Thought it was about time to start a specific Blender 3.0 thread since this is the next Major version Update with many new tools and many improvements This being the case came across this tutorial that 1. I was not fully aware these auto retopology features were actually in Blender but how relatively easy they are to use in the video review 2 are built into Blender on is an external free program and one paid add-on I am sure each of you will take what is will work best in your own work flow.

The ULTIMATE Automatic Retopology Guide for Blender! by Russell Midfield

Thanks for this Lobo, as I've seen auto retopology mentioned, but hadn't seen anything specific about it, so this will be interesting for sure. 

The voxel and quad remesher options have been available in Blender for a while now, but they're really only useful in a sculpting workflow.  The results aren't actually that great for low poly retopology, although I guess you can use it for that purpose in some cases.  In my experience, the creme of the crop among these auto-topo options is the Exoside Quad Remesher addon.  The results which that addon can provide are nearly as good as some hand-modeled topology, if you use it correctly.  It's really the best solution on the market today.  It's so good, Pixologic have used the technology for their Zremesher in Zbrush.  I've actually been able to retopologize some very complex 3d shapes and designs with near hand-modeled results, in just a few seconds with Exoside.  Great tool.

My recent model of the Hibernation Chamber in my gallery I tried both the Voxel and Quad remesh with in Blender left me with odd topology (the Voxel was a bit better than the Quad but not by much) that did not UV map very well and I did use the Zremesher in Zbrush and it gave me excellent topology and from my understanding and I could be wrong but heard that Quad Remesher addon was developed by the same person who created Zremesher. But on a lark I tried the IGL's Instant Mesh which is a free external app and I got similar quality remesh as Zremesher. The Hibernation Chamber before remesh 146,176 tris after Zremesher 9,653 tris now the main reason for such a high polycount while modeling this was uwsing metaball modeling 

That looks great, Lobo!  Yeah, the Instant Mesh app is good, but I'm not a huge fan of it for lower poly results.  It can provide a useable geometry for static models or some objects that aren't too complex with large flat surface areas.  I haven't found it very good for more organic or complex surfaces because it tends to produce strange edge loop terminations and ngons at lower resolutions.  It takes some work to get a good result from it at lower resolutions.  In some cases, I can just retopologize better geometry on a surface with 3dCoat in less time.

You are correct in that the Zremesher was created by the same person who developed the Exoside technology.  I've been using the Exoside or Zremesher solutions for a couple of years now and they really do a great job in most cases.  There are some objects that I made via boolean or high poly sculpting that I wanted to retopologize for distribution.  I tried to do it by hand but it was extremely difficult and time-consuming because of the various interlocking parts and curvature on each object.  The only thing that was capable of doing the job reasonably well was Zremesher/Exoside.  Well worth the money in my opinion if you do a lot of retopology.

I agre LuxXeon the Zremesher is fantastic and have looked at the Exoside but currently finding a suitable work flow using Blender's GOB add-on for Zbrush I think I am ok with and since most of my stuff is non-organic usually I do not have to remesh often have done a decent job with keeping poly counts pretty reasonably but now that I am looking at other modeling options like using Booleans I know that remeshing is something I will need to do more since Applications like Poser and even Daz do not handle NGons at all and retopo is becoming more important even to get textures to look good. I did see with in the video above that he showed some techniques for helping to get better results using IGL's Instant Mesh for more organic models. I think Blender 3.0 is going to be like coming out to becoming a more mature 3D software even saw a boost in my render time with Cycles X and I am still on a GTX 980Ti 

Cycles X is really fantastic for both Nvidia and AMD GPU now.  It really shines for Optix-enabled cards (RTX), but they've also improved CUDA.  Moreover, they've really made an effort toward supporting AMD cards as well, with HIP framework support for RDNA architecture and Radeon Pro drivers.  It's a massive leap forward in GPU rendering capability in Blender.

