Simple UV Retopology using Geometry Nodes in Blender 4.0
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- Опубліковано 6 бер 2024
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If you have a clean UV map, retopology is easy! Marvelous Designer clothing is a classic case of having a funky mesh, but usually nice UVs. UV retopology is a standard workflow for clothing made in MD, but Blender hasn't had the option. But with Geometry Nodes, we can create it!
This video shows a quick example of straightening out a UV map and then using Geometry Nodes to make a UV space mesh and transfer the World Space Position through it to a new mesh.
I use the UV Toolkit addon in this video, but I realized after making it that its hard to find and the version I used may be paid only. It was Magic UV that comes with blender now. TexTools also has these features, but doesn't seem to have a blender 4.0 version yet. Many other UV addons also have these.
UPDATE: Looks like there is a working version of Tex Tools for 4.0 here:
github.com/franMarz/TexTools-...
You can straighten loops with built in Align and Straighten commands, or by simply scaling. The Distribution command is available in the free version of UV Squares (Snap with Equal Distance):
github.com/Radivarig/UvSquares
Follow me on Twitter for lots of WIP posts and quick tips related to geometry nodes and modeling anime girls!
/ aversionreality
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Brilliant. Anything that makes the nightmare of working in UV space more palatable is a huge win.
It still looks like a nightmare overhead 😂
@@oskars_l Only gotta build the nodes once :)
I understood about 5-10% of that because I have barely begun with blender. But I'm glad to see that when I get to a level where I can understand this, such a detailed video will be waiting for me to help me forward in my learning process!
Good luck with your blender journey! Let me know if you have questions.
I hate nodes crap anyway. Not my piece if cake dude. If you can't model just do not do it.
I didnt know Bane from Batman universe was making blender tutorials!
And he's making them For You
@@aVersionOfReality xD
Great tutorials btw, and I love your voice!
@@andrewsneacker1256I was surprised aswell Bane is into girly dresses.. 💃👗
@@v-alfred "I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes... I have to turn away until my DARKNESS goes" - Even people in darkness like pretty girls and their pretty clothes. (Those are lyrics from a song BTW, in case you don't know).
I've been following you on and off for a few years now and every time i check back in you're reinventing a workflow people haven't questioned for years in a fun and creative way. Good stuff. Here's a random string of current zoomer slang to verify this isn't an ai comment: rizz zoomer gyatt skibidi gronk
No Cap fr fr on God bro. And thanks
Marvelous Designer also provides more gridlike quad output.
Thank you! I didn't know about this trick for Blender.
Geniusly done!
omg this is so awesome, thank you!
This looks so promising, and exactly along the lines my poor naive expectations were coming into 3D. Thanks for the vid!
Literally 3 days ago I was thinking about how to unfold mesh based on it’s UV. Found only paid blender geonodes file and the next day you release this video. What a coincidence! Thank you, man
Brain energy transmission.
you've won a new subscriber because I just cant with retopology this will help so much thank you
It's a great method and very simple, thank you. I also found an easy way to save the UV map without unwrapping the retopology.
Interesting video. I will use this information in the future. Thanks
amazing video and great explanations
Good to see you back, bud :D
Youre a wizard! Amazing idea and thanks for sharing
That was pretty awesome :)
thank you so much for the video!
Thanks a lot! This is such a smart technique.
Great stuff, I would really like a follow up video for nonrectangular uv maps
welcome back boss
Great video, and an interesting approach to retopology. Seems akin to shrink wrap retopologising.
very professional solution
Wow nice work.
Lots of great tips from someone who knows what he is doing! Thank you!
It's the return of the Mack!
you're the goat. actually
Great exposition! This geonodes 'get-3d-position' from UV has a lot of future! In the blender conference presentation "Rigging With Geometry Nodes on "Wing It!" the presenter uses it to map a cartoon mouth to a character's face - It would be amazing to know more uses for it, like this one.
Yup, its great for that too. If you scroll back in my twitter feed, you'll find me using it for hair and lots of face rigging. Everything is easier if you do it on a flat plane and then wrap into shape.
once I got it working, its pretty kool to watch it convert my old mesh.🎨🌩
Thank you, UA-cam algorithm, for bringing me here
Woah! Just a few days ago I was thinking about something exactly like this (plus a 3rd offset axis) not for retopology but for putting extra detail onto animated deforming meshes like cloth sims and/or armature meshes (for details such as the hem of a t-shirt, cuff of a jacket, or maybe as a way to more intuitively rig and animate clothing folds by hand)
That is all possible. The third axis isn't difficult to set up. Stay tuned :)
A video on non-rectangular remeshing would be nice to see any gotchas on it, but I can see how it'd work anyway from this (since the rectangular usage is just an easier way to retopo, all that really matters is that the UV is used as a way to map the mesh to a continuous flat surface and you remash back from flat surface to original space). I'll definitely keep this in mind for future retopo stuff I need to do.
