Easy Retopology Tutorial - PolyQuilt Addon (Free) - Blender

hello everyone in this tutorial we will use a free blender addon poly quilt it offers useful tools to create low poly models and to build R topology easily it is similar to The builtin polyu Tool in blender but this one offers some more features this add-on has been updated and now works with the latest blender version 4 the first step is to download the add-on visit the GitHub page page link is in the description below and download the latest version go to preferences and install it like any other add-on in blender there are settings to assign custom shortcuts but we will leave them as they are for now so here I have a UV sphere object you can use any other model press shift a and add a plane object go into edit mode turn on snapping and change the type to face next in the viewport overlays turn on re topology setting this will allow us to see the re topology faces which we will create press a to select the single plane phas and press X to delete it in the left side toolbar you should see the poly quilt button if you long press the button a menu will open open which will show additional tools which we can use we will select the first main button I'm just going to change the viewport mat cap material so we can see the results a bit better now click on the surface to create our first quad phas you can move the face Vertex or Edge to create a new face simply hover over any Edge it will turn yellow you will see a small Arrow drag it out to create a new face you can press a two times to deselect the faces now we have created three faces the color of your R topology quad faces may look slightly different if you like to make the colors more darker then you can change them in the blender theme open preferences in the theme section go to 3D viewport and in the face R topology color setting you can change it I have increased the alpha value to make the faces more visible in the editor all the faces created will snap to the surface of the object that is below press hold the shift key we will switch to the brush tool if we hover over any Edge then we can also see a preview where a next phase can be created you can restart blender if it is not showing here you can click to create additional quad faces in this way quickly you can leave the shift key now to make any cut in the face like the kn KN tool in blender simply click over any Edge and click to the next point you will need to go from Edge to the next Edge to make Cuts otherwise it may not work you can also move any vertex to Auto snap and auto merge to the closest vertex point it will show a small circle where it will merge to delete any face Edge or vertex long press left Mouse button over that part it will turn red and get deleted the next feature is one of the most useful tool of this add-on which is the smooth relax brush it can happen sometimes your mesh topology may not be with a clean Edge flow and a bit messy so by holding shift key and using Mouse brush over the surface to make the typology with clean Edge flow you can use this tool on any other model as well to fix the edge flow now let's look at some other tools on this addon The Edge Loop tool will allow to move the entire edges or create new faces from The Edge boundaries the loop cut tool is useful for adding Edge Loops in the typology using the smooth relax brush alongside can help to keep the faces more evenly spaced the knife tool works in the same way as clicking over the edges to make cuts the delete tool allows to quickly delete Faces by drawing over the typology the seam tool is useful for marking seams for UV un WS holding control will Mark the entire Edge Loop or can remove the seams as well there is a menu on the top where you can access some other settings like changing brush size strength the same settings are also available in the side panel you can press n to access them in the tools section here you can assign custom shortcuts for example I have a shortcut Control Plus left click for Edge extrude it works a bit differently from the default action this shortcut allows to extrude a face from the vertex point or any other point on the edges rather than only limited to dragging from the arrow which I showed before in case you want to make symmetrical topology make sure to enable X symmetry option and then you can easily create faces on both sides one problem you may come across is that if you make a cut with symmetry enabled then it is not going to work correctly as it snaps at at the wrong edges I'm not sure if this is some issue in this add-on you can see I'm making a cut from one side but there is a face being created at the back side so to fix this issue it is better to disable symmetry during knife cut operation and work on one side only after making the cuts select all faces go to mesh menu and use the Symmetry rise option to make the typology same on both sides use the plus AIS to minus AIS you can then enable symmetry again just only during making Cuts you will need to disable let's exit the edit mode you might not see your new topology as it is right below the surface of the base mesh object to see our new topology you can either isolate the plane object or add a shrink RB modifier which we will add in the next step now you can change the mat cap if you like with the plane object selected on which we created our typology add a shrink wrap modifier by the way if you are interested to know I am using a free add-on modifier list here to bring back the feature to show all modifiers in the same panel which was in previous versions of blender as I like it more in the shrink wab modifier change the W type 2 project change the snap mode to above surface and in the Target select the base sere object change the offset amount slightly to bring up the topology plane make sure to check positive negative options as well in this way we can see our typology results in object mode as well let's check a few more Tools in poly Quil you can delete entire Edge Loops as well there is a tool for it you will have to assign a custom shortcut you can also use controlr Loop cuts and use the mouse wheel to control the count of the loops hold control to slide them in the middle remember to use shift smooth brush to evenly space the faces next to the poly quilt button you can see another button it is quad patch tool used to make bigger patches of Faces by drawing lines it does not shows the line as we draw over the surface shows after we release the mouse button there is a setting menu in the corner from where you can control how many points or faces will be created after drawing a line only the drawing line is not visible which makes it a bit difficult sometimes otherwise a useful tool to generate topology over bigger areas and this is the overall working of this add-on rest of the tools you can test for yourself and customize so the next part is going to be a small time lapse I'm using a model that I have sculpted in blender if you like to use the same model then I have provided a link for it in the description below you can download the OBG file and import PED in blender the process will be same as before I will add a plain object in the edit mode I will delete the face turn on snapping with face select the poil tool turn on the r topology setting and enable symmetry as well and start building the faces please note I am quickly building the r topology faces here to keep this tutorial short otherwise you should take your time use the Symmetry rise tool whenever the mesh topology does not get updated on both sides it is better to build R topology in small sections and then connect them with each other shift click to use the smooth relax brush to maintain a clean Edge flow of faces here I am using the edge Loop tool to add edge Loops in the object mode I will add the shrink RAB modu modifier just like as shown before this time I will add a twole subdivision modifier above the shrink RB modifier to check the typology flow right click and smooth shade to make all the newly created faces same here is the final low poly version which I created I kept the amount of faces quite low here but you can increase to add more details to it since we added a subdivision modifier you can create a high resolution clean topology mod as well by increasing the subdivision levels keep it to maximum to three or four otherwise your performance will be affected in the edit mode you will have easy control over selecting Loops a few tips to keep in mind you can turn off R topology setting when you don't need it anymore so the colors are back to normal when working in edit mode if you have added a subdivision modifier on your object during r topology your performance may feel slow so turn the subdivision modifier off turn off symmetry during making Cuts or knife tool operations as I have already shown that sometimes topology is not updated on both sides so use the mesh symmetry option to fix that zoom in to merge and remove any extra vertices remember to assign custom shortcuts or add tools to Quick favorites to access them fast last of all you can also use the poly Quil tool to quickly create shapes like here I am adding faces to a plane in edit mode and from here you can continue to explore more workflows with this add-on I hope you find this video useful if you like to see more in the future then please consider subscribing giving the this video a like and turn on notifications thank you very much for watching and I will see you in the next video

Channel: Farrukh 3D

Views: 15,833

Keywords: b3d, retopology

Id: 1p3u74cMG2A

Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 07 2024