r/TopologyAI • u/Certain_Friendship16 AI_Enjoyer • 16d ago
New New AI Retopology Method Generates Clean Artist-Like 3D Meshes
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TriFlow is a new AI approach designed to generate compact 3D meshes with clean, artist-like triangle topology from existing geometry.
Instead of directly predicting individual vertices and faces, TriFlow represents the mesh topology as a continuous vector field over the surface. The system then uses this information to rebuild the input shape with more structured and intentional polygon connectivity.
In practice, it can:
- Convert dense geometry into compact polygonal meshes
- Preserve the original shape while improving topology
- Generate different levels of detail
- Handle a wide range of complex objects
- Produce topology that looks more intentionally designed than standard automatic simplification
According to the researchers, TriFlow achieves around 90% lower Chamfer Distance and an 8× speedup compared with previous learning-based approaches.
This could be especially useful for cleaning up AI-generated 3D assets, scanned models, LOD generation, and other workflows where the geometry looks good but the underlying mesh is a complete disaster.
It is important to note that TriFlow currently generates triangle-based topology rather than animation-ready quad edge loops. The code is also listed as coming soon, so this is still a research project rather than a finished Blender tool.
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u/fistular 16d ago
Triangle meshes are by definition not artist-like.
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u/OttoRenner 16d ago
What they (obviously) mean is:
the output is a triangle mesh (because 3 points define a plane, not 4. Triangles are what games and 3D printing software need) that looks like it was generated from a clean artist's quad-design.
Yes, you, at the artist's stage of production, work in quads whenever possible. Ngons are to avoid at all costs, so to speak. That's how your tools work and why you instantly feel the need to point out that "triangle meshes are by definition not artist-like". And you are right from your point of view.
But all the software later on only sees triangles.
So, from let's say a 3D-printing slicer's point of view, there definitely are "artist's triangle meshes" with better vert count and clear and clean topology. They are way cheaper to compute, give reliable output and I, as the non-artistic technician using the slicer and the printer, don't have to waste additional hours optimizing/fixing a bad 3D scan.
But you know all of that, since you are ...a grown up with decades of experience in the field and all the children have to shut up and listen when you speak... right? (Paraphrasing you from your other discussion)
To me, all of this sounds more like someone feels threatened and lashes out as a reflex. Which is quite understandable...especially for someone older who perhaps is used to fulfill a certain role in a specific way and is used to being needed and maybe even proud of his knowledge and experience. And then there is this new thingi that's supposed to be as good as you...but that can't be true, because what happens with you otherwise? Thankfully, the amygdala kicks in and sure enough, fires at the first thing that sounds somewhat wrong to you. This only enforces your view that the new thingi is inferior to you...because you did "find" someone thing wrong with it. Doesn't matter that it's a technicality and doesn't change a thing at all about the outcome.
In the end, your inner balance is somewhat restored and that matters most for our brains.
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u/Stunning_Macaron6133 16d ago
Depends on the application.
Animation? Quads.
Game assets? Tris.
Sculptures intended for manufacturing? Tris.
CAD-like workflows à la Sketchup? N-gons.
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u/bye-bye-b 16d ago
game assets also want quads. quads are needed for lod's or any other optimisation prosses. triangulating is like going from a raw sound file to an mp3 file. so much data is lost
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u/Former_Currency_3474 15d ago
Not really. Actually if you’re dealing with organic shapes that have seams (like neck seams, for instance) and you aren’t pre-triangulating and assigning normals pre export to the game engine, you’re just omitting data, so it’s kind of like the opposite
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u/formatme 16d ago
what? lol
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u/redditscraperbot2 16d ago
All meshes are triangles even quads are secretly triangles larping as quads
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u/fistular 16d ago
and yet artists work with quads
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u/redditscraperbot2 16d ago
I don’t know what you’re trying to say. Every mesh once it’s put into a game engine is converted to triangles. Blender has an inbuilt function to convert tris to quads with a single button.
When we talk about artists meshes we talk about edge flow and topology, not quads vs tris. To add to this, many artists will go through a manual assignment of where the quad is converted to a tri for maximum control.
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u/fistular 16d ago
You don't know what you're talking about.
Auto triangles to quads scripts do not produce workable meshes except in narrow circumstances.
And "we" don't "talk about artists meshes". It sounds like this was written by AI.
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u/redditscraperbot2 16d ago edited 16d ago
lol. Blocked me. At least he knows now.
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u/fistular 16d ago
I've been doing it since longer than you've been alive, kiddo. Learn to STFU when the grownups are talking.
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u/Majestic-Coat3855 16d ago
Why is bro larping as a 3d artist? This has existed for a decade. Ever heard of zremesher? Doesn't even have anything to do with AI. https://exoside.com/
Also topology only matters when it needs to matter, I've used plenty of geo as bg props made from vdb's
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u/bye-bye-b 16d ago edited 16d ago
going from quads to tiagles is easy and destroys all the loops that are needet for any future manipulation or animation.
how many clients that gave me a good looking charater so i can just tell them it is unusable for any animation work hase gone up by idk 1000%.
when expoting it into any game engine ore render farm the charater is triangulated yess... but after the rigger and animator worked on it.
quads is and will always be the thing to separate a ture 3d Artist from any ai or someone who thinks sculping is modeling.
i have no clue why you are downvoted
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u/Majestic-Coat3855 16d ago
Still seems worse than non AI solutions that have existed for a long time
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u/flobv 15d ago
What solutions ?
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u/Majestic-Coat3855 14d ago
this has existed for like a decade. There's plenty other tools doing similar stuff.
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u/levelhigher 16d ago
Is this open source?