![Poly Reduction Tool C4d Plugin Poly Reduction Tool C4d Plugin](http://cgterminal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Cinema-4D-Low-Poly-Abstract-Landscape-with-Polygon-Reduction-Tool-Tutorial.jpg)
Leading Swiss university ETH Zurich’s Interactive Geometry Lab has released Instant Meshes, a useful-looking free tool for semi-automatically retopologising 3D meshes. The software is based on IGL’s research paper, presented at Siggraph Asia earlier this month. At the time of writing, its source code was still being actively updated. (Fun factoid: Lead author Wenzel Jakob is also the creator of the interesting open-source.) Convert any mesh to uniform quads, then customise edge flow The software converts geometry to uniform quad or triangle meshes, automatically following the curvature of the geometry and snapping edges to sharp features on the model.
![Reduction Reduction](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/73/1f/04/731f04ed495740a7f3e9ca9abd071462.jpg)
In addition, users can adjust edge flow manually by drawing strokes along which the software should create lines of edges directly onto the surface of the model. The software can handle point cloud data from 3D scans, and works with very large meshes: the demo above shows a 372-million-triangle mesh being converted to quads in under 10 minutes on a 16-core workstation. The retopologised geometry can be exported in OBJ format. Availability Instant Meshes is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. We had trouble installing the Windows build, but on The Foundry’s forum confirms that the Linux and Mac OS X versions work fine.
This is the online documentation for CINEMA 4D, BodyPaint and CINEWARE.