http://www.makehuman.org/blog

I like the loop flow in that post about topology.

Would a retopo tool make sense for the Poser world?

Like, preserving morph and weight map data, guessing values for the new elements.

Input: Base Mesh, .Cr2, Modified Base Mesh with other topology

Output: New .Cr2

Would it be worthwile to retopology the DAZ4? (They use classic Poser rig, DSON stuff is special as you know)

Thanks for the link. You made me wondering how makehuman can be useful for Poser.

If you retopo a figure with morphs you have now changed the vertice count and order, so whatever morphs the figure had before will no longer work.

In the order of figure creation retopo would happen before the morph creations.

It would definitely be useful. Would make rigging life much easier.

I don't see a point in retopo'ing the Gen4 figures, their meshes are pretty decent (if not a bit heavy), but the native poser figure's meshes are horrible and could definitely benefit from a rebuild.

But what about new UV maps?  The new topology would require new maps. Can those also be transferred? 

@Ray: The morphs would likely be projected onto the new topology. Its usefulness would show when rigging, as a mesh usually has to be fine-tuned during the rigging process unless you're building a low-res standard mesh with little modeled detail and mostly rows of quads. 

~Shane

darkedge, the program would repair the morphs. for FBM's its no problem.

JCM is a special case, quality may vary. this is due to anomaly of morph target behaviour at group borders.

UV wise, I'm not sure if you need new maps if you do not change the mat zones. I guess you would model an UV layout for the new geometry thats compatible with the old textures.

Okay, I see what you're saying now. When the retopo was done trying to match the existing uv layout would be a bit of a puzzle, I'm not sure you could (I say that as if you had given me this challenge and I am thinking it through my head). Without actually trying it out I honestly don't know.

Repairing and creating JCM's is no problem, sculpt, create morph, control morph implementation through xyz rotational values, blah, blah, blah.

Curvature if you want me to give this a go I would be happy to work with you on it. I can retopo, morph and uv map, if we need new textures I can do that as well.

Shoot me line if you are interested I would love to work on this with you: darkedge@sbcglobal.net

I think a retopology tool for Poser would be extremely useful.  I wouldn't limit its application to cr2 files and their base geometries, however.  The ability to apply retopo on other geometries within Poser would be useful.  If you check the Python forum, for instance, andygraph has a series of posts where he seems to require re-meshing as part of a scripted solution to the problems he presents.  It might also be useful if a user could duplicate one geometry's topology on another object.  Right now I'm porting old characters from Vicky 1 to Antonia, and I keep wishing I could just project the Antonia topology onto the existing V1 figure.  If we had topology transfer tools, morph and weight transfer methods would not require that both meshes involved be similar in scale or shape.  Easy UV transfer would be possible, too, because we would have a 1:1 vertex and polygon relationship between meshes, removing any ambiguity about where and how to apply splits for UV seams.  Hmm.

Respectfully, topology cannot be properly created from a button. There is so much more that goes into it, figure shape, joint areas, future morphs, facial expressions, etc.

I will say that when I retopologize I generally keep to a common edge flow path that I favor, so that much is common. But each figure is different...but that's just me and I'm more than a little crazy.

Retopo is only partially usable for Poser.

What do you do with opening - closing mouth? Eyelids?
What about inner mouth? Teeth? Eyeballs?

Retopo is a new mesh in need of a uvmap.

JCM's and other exotic old school hacks are not an issue. Learn how to paint a Weight- and Bulge map, and they are a thing from the past.

But? And here come the catch !
How are you gonna safe the obj file? => This is a deep question for insiders.
Build the groups in Poser? => Same deep question for the same insiders.

You cannot retopologize any of DAZ meshes.
You cannot make new maps for any of DAZ meshes.
or any part of DAZ meshes.cannot use DAZ Rigs,weights etc etc
for free/forsell public use.

Rex,Roxie has a decent polycount & topology flow.