Hello, could be easier if you could get a bit more definition (voxels) in that source mesh tho ... 10 iteration of quad remesh > smooth push > blur
Hou 22.0

@ PaQ
That looks pretty smooth..
what is the process?...I rarely use blender ...just for 2 add ons.

Tnx!

Hi Matadem,

In this case, Paq used Houdini 22.0. Houdini is very powerful for retopology.

- Zooen

Yes it's houdini here (the .hip is include), but the general ideal is to run the quad remesher multiple time. Houdini QR is not as good as Exoside one, but it's super fast, so you can chain process it.
The loop is quad remesh > computing normals > average the normals (blur) > pushing the point along normal (small distance) > blur the result > repeat.

It's pretty close the the erode>blur filtering usually used to smooth out liquid from simulation ... that said it was just a guess to solve this here, not sure that method is robust enough whatever the mesh you throw at it.

I suggest you the free TopMod who can make this sort of thing! https://moiscript.weebly.com/topmod.html

A killer one: never seen so easy and powerful prog! :)





So seems to me that your form above will be a game boy for it! :)


To obtain the kind of organic, openwork structure typical of TopMod from your base quadrilateral mesh, follow these steps to continue your modeling process:

1. Apply a preliminary subdivision (Doo-Sabin)
Before hollowing out the form, it is common to apply an initial round of subdivision to restructure the geometry:

Apply one iteration of the Doo-Sabin algorithm. Unlike Catmull-Clark, Doo-Sabin gives quadrilaterals a more mathematical and structured appearance, which serves as an excellent foundation for this type of sculpture.

2. Use Rind Modeling (Hollowing and shell creation)
This is the core function in TopMod, which allows you to transform a solid volume into a mesh-like or perforated tubular structure (as seen in your image):

Select the loops of quadrilateral faces that you wish to transform or remove.

Apply the Rind Modeling function. This command converts your mesh into a thin, hollow shell while opening up and piercing the corresponding areas.

3. Smoothing and finishing (Catmull-Clark)
Once the openwork shell has been generated, the edges may appear a bit too rigid:

Apply one or more iterations of the Catmull-Clark algorithm (or Doo-Sabin again) to smooth the edges, round out the junctions, and achieve that fluid, organic, 3D-sculpted look.

By experimenting with your initial selection of quadrilateral loops before activating Rind Modeling, you can freely adjust the size, thickness, and shape of the openings.

@Matadem ... Altar clearly use a quad remesher to convert the low res voxel model form material reduction into a smooth surface.
Blendtopo can generate a bit more voxels tho, (Final resolution ? maybe the poisson feature), I'm not sure how slow the process is, but pushing the resolution will help the remesh a lot.

I use to think exoside quad remesher was the best for the job, but in your case maybe one of those AI remesh could work better. The AI shape guessing might output a smoother low quad cage, that you can then convert to Nurbs in MoI.

https://studio.tripo3d.ai/workspace/retopology

Not that bad (according how coarse the source is) ... those AI web services are unbearable tho, pop up everywhere, any settings change need credits ... it's about time people fight back to run those stuff locally.