Looking for input on Topogun or 3d-Coat

Hi guys, I’m looking for any and all input (pros, cons / good, bad)from those of you who have used Topogun or 3d-coat (or other commericial tools for retopology).

Of course I’m not sure what the pixo crew has up there sleeves for retopo in the the long awaited release of zbrush 4r7.

Thanks in advance for your time and knowledge (ô¿ô)

Cheers,
~Tung

Topogun is really great !

If you dos not have to make modeling outside the mesh, it’s one of the best retopo softs.
If you have to make modeling outside the mesh, you will have to export/import etc with your modeling software.

That’s why I use blender for retopo, there are some great tools for that in the addons forum :wink:

Thanks for you input :slight_smile:
I’m keeping an eye on your works too :slight_smile:

Cheers,
~Tung

Haven’t used Topogun.

3DCoat, I’ve used briefly for retopo. Briefly, because it didn’t resonate with me, with what it had at the time. I liked the auto retopo, it was one of the few things like that at the time, but the manual retopology was a bit slow in terms of workflow. I still preferred Silo at the time. My problem with it (and Silo) was reading surfaces. I could not find a good shading setup to see both the HiRez and retopo well. 3DCoat, now-days, I use just for texturing.

Besides Dyntopo, the potential to use Blender for retopo was what drew me to it. After I customized it enough, and was getting comfortable with Blender in general I started exploring the different retopo workflows. Soon after it became my main retopo tool. I’ve done quite a bit of retopo with it in production. This was all with just the BSurfaces addon. Today there’s already a couple of more addons that bring a lot to the process.

For me, Blender, is the best tool for retopo because of the environment it lends for the task. The thing is, it’s not a dedicated tool for retopo and is not as easy to use as such. It’s not like just fireing it up and starting to retopo. You need to know Blender quite indepth, and set everything up properly to suit you workflow. But it’s there, it allows for good workflows. And it only gets better from here with time.

edit:
BTW, I might add that I have adopted the retopo workflow back in the days of the Silo v2 release that brought sculpting, surface snapping and topoBrush to the app. That was some 6 years ago. Sculpt > retopo has been my workflow in production for 6 years already.

Thanks OrAngE,
Great input, some of the vids on 3d-coat looks like its steep learning curve, but the auto retopo looked intriguing, (in a perfect world :p)
I need to take some time to give bsurfaces and Icetools as well a test drive.

Thanks again :slight_smile:

Cheers,
~Tung

I can tell you right now that Topogun is decent for retopology, but it focuses primarily on that one task. 3d Coat has far more utility built into it, with a great UV editor, sculpting, texture painting…ect
Topogun is less active on the development end, no significant community activity, where as 3d Coat is both very active in development and community.

3d coat cost more, but you get far more value out of it. Over all its better software.

As for retopology software in general, retopology is a critical part of the pipeline if you sculpt or need to bake high poly detail onto low poly geometry. Having access to good retopology tools not only empowers the artist quite a bit, but significantly reduces the time and stress that comes with that part of the pipeline.

Some 3d software packages come with retopology specific tools which make the need for dedicated apps like topogun and 3d coat unnecessary. For example, Modo has a retopology toolset/mode that acts in a similar fashion to those dedicated applications. Jonathan Williamson is also working on enhancing the retopology toolset through one of his addons, this is great if one wants to stay inside of Blender. From what I have seen its coming along quite well.

At the end of the day, its quite hard to go wrong with 3d coat.

@SaintHaven,
Valuable advice my friend.
I never took into account about the activity in development/community between the two.
As I was looking into features, I did notice on topogun that you can also bake maps, but like you said, sculpt, texture, uv retopo, community (Plus they have Farsthary coding :p) I can see where you will get more value for your money.

Jonathan Williamson is also working on enhancing the retopology toolset through one of his addons

That is one point, I even bought into it at first when contours came out, sure it was of interest to me and something I would use so I bought it. Then they started splitting up features (Instead of keeping it as one addon)as the roll down the red carpet with it, you will end up having to buy 2,3,4 or 5 versions to get the job done, at the end of the day after buying all of them…
Who knows 3d-coat may be cheaper.
For me, if your out to make a tool for retopology, focus on making it the very best tool in the area, not by splitting it up into how many versions you can, to generate more revenue. For me was a disappointment.

