• lks

  about 5 years ago

  Edit:
  Hey, so in RetopoFlow 3 y'all addressed basically every problem I had and more!
  I'd be game to change my review to 5stars with a "works great, 5 stars" type review hahaha

  Previous review:
  This review is specifically for the "RetopoFlow V3.00.0 Alpha". I attempted to contact the creators a week ago and again today but seems they haven't had a chance to respond, and I know the Blender2.8.1 implementation of this tool is still in alpha, so this review will definitely get reconsidered when the bugs are fixed. Also, if you're using Blender 2.7, please ignore this review as it does not apply.

  For anyone who uses Blender 2.8+, just know that at present, this plugin is basically broken. I bought it for full price and it's pretty much unusable right now. There are a number of game breaking bugs which I'll list below, and I would report them to github but the link a previous reviewer was given is now a 404, so I'm not really sure how to officially report these bugs.

  1) SpeedRetopo hijacks your currently centered blender viewport and enters some kind of SR context, which is fine (though it's too bad it doesn't just work in your existing viewport) except for the fact that entering and exiting the SR context successively results in a number of cumulative runtime inconsistencies.

  2) SR clobbers a number of your custom Blender hotkeys (I would imagine this is necessary) but it incompletely clobbers the blender hotkeys, meaning that some keys mapped to other blender actions will interfere with SpeedRetopo. For example, I have the "F" key in Blender mapped to "center camera on object". SpeedRetopo attempts to clobber this key binding for its own purposes, but fails somehow and so it becomes impossible to use whatever tool is mapped to "F" within SpeedRetopo (I think the quad fill tool is broken by my hotkey binding). SR also does not have remappable hotkeys internally, so you can't work around the conflict by changing SR's hotkeys to some other shift+alt command.

  3) SpeedRetopo rescales your source and target mesh object when you enter its context. It does not revert the scale when you leave the context, so I manually have to reset my scale transform back to "1" in order to put my objects back to their original positions after using SR.

  4) SpeedRetopo attempts to set your camera clipping planes to the size of your retopo object. Sadly there seems to be conditions which will make this action fail and set your clipping planes outside your scene objects, meaning that you'll just have a blank 3d view. Also, like the scale, SpeedRetopo does not set your clipping planes back to what they were before entering the tool, so it permanently messes up your 3dview camera with each use.

  5) SpeedRetopo does not currently seem to play nice with "isolate selected object" view. I'm not quite sure what the bugs are, but I have noticed additional weirdness when using this to retopo specific meshes in my scene.

  6) For some reason, opening the documentation and hotkey reference windows within SpeedRetopo tanks your framerate.

  I have tested these bugs in vanilla blender 2.8, so I'm certain it's not my custom setup causing the issues.

  In any case, I'm sure this will become an awesome tool when it leaves Alpha! Please give me a shout when there is a new version release and I'll reconsider this one-star. But yeah, currently, since I basically can't use the tool for work because of the compound effect of all these behaviors, I can't reasonably give V3.00.0 alpha a good review.

• 

  Orange Turbine

  about 5 years ago

  Hi there, thank you for the review and feedback. The detailed description of each issue is very helpful and so I'd like to address each one in the same order you wrote.

  1 ) The dedicated RetopoFlow mode is a bit of a blessing and a curse. On one hand it gives us far more control over mesh display, snapping, etc, but it also presents some workflow inconveniences. We are hoping to revisit this after the official 3.0 release to see if we can make RetopoFlow work in a more native environment (this was not really possible before 2.8x).

  2 ) This is a known issue and something we have on our agenda to fix after the 3.0.0 release. Specifically we intend to integrate RetopoFlow directly into Blender's native hotkey system so that hotkeys are more flexible. There's a GitHub issue here: https://github.com/CGCookie/retopoflow/issues/718

  3 ) This bug has been fixed. A new "beta" will be sent out any day.