Yeah. Non-rectangular topo is a large topic, and I don't have a perfect solution (because afaik there isn't one, its just a matter of choosing the right pros/cons for your situation). I'll be talking a bit about it in the next video, which shows the retopo on the rest of this outfit.
Never knew you could do this with geo nodes. Really awesome stuff, i wish someone would make an addon that does all this automatically. Retopo takes so much time man
There are some nice quad remesher addons out there, but they are premium. This method could be automated more, but the problem is getting the UV islands squared. That process can be automated in some ways, but its hard to do properly on any arbitrary island without user input.
Thank you very much!
Just what I needed for my FPS gun skin project! Thanks a lot!
That thumbnail had everyone concerned 😂
Haha 😂 yeah right
fr bro
imagine seeing that thumbnail and when you open the video, the first thing is a model in a skirt
Nice this looks much more accurate than just shrinkwrapping. Should make complicated clothing easier to retopo.
Amazing 🤯
this is excellent
Thank you very much for your, bro!!
this is so cool
new to blender, spent years in maya and I first saw this type of method in maya - so glad to see it's not too difficult to do in blender. sub'd [3d modeler / new subscriber to the channel pun lmao] thanks!
sheeeesh.... Its flame! thnks
Legend!
Quick Tip. Marvelous Designer has a Retopo Section that does this. Retopo a Flat Object by Hand then it conforms with your Cloths Shape to the Original in 3D Space and you can Export it.
Yup, it has various retopo tools. Its come a long way the last few years!
Jesus there's so much setup, but the results were amazing.
That's pretty much geometry nodes in a nutshell, yeah 😆
fwiw, once you make the nodes, you can reuse them for other meshes, so it's something you've only gotta do once, at least.
@@tciddados Really? is it in some kind of library or is it just associated with your current blender file?
@@iizneoO You can append geometry nodes from the original blender file and use them in other projects :)
this technique can be useful for other things as well, for instance you could use this to add stickers to an object
You've already figured out where this is going next :)
Subscribed!
I know squat about nodes in general (i do things the hard way)
So this will be a good place to start learning XD (trying to get an SFM outfit i found game ready)
16:35 Baking normal/height maps will fix that just fine XD
This is quite useful tutorial, not only for someone who uses CLO3D or MD, but also geonodes enjoyers and sculptors
Nice, looking forward to learn more from you :)
have you seen the meshdatatransfer addon for blender? it lets you transfer mesh data through UV space, including shape data
it's what I use for retopologizing my marvelous designer output :)
Nice. I've seen some python scripts floating around over the years and I figure there was an addon for it somewhere by now.
10/10
Bravo, bravo bravo bravo and thank you. The thing I will try to do with this is to have the vertices ID or even Indexes following the U and V direction or even better to build a new attribute (vector of integers) like (0,0) etc where the first is the U indice and the second the V indice. That way we can select a "rectangle" on the mesh With this selection we can apply transformation using mathematical functions to edit the mesh without having to touch it. I have done the mathematical transformation part it's the selection part that is my problem. The result would be a procedural sculpting tool. If that talks to your depth jus tell me.
If you use the Grid primitive in geonodes it'll come with a UV map that can be used for this!
@@aVersionOfReality Thanks. I am sure I don't know but I am sure I really want to do it so, I'll give it a try. If you had a tutorial for that, I'll love it.
@@johnsmith56920 I think that or something similar will come up as I keep making videos about geonodes for modeling and character stuff.
goat
"Simply" it's really a trick world in this video, maybe it's faster to retopo by hand
For simple shapes it certainly would be. The more complex the mesh is (like with overlapped folds or layers) then the more methods like this help.
Well ,There is a node call Sample UV Surface ,This is going to simplify your work!!
Sample UV Surface is equivalent to setting both meshes to their UV position before Sampling Nearest Surface. Except it actually has a bunch of extra problems, including much worse performance in some cases, and will fail if certain conditions aren't met (which don't always matter), and means you can't see what you're doing. Maybe the performance will be fixed in the future, but for this sort of use case its not ideal. That's why I didn't mention it :)
Was hoping to conclude the normals stuff lol. This is good info tho
I got stuck sitting on that because of work, but I do want to finish it. Good news is that I have also looked into some real time solutions, and have been picking up how to implement something in Unity.
id be curious to see what quad remesher would have done vs this solution. do you have the original messed up topology blend file?
Quad remesher creates the same sorts of topo as the Marvelous Designer auto topo. Its the same algorithm iirc. Of course, it depends on the settings too. But quad remesher is conscious of the area affected, which is why it won't give only a grid on things that aren't truly square (which the sleeve isn't in world space.)
its all good but if your cloth has alot of folds the detail will be list of the flow how the folds go
Indeed. This is true of any retopo method. The solution is to manually place loops as needed instead of just using a grid.
I am struggling with this. After adding and configuring the geometry nodes for the Retopo Output plane it becomes crumpled and does not seem to follow the original mesh at all. I feel like I followed the instructions precisely, but is there any suggestions you could give me for trying to make this work? I made sure to remove the referenced meshes on each of the Object Info nodes. I am currently using blender 4.1 and I have very little experience with geometry nodes.
