retopo from scratch when tools like this exist. thanks!!!!

[@JamieDunbar]

If you’re willing to pay that little bit it’s an awesome addon 👍

[@abbeybrickner6603]

Great video! I like how clear you are and how you take your time explaining things. Looking forward to future videos !

[@JamieDunbar]

Thanks Abbey. Really appreciate it ;)

[@WesleyOverdijk]

Adding the little things that could go wrong was really really helpful. My first thought was "Ha! Dumbass". Now, I don't like admitting my mistakes but the second I started my retopology I hit at least 4 of the potential mistakes and thanks to you I knew how to solve them. 5 stars! Remember when youtube used stars?

[@JamieDunbar]

Ahahaha. That actually makes me really happy to hear. I often wonder about including all those potential problems, as it slows down the video and until you personally run into them it can feel like pointless information. So I'm glad at least one person has found it helpful.

[@siddheshwarmahant566]

Thank you very much bro I finnaly understand how to use retopolfow cuz on bcz of you

[@JamieDunbar]

That’s awesome mate. There’s been another one or two updates since I made this video, so some of the tools are even better now.

[@manojlogulic4234]

Very nice explained, well done sir. I sub and liked, you deserve it. Keep doing wonderful job 👏👏👏

[@JamieDunbar]

Yay! Thanks Manojlo. And welcome to the club :D

[@pixelwrinkly1528]

very nice video many thanks for sharing your knowledge it's a while since I tried retopoflow (version 2) and I found it kind of ok, but not really. felt very clunky and on a mac at least there were various display problems but wow, this version 3 is night and day; the devs have done a great job getting to this stage i'm sill only taking baby steps but for the first time ever i'm thinking i may actually be able to retopo some of my creations thanks again

[@JamieDunbar]

Version 3 was such a big update for Retopoflow. And there’s been another small update since I made this video which streamlined a lot of the tools even more 😁

[@bertle]

Hi Jamie, love the video! Is it possible to enable an "in front" option within the addon, so it is possible to make the retopology visiable even it is behind the target mesh?

[@JamieDunbar]

Hey Bertle. I just checked on version 3.2.8 and it doesn't seem like there is a good way to do it. The best thing I could find was to reverse the normals (under 'target cleaning'), which makes them visible through the mesh...but then of course you can't seem them from the front side 😅 I can't say I've ever had any use for this particular display option, so I might be missing something. But it doesn't appear that it's currently possible.

[@bertle]

@@JamieDunbar ah thanks for the help. hopefully the developers add the feature in soon

[@saneibrahim340]

thanks a lot for this video

[@JamieDunbar]

You're very welcome Sane.

[@midnightmediareview]

Hey I love the detailed tutorials. I'm new to blender so thus is helping. I have a sculpt I want to use to animation. Can you tell me the recommended amount of faces to have before retopologizing?

[@JamieDunbar]

Hey Moel. Welcome to the Blender club ;) You asked about the recommended face count *before* retopology? How many faces you need while sculpting is completely dependent on how much detail you need. This Gremlin ended up with around 25million, although a lot of computers may not be able to handle that level of detail.

[@midnightmediareview]

@@JamieDunbar ok cool. During this video when you decimated the gremlin you said it was completely useless for animation due to how many faces after decimation. My mesh is about 6 million.

[@JamieDunbar]

@@midnightmediareview Any time you decimate a model it makes it pretty useless for animation. The way the polygons get laid out during decimation makes deforming those meshes nearly impossible. There's nothing wrong with your high poly sculpt having 6million faces. But even a super computer would struggle to animate it. That's why you'll want to retopologise it - to lower it's polygon count to make it animatable.

[@midnightmediareview]

@@JamieDunbar oooooh ok ok now um understanding. So no matter the poly count, everything is animatable after it is retopoligized! Thank you so much!

[@JamieDunbar]

@@midnightmediareview You'll want to make sure your retopology isn't incredibly high poly. Even with nicely laid out faces, a retopologised mesh with millions of faces will lag like crazy when animating. The number of faces for a good, animatable character will vary a lot. But just as an example, AAA games have characters with around 50,000 polygons. For film, you can go higher.

[@HervertPimentel]

Very cool dude... Have option backface?

[@actuallyAdonis]

Helpful video!

[@das_evoli]

Thank you for your great videos. Did you already cover the multiresolution test you mentioned in Part 2?

[@JamieDunbar]

Thanks DasEvoli. Refresh my memory - what's the multiresolution test I said I would cover?

[@das_evoli]

@@JamieDunbar Thank you for your reply. I'm talking about this part kzbin.info/www/bejne/bZCaY4SajtNmZ8U

[@JamieDunbar]

@@das_evoli Oh! Yes that got an entire tutorial dedicated to it. It's the "Everything you need to know about displacement maps" tutorial. kzbin.info/www/bejne/iGPUaKKQgdhjfac&t

[@das_evoli]

@@JamieDunbar Thank you! One last question: do we still use subdivision when we use Retopoflow? I can't find anything for it and while the tool is open I can't find a subdivision option

[@JamieDunbar]

@@das_evoli I'm pretty sure Retopoflow doesn't have a subdiv option whilst inside the tool. But there's no reason you can't come out and add one yourself for testing purposes. Just remember to remove it again before going back into the tool. I haven't tested it, but I suspect it would be unhappy about having the extra modifer :P

[@1DInciner]

So...no video about irregular density retopology (F2 addon)?