LuxXeon posted at 8:39 PM Sat, 4 December 2021 - #4431267

Cycles X is really fantastic for both Nvidia and AMD GPU now.  It really shines for Optix-enabled cards (RTX), but they've also improved CUDA.

OK, a quick question Lux, you mention Optix-enabled cards (RTX), but I'm wondering if Optix will work with my GTX 1660 card, which runs on the same Touring system as the RTX cards.  Do you have any ideas about that?

I do not think my old GTX 980 can take advantage of the Optix been trying to get a RTX card but just been impossible to find one that is reason and with in a fair price range will keep on looking can just imagine the further speed boost I would see with a newer card in my system. 

Optix requires a GPU with compute capability 5.0 and higher, and a driver version of at least 470, according to the Blender specs.  Optix is currently ONLY supported by the RTX cards in Blender.  There is speculation it may become available for other Turing-based cards like the GTX 1660 Ti, but currently, Optix requires the RT cores found in the RTX cards to use Optix.  The GTX 1660, although it may have the Turing architecture, does not have the RT cores.

Optix is much faster than the Cuda backend in Blender, and Cuda was much faster than the OpenCL.  However, now AMD users have a new option for GPU enhanced rendering, so that speed has been much improved.  I don't know how much speed improvement Cycles X will offer to Cuda-based cards, but Lobo has suggested it is significant as well.  Still, if you can get an Optix-enabled RTX card, you should see the greatest speed enhancements because of the extra RT cores.

I keep crossing my fingers that I can get an RTX card but between the bots that keep snatching them up not going to pay an over inflated price for one. Now for a another New tutorial feature of Blender 3.0 the Asset Browser which I look forward to exploring and learning more about 

Blender 3.0 - Asset Browser for Beginners!

Lobo, has Renderosity removed our ability to embed videos directly in the forum threads?  I tried to embed a video in a reply the other day and it didn't work the way it had always done before.

LuxXeon posted at 9:16 PM Sun, 5 December 2021 - #4431314

Lobo, has Renderosity removed our ability to embed videos directly in the forum threads?  I tried to embed a video in a reply the other day and it didn't work the way it had always done before.

I have had hit or miss with it if you see your buttons above when your writing a thread the last one is suppose to take you into HTML mode we did away with the markup a couple of months back as far as I know should be able to embed video using the HTML mode but like I said it has been hit or miss for me so I do not know if they have taken that feature away I will try to find out when I go into Slack tomorrow and ask in there. 

Lobo3433 posted at 9:30 PM Sun, 5 December 2021 - #4431317

LuxXeon posted at 9:16 PM Sun, 5 December 2021 - #4431314

Lobo, has Renderosity removed our ability to embed videos directly in the forum threads?  I tried to embed a video in a reply the other day and it didn't work the way it had always done before.

I have had hit or miss with it if you see your buttons above when your writing a thread the last one is suppose to take you into HTML mode we did away with the markup a couple of months back as far as I know should be able to embed video using the HTML mode but like I said it has been hit or miss for me so I do not know if they have taken that feature away I will try to find out when I go into Slack tomorrow and ask in there. 

Interesting.  I don't see the HTML mode in my buttons anymore either.  This is how my button panel looks now. 

Whenever I try to add the embedded iframe code from Youtube, the post simply returns the code in code form instead of embedding the player.  Here's an example:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7wKnPclzYY8" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Sorry for interrupting the thread, BTW.  If you want to delete this conversation and just contact me in private, its' ok.  Thanks.

Seems you do not have the option the last button on my row is for HTML I already posted the question in Slack but I will not get a response till sometime tomorrow when I log in which I usually do sometime after noon 

How to Use Blender's New Asset Browser (Tutorial)

LuxXeon posted at 1:14 AM Sun, 5 December 2021 - #4431277

Optix requires a GPU with compute capability 5.0 and higher, and a driver version of at least 470, according to the Blender specs.  Optix is currently ONLY supported by the RTX cards in Blender.  There is speculation it may become available for other Turing-based cards like the GTX 1660 Ti, but currently, Optix requires the RT cores found in the RTX cards to use Optix.  The GTX 1660, although it may have the Turing architecture, does not have the RT cores.