Check if you have any Transforms on your objects. If that's not it, my email is on my youtube About section, or you can DM me on twitter. Send the file and I'll let you know the issue 👍
Alright I'm trying to keep up but it's not easy, I'm getting a straight line instead of a wrapped up mesh, can't find what I'm missing.
I don't understand why you would change the flat mesh position (-0.500), in any case what's the difference with using Offset option on the Set Position node ?
Why rotate the UVs to be in camera view when you could just hit 7 on the keyboard to get Top camera view ?
In my case I don't have any MD mesh to import so I'm using a simplified leg mesh (no toes) or a cylinder so UVs are not straight rectangles
Oh also I don't know if it's a 4.2 Alpha case but Split Edges worked perfect right away, adding sharp edges makes it as worse as if split edges wasn't there at all, very unexpected
The offset is to center the origin point (useful for many operations like mirroring, or stuff in later videos.
The rotation is so you can see it and your mesh lined up more easily. I think I said its not essential.
Yeah that's probably a new feature. I'll check that.
I've never heard about UV retopology before, so it's like you take a flat surface to follow the original mesh and then use it as a retopologized mesh?
You have mesh 1 with positions A and B (world and UV.) And you have mesh 2 with just position B. This lets you get mesh 1's A position transferred to mesh 2 via that shared space.
Can I use ZenUV addon on this. Because I already bought it back in the day.
I think so.
Also see the next video for how to do this without any addon.
Textools exists for 4.0 but from a differrent githib repo
Oh that's great to know!
So what do you do about the actual UV map for the textures? Won't turning it into a rectangle like that cause distortion?
Indeed it would! But you can have multiple UV maps. Use a second one for retopo, or even just a geonodes attribute. Also note that you don't necessarily need a UV map like this on the final geo, just on what you are retopoing.
@@aVersionOfReality Maybe use a Data Transfer modifier to copy the UVs over from the original template model.
I may have to give this a try. I'm working on some stuff now that I modeled using the grid method to get my measurements, and cutting the patterns out made a mess of tris and ngons. :-P
@@Ambaryerno Yeah Data transfer should work fine, but may need some cleanup on the edges of the UV islands.
0:47 Woah there
😉
How is it better than shrink-wrapping a cylinder?
Loop spacing, quicker to make adjustments or add in other loops. And if you want anything more complex, it quickly pulls ahead even more.
5:25 actuall start
I just paid someone 70 Euro to retopo an item and I got it back with zero resolution retainment or stylization; if this came out just 2 days sooner I would've just done this method and retained all that information that is lost. The upside is the retop'd version I received is a good source transfer to my original mesh for weights and vertex groups though.
Ain't that the way of things 😅
@@aVersionOfReality Would the workflow change, or what would change if you were trying to respect an existing UV already and simply just wanted to retopo?
@@supportwaifu It depends on the UV really. You can copy the UV and retopo based on a different UV map entirely if needed.
Holy sh*t, please make this an addon
Its just a couple nodes, you don't need an addon. But I am thinking about making an addon to make things easier to setup once I've got some more stuff like this put together.
I think this technique can be used to make re-topology for anime style hair
Correct, I'll be getting to that :)
Change Thumbnail to Pretty girl!
I didn't click for a while because I didn't understand your thumbnail.
then I hovered my mouse over it and saw pretty girl.
And now I'M HERE!
Pretty girl isn't done though XD But I'll keep in mind for future thumbnails
Witchcrafty!!!
Quad remesher? 🤷
Often does most of the job, but still needs adjustments. Can quad remesh in UV space too.
Interesting approach, however if you're using marvelous designer the first half of the video seems kinda pointless when you can just unfold the patterns and export them as flat planes, unless I'm missing something.
MD is just an example. There's lots of cases where you may want this process that isn't specifically MD.
its great but you can use surface deform modifer also its simple
We can make a better version of Surface Deform with geonodes too!
first
Zbrush: slice polyloops>zremesher keepgroups, 2 or 3 seconds at max for the whole "operation"
Yeah zbrush is nice.
i know what i saw in that thumbnail.
cool to see but it's too much effort
Hello Frey. Did you know I built the scene you have as your channel banner? XD
Why does this have to be done by hand, it looks like you're following something that could be basically be an algorithm, it seems like a huge waste of time that this isn't automatic and built-in functionality.
There are some existing algorithms like quad remesh, or the one that created the sort of topo I'm starting with. For some things those do the job just fine. It depends how much control you want/need.
3 minutes in I'm already done with this.
It's 2024. Why is AI not handling this for us?
Because nobody has devved the tool yet I guess? And while AI retopo is going to be great I'm sure, it won't necessarily solve some fundamental problems. You still need to know what topo you actually want. We already have lots of forms of algorithmic retopo that aren't ideal because the problem is design, not automation. AI won't necessarily solve this issue as its just a fancier way to automate.