I have wished this functionality for a long time in Blender.
I bought this and at least to my admittedly simple test cases it works as advertised.
I think it will be a great addition to all who make a lot of retopo. I know there’s shrink wrap possibility also, but this is a lot quicker…
Edit: Pretty much everything I said in this post is wrong. Ignore me. Good work on this tool, guys. Can’t wait to see the rest of the roadmap complete.
It’s a neat looking tool, but $31.50 for a beta version of a tool that can’t even retopologize a whole model, only the cylinder shaped parts? From their roadmap it looks like I’ll need to come back in a few months to buy the other parts to make this a complete tool. Yeah. I’d love to buy that, but first I need to spend my money on this really cool car I saw that only drives during the daytime and can’t turn left. :no:
easier for really simple characters,such as low poly game characters.
manual is the way to go for more complex forms (and always will be) but I am interested in speeding up workflow.I saw the roadmap for the other tools , I have seen examples of drawing main loops in other software,so I’m really looking forward to that (poly strip sketching).
I was going to question the paying for tools,but in essence,its seems more like a donation scheme for further development of the tool,and other tools,if I understand correctly.
great work by developers here.
Yes, the money actually goes in for supporting further development and support, the tool itself is under GPL license and might be integrated into future Blender releases when it`s ready.
That’s a rather impressive tool from the video, looks like some genius piece of coding at play there !
That’s exactly it! All of the proceeds go back to the development of the tool and future tools.
Like @K Horseman said, the tool has a limited scope at the moment but that’ll soon change. And even with the limited scope, depending on the model, it can save enormous amounts of time during the retopo process.
I should have a video up soon showing the full retopo process of the Swampler creature, while making use of Contours.
Thanks for the support!
gracias 
While at first blush it looks very complicated, it’s probably more simple than you think. The actual “cutting” code and my connectivity code took about 1/10th the time of the polishing and user interface
Turns out, a lot of people make mostly right turns in the day time and finding a way to make it more time efficient is…gasp, a $ worthy tool.
#Imbetteratanalogiesthanyou
<3
Patrick
I don’t mind paying for a piece of software, and I don’t mind making a donation toward development, but paying a set price for the beta version of an incomplete tool is not the same as making a donation to a development team. Either make a voluntary donation page, or let me know when you have a finished product to sell. Cylinders are the one thing I don’t feel like I need an automated tool to retopo. I spend a half hour doing those parts of a character and a couple of days on complex things like shoulders and hips and faces. At the moment this doesn’t do any of the things I would pay money to accomplish, and for the things it does do, it’s still a beta version. This is like selling me a handle and telling me that I can come back and buy the tip of the screwdriver in a few months. And we haven’t finished testing the handle yet, by the way.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to see how this develops, and I will definitely buy it when it’s finished, but this product launch style really rubs me the wrong way.
Edit: Patrick, I’ll reiterate what I just said about what I actually need in a retopo tool versus what this currently does. I’ll be happy to spend 30 bucks when this saves me more than twenty minutes a month. #analogiesarelessimportantthanreality
#alsohashtagsdonothinghere
Thanks for the feedback! I can understand why it rubs you the wrong way, even if I don’t personally agree. We’ll keep cranking and hopefully have the full package available in the near future
Couple of tricks and a warning: You can sketch with primitives (cylinders, spheres etc. or make your own) and join them to one object. Then retopo with Contours -> new quad topo. Also neat trick to quick retopoing simple characters is to make limbs and torso with several rounds of Contours use and then use the marvelous new Bridge connect functions… Also, in more complex shapes, new vertex connects over several polys, delete some and Bridge… Yes, there are possibilities.
One warning, if you have very sparse topology (like simple cube) Contours fails. But subdivide the Cube and it works. Probably not usual situation in retopo, but I’m gifted in using everything the wrong way… XD
I look forward to it! Thank you for taking my curmudgeonliness in stride.
I can’t speak to your values and needs. For many, making a 30 minute task a 2 minute task is a valuable service even if they have have 2 hours of other work to do. We are offering a screw driver. You need a screwdriver and a few other tools. Why does our release strategy upset you? The 30 people wanting to use it “as is” sure aren’t mad and you will most definitely benefit from their early adoption.
-Patrick
Huh, between this and Gaia Clary showing interest in updating the remesh modifier in the mailing list, retopology in blender is going to become quite something.
Now if the mesh properties transfer Gsoc finishes proper and gets into trunk…
@patmo are you intending to do something similar to the mudbox advanced retopo tool (youtube it) for your polystrip sketch tool? as I wasn’t exactly clear on the roadmap.
Edit: Eh. I’m just being a grouch now. Grumpy rant withdrawn. This looks very awesome and very promising, but I will be waiting until the full set of retopo tools are available. That’s just down to what use I personally feel I’ll get out of it. I look forward to future developments.
It’s becoming more and more common to actually declare your software “beta” before selling it. Other companies may just sell you unstable software that they just declared stable, because they need the funds. Non-trivial applications are never quite stable, anyway.
If you want people to donate to your in-progress, unfinished development project, ask for donations. If you’re going to offer it in a store and call it a product, offer a finished product that is out of its testing cycle.
You do realize that this tool is free software that you use at will, with no obligations? You’re being offered to support its development, if you don’t like it, don’t buy into it. You shouldn’t be telling other people how to run their business.
@CGCookie:
I’m always very interested (and skeptic) about how to monetize free software like Blender. It would be great if you could at some point publish a few figures on how well this sold, so as to motivate (or demotivate) prospective developers from contributing to Blender in a similar way.
I’d be happy to do that! I’m looking to post a blog update in the next few days to talk a bit more on our development intentions, roadmap from here, and of course sells success.
Keep in mind that in a way you are not paying for a beta tool, but instead you are paying for a complete tool at a discount price and get to use it early as an added bonus. Since you get free upgrades throughout the development of the add-on, I don’t see how this is a bad deal at all. Good work Jonathan and Patrick, I’m looking forward to this!
In my limited capacity for imagination, I don’t see the major automatic mudbox functions coming out of my fingertips, but I also never envisioned being where we are right now when we started. So I won’t say never, but certainly this addon will always be a user driven process. The mud box stuff is pretty darn impressive.
Now a concrete answer on what I feel are the two most “conceptual” planned work flow improvemnts which I have a vision for how to implement.