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Retopology using 3D-Coat - Convert triangles to smooth quads
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Tim Olson  
#1 Posted : Thursday, February 5, 2015 5:42:00 PM(UTC)
Tim Olson

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Hi All

I've been exploring 3D-Coat as part of a workflow with PowerPack to convert scanned or triangle data for conversion to NURBs. Below is a link to a movie showing some of the results.

http://youtu.be/4rDQCxGaLZ8

Models that have been re-meshed using 3D Coat have very nice flow/quad features that result in a smaller NURB model within PowerPack.

Tim
Tim Olson
IMSI Design/Encore
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Jean-Francois Jacques  
#2 Posted : Friday, February 6, 2015 7:41:08 AM(UTC)
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Very interesting!
METEORE DESIGN / KEKO Stand
Jean-Francois Jacques, Industrial Designer
SharkCad Pro V14 B1653
Platform macOS 14 Sonoma
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jonwatts  
#3 Posted : Friday, February 6, 2015 8:45:15 AM(UTC)
jonwatts

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Tim,

This is outstanding! Thanks so much for sharing this as this is the EXACT workflow I have envisioned for my manufacturing operation! Large shops and small should be breaking down your doors for this system to ad to their library. You have hit a real home run here with Viacad,Shark, and Powerpack. I hope to acquire my copy of Viacad Pro/Powerpack soon!

Jon
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Tim Olson  
#4 Posted : Friday, February 6, 2015 12:27:06 PM(UTC)
Tim Olson

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Hi Jon

It's fun to take some of these triangle models and turn into usable solids. I was next going to try some larger scanned models and see how they turn out. Something larger then the bunny which was 69k triangles.

Have you tried it with anything larger then 250K triangles?

Tim
Tim Olson
IMSI Design/Encore
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jonwatts  
#5 Posted : Friday, February 6, 2015 11:29:32 PM(UTC)
jonwatts

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Tim

I down loaded an obj mesh from 3dvia Warehouse a little while ago and opened it in my trial version of Rhino. It was 13.1 MB with 250K triangles. It opened fine in Rhino but as of yet I do not have a serious retopology application to do anything. A while back I got a trial version of Silo but it was very unstable and continually crashed... forget that. I know 3d-coat is a top shelf program and will probably ad it down the road as things develop, but I'm going to settle on Topogun for now. Probably get it here in the next few days. It appears to have what I need with no compromise. I will manually re-topo everything to manage the polygon structure and hopefully make my surfaces and solids as lite as possible. I have no idea what is involved at the programming level, but if it would be possible to ad retopology tools at some point to Viacad/Powerpack I don't think I could contain myself!

Jon
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Tem  
#6 Posted : Tuesday, February 10, 2015 6:29:23 AM(UTC)
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There are several retopology tools available (I might have missed a few, but these are used by many):

Z-Brush
3D Coat
Blender
Topogun
Cinema4D
Maya
Modo
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Tim Olson  
#7 Posted : Tuesday, February 10, 2015 11:24:06 AM(UTC)
Tim Olson

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Hi Tem

If you've found that works well with Shark FX please let us know.

Thanks!

Tim
Tim Olson
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jonwatts  
#8 Posted : Sunday, February 15, 2015 10:17:34 PM(UTC)
jonwatts

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I just purchased a copy of Topogun as part of my reverse engineering work flow. It's a great bare bones application that's very easy to learn and perfect for retopology of obj scans. As time permits, I'll give periodic updates as to my progress in developing a work flow in union with Viacad Pro/Powerpack. Most of you folks probably are far more educated than I in this area, but I'm more than willing to share what I learn to help others if needed. I'm very excited about starting the process!

Jon
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Tim Olson  
#9 Posted : Tuesday, February 17, 2015 12:55:37 PM(UTC)
Tim Olson

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Topogun looks interesting. I asked for trial number to test some meshes with PowerPack. The example file (orc_84k.obj) converted very nicely into NURBs.

Tim
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Tim Olson
IMSI Design/Encore
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Tim Olson  
#10 Posted : Tuesday, February 17, 2015 1:54:10 PM(UTC)
Tim Olson

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I also tested their 680K orc model. This was a good test for the optimization/merge logic of the subd to nurb tool.

Tim
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Tem  
#11 Posted : Tuesday, February 24, 2015 2:00:47 PM(UTC)
Tem

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Hi All,

I just had some success using a few different apps to get a result that is closing in on what I want.

Process: (experiment)

Autodesk catch app (free for now), using iPhone 6, to capture top and bottom of a clients hard model.
Import top and bottom meshes into Meshmixer to remove non-essential scan data and simplify meshes.
Import OBJ as reference into Topogun 2.0 (US$100), create "quad mesh" manually ( a lot to learn about this tool, although it is quite simple). Export OBJ
Import into SharkFX 9.0 (1150), repair mesh, subD to Nurbs and I get something closer to what I am looking for. (sorry, I can't show the work yet).
I can see how this might be very useable in my work flow eventually.

Tem
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Tim Olson  
#12 Posted : Tuesday, February 24, 2015 2:03:10 PM(UTC)
Tim Olson

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Very interesting!

>>Import into SharkFX 9.0 (1150), repair mesh,
What tools in FX/PowerPack did you use to repair the mesh?

What size of mesh did you convert to NURBs?

Many thanks

Tim

Edited by user Tuesday, February 24, 2015 2:05:25 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Tim Olson
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Guest  
#13 Posted : Tuesday, February 24, 2015 4:38:29 PM(UTC)
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Hi Tim,

It is a small OBJ, 25kb, quads.

By the way, earlier versions of the same mesh had errors about "slivers".
What is meant by slivers and why does it prefer evenly sized meshes?
Is there a setting to retopologize imported models?

Different subject:
1. how does one control a crease within a resulting nurb surface.
2. how do I explode a collection of nurbs surfaces into smaller individual surfaces? Convert?
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