[@JamieDunbar]

Actually… kzbin.info/www/bejne/an2XdKOKr7KdeLs It’s an older video and slightly more of a timelapse, but maybe that will help 😊

[@1DInciner]

@@JamieDunbar Hm. I mean irregular topology density type. Have you seen TOPOLOGY WORKS video?

[@JamieDunbar]

@@1DInciner No. I must admit I have no idea what irregular topology is. Feel free to link that video, I'm curious.

[@1DInciner]

@@JamieDunbar as far as I remember it is impossible to paste even youtube links to youtube comments. But it is quite easily searchible here as TOPOLOGY WORKS 1080p.

[@JamieDunbar]

@@1DInciner Took a look at that video. It's very nice topology and that last section with those weird animations is really cool to look at. But it's not retopology.

[@iresolver]

is plugins like Quad Remesher good to use for re topology?.. or is it better to use Retopoflow?

[@JamieDunbar]

The automatic retopology tools are great for quick and dirty work - and sometimes that’s all you need. But if you plan on making a character for animation you almost always need fine control over the topology - in which case you need to do it manually.

[@rucchi7]

thank you very much!

[@jonahoskow7476]

Question: I’ve skimmed through all three. Amazing work! But.. I don’t know how to take the new mesh and bake normal and displacement maps so that I can animate them. Do you have any tutorials that go through that process? Thanks! -edit- I think the lapras (sp) tutorials have exactly that? So glad I found your channel. Everyone missed the steps needed to animate highly detailed sculpted characters.

[@JamieDunbar]

Hey Jonah. Yes I do! I've got one for displacement maps: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iGPUaKKQgdhjfac And one for normals: kzbin.info/www/bejne/foHJonxuoadoh5I I'm pretty sure in the displacement one I mention that UDIMs aren't fully supported yet. That's no longer the case. So if you're using a UDIM workflow, this process will now work :D

[@jonsk1402]

@@JamieDunbar amazing thank you!

[@SpurlinCinema]

Just bought retopoflow, installed it and when I click the check box in the addons, it crashes blender immediately. Can’t seem to find an answer to this problem. I’ve read that others have experienced the same issue. Any info would be helpful. Thanks!

[@JamieDunbar]

Hey Zach. Well that sucks. Unfortunately that’s beyond my scope. That sounds like a proper bug! I’d recommend getting in touch with the developers. If you’ve paid for it you’re entitled to support. You can message them via Blender Market.

[@JaxMurderer]

Gday, I'm have some serious performance issues with the addon, even the UI is lagging terribly. my high poly model is only 50k faces, any ideas? cheers

[@JamieDunbar]

Unfortunately I'm only going to be so much help here. That sounds like a programming problem, and the addon has always been a little slow. I've heard there's a plan to merge the addon into the main Blender code, which will hopefully get around some of these performance issues. Until then, make sure you're using the latest versions of both Blender and the addon. And obviously how powerful your computer is will play a significant role. If problems persist, see your developer? :P

[@JaxMurderer]

@@JamieDunbar Hey man, thanks heaps for the response. I've chosen to learn retopo with blenders built in tools for now. Retopoflow is just unbearably slow, I'm using a old i7 3820 cpu with 32gb of ddr3 and a heavily bottlenecked rtx3060. I can typically sculpt around 4million polys reasonably comfortably so a a 50k high poly lagging doesn't make a lot of sense? I'll double check but I'm sure that I'm using the latest version of both programs. Wish me luck, cheers

[@JamieDunbar]

@@JaxMurderer Definitely all the lucks my friend. That's a reasonable computer. I'm surprised it's lagging that much for you :(

[@MasterCharizard]

Great tutorial and conclusion to this retopo trilogy, was really interesting to see your approach. If I may ask, in the previous video about speedretopo you mentioned about using multiresolution for baking normal/displacement maps in a final export instead of the standard subdivision surface, are you still interested in a video for this tecnique? Thank you and stay safe :D

[@JamieDunbar]

Hey MC. Although this is technically the end of the retopology series, I am secretly planning a few addition videos titled something like "everything you need to know about displacement/normal maps" and "everything you need to know about UDIMs". But, ssshhh, big secret...

[@MasterCharizard]

@@JamieDunbar Ok ok, I'll stay quiet... NOBODY will read this for SURE. Thanks for the tip!

[@JamieDunbar]

@@MasterCharizard I mean, what kind of crazy person reads the comments on KZbin :P

[@hiagoraimundo6254]

Good afternoon, could you help me? I ended up with 3 meshes over my retopology and I can't get it off!!

[@JamieDunbar]

Is there any reason you can't just delete the two you don't want anymore?

