What with these tools being out in the wild for a while now I figured it was time to give them a dedicated thread for discussing development progress and for a better feedback loop. For those unfamiliar with these tools, read on.
Dedicated Retopology Tool Suite from CG Cookie
Contours and Polystrips are two dedicated retopology tool add-ons for Blender designed by yours truly and developed by Patrick Moore and Jon Denning.
The eventual goal is to create a full suite of retopology tools that’s carefully designed to work together, allowing you to complete the full retopology workflow from beginning to end.
After all three main tools are complete, the workflow will go like this: block the simple forms with Contours, map out the difficult flows with Polystrips, and then finally fill in the holes with Patches.
Update 11-21-2014: after a lot of feedback I’ve chosen to re-release Contours and Polystrips (and future tools) as a single add-on, called RetopoFlow. Read the blog post here: http://cgcookiemarkets.com/blender/2014/11/21/contours-polystrips-combined/
Tool #1: Contours - available here
The Contours Retopology tool is an addon for Blender that provides quick and easy ways retopologize cylindrical forms. Use cases include organic forms, such as arms, legs, tentacles, tails, horns, etc.The tool works by drawing strokes perpendicular to the form to define the contour of the shape. Immediately upon drawing the first stroke, a preview mesh is generated, showing you exactly what you’ll get. You can draw as many strokes as you like, in any order, from any direction.
The Polystrips tool provides quick and easy ways create the key face loops needed to retopologize a complex model. Use cases include complex forms, such as human faces, creatures, and other organic & hard-surface objects.
In most cases, difficult part of retopology is getting the topology flow right around details. The goal of Polystrips is to provide a fast and artist-friendly method of mapping out the crucial topology around complex forms, allowing the remaining areas to simply be filled in.
Tool #3: Patches - coming soonPatches is the third tool in development that will round out most of the retopology workflow. It is still in the very early development stages, but it will allow you to fill in holes with quad-based poly patches very easily.
Each of the add-ons are available on the Blender Market.
Any and all feedback is welcome!