Thanks a lot my friend, I really appreciate your input.

Cheers,
~Tung

Honestly, Blender has everything you need for speedy retopo, even without extra tools. I have 3D-Coat and I like it a lot for texture painting and voxel sculpting, but it’s retopo tools seem unintuitive to me. If I only had, say, Maya 2013 or earlier (prior to the inclusion of the new modeling toolkit), then I’d probably appreciate 3DC’s retopo tools more, but Blender’s native tools are much more intuitive to me.

Im in curious what you need that’s not already included?

I’ll be the first to admit that splitting up the tools was the wrong decision. Which is why they’re being combined: http://cgcookiemarkets.com/blender/2014/11/21/contours-polystrips-combined/

Thanks ohsnapitsjoel,
Valid points, blender has always impressed me and continues to each day.
Topology has never been a strong point of mine(guess I should get into the ring focus only on topology till I get it down to a science :p), I guess I’m looking for something to increase workflow. Magic one button fix all (a perfect world? lol)

Thanks again my friend :slight_smile:

@ JonathanW
We will see where it goes when the dust settles
Thanks for your input

Cheers,
~Tung

I just do 3D as a hobby which is why I don’t usually post on these threads. Saying that I do use 3D-Coat and Blender a lot. I really like the Autopo and find that it’s easy to setup if your mesh doesn’t have large insets/holes in it. It only works for meshes that are enclosed volumes though, if your mesh is not enclosed then you have to manually retopo it. Manual retopo is very similar I think for both 3D-Coat and Blender. One added bonus for 3D-Coat is that they are currently adding in PBR functionality to the paint/rendering part of the package, which is looking very cool.

Thanks Grimm,
Great info, I didn’t know they were heading toward pbr as well,
so everything has to be a-symmetrical as well for auto topo?
allegorithmic and quixel will most like port to 3d-coat then

Thanks again for your time and knowledge :slight_smile:

Cheers,
~Tung

Nope both symmetrical and a-symmetrical meshes work fine for Autopo. There are settings in Autopo to handle symmetrical meshes which makes it easier to setup. Also you can add guides to the mesh that Autopo uses to place the polys in the retopology.

Topogun is great, but honestly since Blender got the F2 addon and with Contours, I haven’t once felt the need to retopo anywhere else. I would argue that (aside from missing auto retopo) Blender offers a best-in-class retopology workflow.

Also, if you’re interested in examining some of the shortcomings of auto-topo options out there, I made a little design doc explaining the workflows in 3DCoat and ZBrush.

advice ? can you be specific your first thread link to this one…

I used Topogun , Zbrush… Can give my feedback on those if you like.

Topogun :

Topogun’s topo tools seem nice at first, but it needs labor, if you are going for presicion and have time to spare I guess its ok. It can speed up once you get familiar with a work flow. (For example I use to just draw edges from vertex points and draw the edge loops on the part I’m working on. Then use bridge tool to quickly turn the loops into faces.) Some of the tools I never manage to make work properly like “tubes”. One thing I tried a lot and failed was its baking tools. Just an advice dont waste time on them. They are cumbersome and take too long with no real control over the bake.

pros :

  • Has a quick draw capability and bridge capability - good for manual work.

  • Has a subdivide feature to preview the topology when subdivided.

  • Has a morph tool which allows auto morphing of topologized surface to translated new base model with same number of vertices. (original > topo —change in subdivision sculpt—> original -translated- (original vertex count ) >> morph >> auto arrange topology to the translated new original).

cons :

  • Some tools are hard to work with , tubes,pencil.

  • use to crash unexpectedly on some options .( dont know current state).

  • Has awful bake tools.

  • Labor can get intensive if the mesh consist of multiple parts on the same model.

  • can only import / export a single mesh at a time. ( A character with multiple parts is either imported as a single object or part by part).

  • Price is it worth it ? In my opinion no.