[@shluhenfurer]

Would be perfect if it could handle over a million and even more polygons without any lags. Actually the point of any re-topology program/addons is the ability to handle hundreds of millions triangles to be able to retopologize any detailed object. I do not want to spend my time for preparing my highpoly model for retopologizing, as it can lose some important details.

[@JamieDunbar]

Hey Vladko. It would definitely be nice if it could handle more polygons. That said, there's no reason why you couldn't duplicate your 5million poly model, decimate that down to 500,000, retopologise that model, then go back to your 5mil model to extract displacement maps. It's an extra step that hopefully won't be necessary after another few updates, but you could certainly work around it.

[@Hardcore0]

How change offset

[@jhonysteak5512]

Impossible to activate in blender, if I rename it, I have lots of error messages, if I don't do it I'm different, I tried five different versions, there is another addon of the same type that works ?

[@JamieDunbar]

Hey Jhony. I'm using Blender 3.2 and Retopoflow 3.2.8 and it works without an issue. It's definitely still up to date and working at my end.

[@jhonysteak5512]

@@JamieDunbar Du coup j'ai fini par y arriver mais en cherche une au version que celle disponible sur GitHub.

[@JamieDunbar]

@@jhonysteak5512 Ah, the version of GitHub could be out of date. It's the free version, so it may lag behind the paid version. If you get the paid version off BlenderMarket you'll get support from the developers so it might be worth it. Otherwise shoot them an email and let them know the GitHub version isn't working. They're quite supportive of their free users, so they'll probably fix it pretty quick.

[@jaykhamankar8782]

I have made the retopology of main body....when I create the new target in retopoflow...my previous main body retopology just gets disappear...what's the issue?

[@JamieDunbar]

I can't say I've ever needed to create two retopology meshes before, so I'm not certain. Is there a specific reason you need two meshes?

[@jaykhamankar8782]

@@JamieDunbar for clothes retopo....this also happens when I add armature

[@JamieDunbar]

@@jaykhamankar8782 Hmm, the armature just makes it more confusing. My best guess would be Retopoflow is accidentally deleting your main body because it uses the same name. Try changing the name of your main body before starting on your clothing retopology. If that works it might be good to report that to the developers, because that sounds like a bug.

[@jaykhamankar8782]

@@JamieDunbar ohkkk...thank you:)

[@jaykhamankar8782]

@@JamieDunbar I changed the name but it didn't worked:(

[@samdavepollard]

that's all well and good but you really should include a warning that this add-on can get you to the stage of actually enjoying retopo i mean, that can't be a good thing, surely??

[@JamieDunbar]

Roflmao. I mean, you probably need to have a twisted brain like mine where you actually enjoy things like rigging, programming and retopology. But the addon definitely helps :P

[@samdavepollard]

@@JamieDunbar that Contours tool is better than sex. Mind, I'm 64, so that could just be an age thing ... No but seriously, Blender, for me, is the perfect combination of art and geekery. (I feel kind of the same about Photoshop.) There are parts where it's fun to just dig in and be all artistic, and then there's stuff like scripting and, like you say, retopo and rigging, which stroke my inner geek.

[@JamieDunbar]

@@samdavepollard Lmao. You're killing me here Sam. I completely agree. I've always had a pretty even split between right and left brain, so I'm equal parts mathematical and artistic. Which has always made 3D a perfect fit for me. I'm genuinely not sure what job I'd have done if I'd been born in a different era.

[@Polygonlin]

I Can't get Retopoflow to work for me if my life Depended on it. i spent $86 on it on Blender Market, and nothing i do will make it work. literally the worst thing ive bought on the blender market. which ABSOLUTELY SUCKS cause it looks amazing! not that id know, considering ive never even got to TRY IT!!!

[@pramodacharya2916]

Would you take a look on Topogun 3 and review it.

[@JamieDunbar]

Unlikely sorry. Topogun is paid software and with both Blender and Maya on my computer I don't really have the need to pay for another program.

[@kloa4219]

I like it but it's kind of buggy and crash prone. It sometimes won't center.

[@pramodacharya2916]

@@JamieDunbar but retopoflow is also a paid addon which costs $86 and topogun is like $100, so almost same price. so i was asking your opinion on that software

[@JamieDunbar]

@@pramodacharya2916 Lol, fair point. Unfortunately I've never used Topogun, so I don't have much to say about it. Except that I didn't realise it was that cheap! That's a pretty good deal.

[@leminh8641]

I use the Strokes tool and I get an error: "Edge strips near ends of stroke have different counts. Make sure your stroke is accurate." blender and plugin can do like this? kzbin.info/www/bejne/poW8c4ymntaUsKM

[@JamieDunbar]

Not sure I've run into that exact error. But it sounds like the edges you're trying to join have a different number of vertices.

[@JacobKinsley]

Why does everyone do weird anthropomorphic reptile-like creatures to show off this addon lol

[@JamieDunbar]

Lol, who else is doing that? And he’s a gremlin! From the movie...which is rather old now...Oh no, am I old too!?