Instant Mesh – Open Source Software for Easy Retopology of 3d Models

Repository

https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes

Introduction

This post is about Instant Mesh software, an open source software, available at GitHub. The software is made by GitHub user named wjakob, so many thanks to him.
It is software with very specific task, and that is retopology of 3d models. This software is doing this job the best as it can be from any other software.

Here I will be sharing my experience in using it and try to get it closer to a wider public, explain how it works, what it can do and what not. I will also use a real model of mine and show a real case use scenario for it. So, let’s begin.

Instant Mesh Usage Explanation

To transfer a model from blender, or other 3d software’s in to game engine like unity or unreal, or simple you want to lower the number of polies in a scene you need to do retopology or lower the number of polies.

Manual retopologies is not so popular process, as what it does is redrawing the already existing model, so it is a kind of repetitive and non-creative process. But this process can take a lot of time. Instant Meshes is solving this problem and in a very nice way.

It is very simple software and easy to use. I support .obj and .ply formats. Here is a screenshot of the starting menu.

The firs step is to open the model that needs retopology. For the purpose of this explanation I’m using a model that have almost 2 million of polies. That is a lot. Find and open the model.

The target vertex field is used to adjust the numbers of polies that are needed. I will adjust this to 5K. That means that the model will be reduced from a 2 million polies to 5000 polies. That is a big reduction.

Next by clicking the first and the second solve button it reduces the numbers of polies of the model. The solve buttons should be clicked one by one, and there is some waiting time to process the change. Also, there are more setting available, to adjust the flow of the edges etc.

Final step is to export the mesh. And that is, the model has been retopologiezed, and the number of polies lowered. This can be used now as base to apply normal map etc.
This software is doing amazing job and saving a lot of time for 3d modelers. It can be used for a lot of models, even the ones that are being animated.

Maybe for some character models, when it is needed to have more geometry on some places, and less on others, this software will not do the job, because it is distributing the geometry evenly to all of the model. But this will be very detailed models with a specific use, otherwise the software works great.

Resources

This the model that I used for the explanation. It is .obj format.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kDk_89j2dFCHyGEIDs28HHx6_pGvk1T-/view

Tutorial on how to use Instant Meshes

• Instant Retopology With Instant Meshes, The fastest way to do retopology with decent quality?

Thanks for reading.
@dalz