Zbrush :

Most people will talk about Zremesher (qremesher in the first days) when they hear about “zbrush & retopology”. However zbrush has 2 other tools for manual retopology. These are zsphere and topology brush.

ZSphere topology is the legacy mode for retopologizing a model in zbrush , it is controlled but needs a lot of labor depending on the model. If you are familiar with the Ui and use zbrush constantly you can get use to its awkward usage fairly quickly. But understanding how it works may take a couple of trials.

Topology brush is the new tool for manual topology. it seem fairly simple , you draw with the brush on the surface it creates a curve and a preview topology (the face size depends on your brush size). When you get near to a curve end point, the cursor turns to green (means it recognizes the edge and will connect to it) you draw and continue building topology. Easy right. Well in real life it takes more work than that. The system most of the time behaves not the way you like so you try to delete a previous curve, after you delete it you try to draw again and this is where the “s/ht hits the fan”. System interpolates your draw strokes and it is not what you want, delete it oops you accidently deleted the neighboring curve point too… So it is a little bit of 2 steps forward 1 step back kind of way of topologizing. It took a lot of trials until I could get a hang of it which at that point I said “its cumbersome , I don’t need this” and returned to blender.

Pros :

  • It Zbrush you get the whole package; including auto topo feature zremesher. Decimation master, Vertex paint tools etc…

  • It has Legacy topology mode zspheres. which is controlled but looks very unorthodox at first.

  • It can also create fast and usable bakes.

  • Also has an alternate tool “Topology brush” but usage depends on the person and familiarity with the system.

Cons :

  • Its hard to grasp out of the box.You need to watch couple of zclassroom tutorials before getting a hold of the systems.

  • Zsphere legacy topo is labor intensive , you draw faces point by point.

  • Topology Brush topo is faster but is hard to control. Takes lots and lots of practice.

  • Price is it worth it ? yes , since its not just a topo tool but a sculpt package (with modelling capabilities very soon).

Conclusion :

Personally I use Blender. Just enable “snap to face” and “F2 Addon” and start to create faces. Topology is usually labor intensive anyway. besides it teaches a lot about good modelling practices.

Blender has mirror , baking , subdivision preview , decent projection (shrinkwrap modifier).

if you are going for speeding things up more ; try the CGCookie polystrips and contour tools (You can find them on the Blendermarket). They do speed things up a lot.

There are also custom addons people are working on like Icetools and topology tools. You can try those.

Hope this helps…

@Grimm,
Ahhh cool can handle either in auto topo sounds like a time saver

Thanks mate :slight_smile:

@m9105826,
I never even thought about the f2 script, are you using it with a shrinkwrap modifier or with autosnapping?
Great research on the shortcomings of auto-topo options. I’m gonna give it a study :slight_smile:
I’m hoping that pixo crew has some awesomeness for retopo in the upcoming/long awaited release of zbrush 4r7.

Thanks bro :slight_smile:

@yii7,
About topogun,
I guess like anything there’s a steep learning curve? the more you use it the more proficient you get with it.
Now for zbrush,
I bought a license a couple of years ago and love it but never had much success in the remesher. I recently came across a tutorial though where they were using a topology brush laying down some guides to follow before hitting the remesher button and had a lot better flow to the topology. I’m gonna give that a try and I’m still hope the new release coming up with have more bells -n- whistles in topology as well as all the other tweaks they throw in (x64 bit as well :p)

Thanks a lot for your time and knowledge :slight_smile:

Cheers,
~Tung

I just use simple surface snapping with the Multiple Elements option turned on. F2, Contours/polystrips, and grid fill automate a nice chunk of the process.

Trying the f2 script… Where’s the Multiple Elements option? Forgive my blindness :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s one of the buttons to the right of the dropdown where you choose what type of snapping to use.

Thanks (ô¿ô)
One last question for 3d-coat users(Well the hobbyists) limitations on hobbyist compared to full is obvious Non-commericial and the only other restrictions I see is it’s limited to 2K maps.
Are there any watermarks or hidden restrictions (Or buried in the fine print, that your next born belongs to their bloodline?)

Thanks for all the feedback.

Cheers,
~Tung