  4 ) You've identified one of the most difficult and frustrating requirements for RetopoFlow. Due to the way surface snapping and selection works we have to ensure the Clip Start/End are adequate for the given models. In order to prevent constant artist frustration from not having good start/end settings we attempt to automatically set these based on the given models but like most things, it's an imperfect system. We don't have a good answer to this but are constantly trying to improve it.

  However, we've not seen the specific issue you're describing. If you're able to send a .blend file to retopoflow@cgcookie.com that would help us narrow it down!

  5 ) Unfortunately this is a limitation of Blender. What you can do instead is Hide unnecessary objects. SHIFT+H will hide all but your current selection.

  6 ) The UI performance has been dramatically improved in recent changes and will be sent out in the upcoming beta!
• Svetlana Shalonina

  about 5 years ago

  I use this plugin in addition to the standard Blender tools and it works great! I am very happy and recommend it to everyone. In the beginning, you need to get used to it a little, but in the end, retopology works better than in Maya.

• jacobo

  about 5 years ago

  When will you be releasing the 2.8 stable version? The 2.79 version doesn't cut it anymore :-/

• 

  Orange Turbine

  about 5 years ago

  Hey jacobo, we're hoping to release the 2.8 beta any day now. An email will go out to all customers that are subscribed to Creator Emails here: https://blendermarket.com/account/privacy-center/consents

  Thanks for your patience! I hope we can revisit your 1-star review soon as that happens.

  Cheers,
  Jonathan
• Alexandr Gluhachev

  over 5 years ago

  Very useful addon!

• 

  Orange Turbine

  over 5 years ago

  Thank you for the rating Alexandr!
• BluFeather

  over 5 years ago

  Very solid toolset that gives all the other 3D apps a run for their money. I can't wait to see the Blender 2.8 release!

• 

  Orange Turbine

  over 5 years ago

  We're excited for the 2.8 release too! It's coming soon.
• Ali Roumani

  over 5 years ago

  Great tool, makes the retopology process much easier and efficient, can,t wait for blender 2.8 version

• ani

  over 5 years ago

  Simple to use! Has some minor flaws, but I love it! Can't wait till its released for blender 2.8. :)

• Roman

  almost 6 years ago

  It would be a good addon, if not for the bugs and non-working preservation. Killed 3 hours, saved the file, but nothing was saved. $ 86 is not a small amount of money and such problems should not happened.

• 

  Orange Turbine

  almost 6 years ago

  Hi Roman, I'm really sorry that you've had a bad experience. If you're able could you please report these bugs to https://github.com/cgcookie/issues ?

  We are always looking to fix bugs and improve the experience for everyone but we're only able to fix the bugs that we're aware of.

  Please get in touch and we will resolve the problems or issue you a refund.

  Cheers,
  Jonathan
• Anne Webb

  almost 6 years ago

  Hi. I initially sent a support request about it but didn't get an answer (I think). But I found out it was just a small part of the program (contours). I tried other programs for retopology but nothing felt as nice to use as this. So thanks for making this guys! The only problem I have is most of the time when I try to use the contour tool, the third time I use it in a row it crashes blender. So my advice is if you're using it, save before you use contours.

• 

  Orange Turbine

  almost 6 years ago

  Thanks for the rating Anne! Be sure to check your inbox via https://blendermarket.com/inbox - that's where replies to your support request will show. You should have also gotten an email notification about it.
• Pete Burges

  almost 6 years ago

  I have zbrush, topogun, 3D Coat, 3DS Max and Blender. All have decent retopo tools, although some are better than others. I bough Retopoflow yesterday and already I like it best out of the lot. It's smoother, more intuitive and more forgiving than anything else I've used, and unlike ZBrush's topology brush I get consistent results every time. I am using it to retopo an Alien xenomorph, which has lots of protrusions and bridges and is generally pretty challenging but Retopoflow is helping me make light work of it. Money well spent.

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