Thanks for the Optix info Lux.  I was aware I'll have to up date my driver to 470.  I think right now it's 466.13, or something like that. Since this is a laptop, I'm not going to be looking for an RTX card.  I purposely got the GTX 1660 Ti because Poser 11 didn't handle the RTX Turing series.  I didn't, however, know the GTX 1660 Ti was also running on Turing, so I had to wait until the Poser dev team got it working with both the very new (2 years ago) Turing system cards.

I think it's always important to include Andrew's ubiquitous doughnut tutorial, updated for Blender 3.0.  It's basically the same tutorial it's always been, except now he includes some features specific to 3.0, such as Geometry Nodes for the sprinkles.

Yes, I noticed that recently while looking at his YouTube videos.  I've always liked working with his tutorials, and have quite a few bookmarked. 

I have two 980TI 6GB cards,do you guys think that will run Optix

goofygrape posted at 1:38 PM Sun, 19 December 2021 - #4432113

I have two 980TI 6GB cards,do you guys think that will run Optix

Like LuxXeon posted above "Optix requires a GPU with compute capability 5.0 and higher, and a driver version of at least 470, according to the Blender specs.  Optix is currently ONLY supported by the RTX cards in Blender.  There is speculation it may become available for other Turing-based cards like the GTX 1660 Ti, but currently, Optix requires the RT cores found in the RTX cards to use Optix.  The GTX 1660, although it may have the Turing architecture, does not have the RT cores."   I have GTX 980Ti also and regretfully Optix is not supported by the card but you can still run Blender 3.0 with the this card 

In the spirit of the holidays came across this cute full tutorial that prehaps someone might want to try 

Free Mini-Course for Blender 3.0 | Cute Character!

Lobo3433; sorry I guess I missed that post.

goofygrape posted at 10:07 PM Sun, 19 December 2021 - #4432134

Lobo3433; sorry I guess I missed that post.

No worries I have been known to miss some myself so all is good 

New tutorials some might find of interest using Geometry Nodes in Blender

Generating Wings Procedurally with Geometry Nodes in Blender

by Arti Sergeev

https://80.lv/articles/generating-wings-procedurally-with-geometry-nodes-in-blender/

Found this interesting way to use Animations & Geometry Nodes 

Zombie Horde in Blender - Animations & Geometry Nodes

Here is a quick tutorial on using Wireframe modifier to make a Greenhouse rather easily in Blender 

How to use Wireframe Modifier in Blender - Greenhouse - Architecture Building 3D Modeling

Ohhhh, now that looks very interesting Lobo, so thanks for posting it. 

Miss B posted at 11:04 AM Mon, 6 June 2022 - #4439626

Ohhhh, now that looks very interesting Lobo, so thanks for posting it.  :slight_smile:

Yes I thought it was really interesting and very simple actually and your welcome I need to find some more recent ones to share 

puritumse posted at 1:52 PM Mon, 27 June 2022 - #4440449

Ohhhh, now that looks very interesting Lobo, so thanks for posting it.  

Your welcome look forward to seeing some version posted to the Gallery 

thanks for posting it.  

19216811.bid

Your welcome 

For all those who have just joining or following our community here and looking for a good beginners series on Blender Youtube creator Zerobio is starting a new beginners series and I would high recommend watching and following along. 

Cycles X has become truly remarkable for both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. It particularly excels with Optix-enabled cards (RTX), but significant improvements have also been made for CUDA. Furthermore, there's a notable effort towards supporting AMD cards, including HIP framework support for RDNA architecture and Radeon Pro drivers. This represents a significant advancement in GPU rendering capability within Blender.