Change List

This document contains details about what has changed in Retopoflow in version 4.

4.2.0

New Operators

• Added standalone operator for Relax that can even be used outside of Retopoflow
  • Has all the same masking and snapping options as the brush version
  • Includes unique options for retaining / reconstructing the desired shape
  • Works great with proportional editing
  • Improved Relax performance
  • The default hotkey is Shift R
• Added operator for evening selection that also works outside of Retopoflow
  • Similar to Relax but faster to use when adjusting spacing and improved for edge loops
  • Works for any number of selected edge loops, non-loop edges, and faces
  • Optionally preserves sharp angles
  • The default hotkey is Shift Alt R
• Added operator for inserting diamond junctions that also works outside of Retopoflow
  • The default hotkey is Ctrl Alt B
• Added operator for twisting loops that also works outside of Retopoflow
  • It automatically finds cross-sectional loops in the selection and twists each one independantly
  • All vertices that are not on complete loops are properly interpolated
  • Works great with proportional editing
  • The default hotkey is Alt T
• Added new Auto Fill operator that can be used outside of Retopoflow
  • Described below in the Patches section
  • The default hotkey is F
• Added new Edit as Curve operator for adjusting any selection with Bezier handles
  • Works outside of Retopoflow tools
  • Works the same as the curve handles in PolyStrips and Strokes described below
  • The default hotkey is Alt C

Patches

• Added new Patches tool for quickly filling areas with quads
  • Select boundary edges to see a preview of the fill
  • Ctrl LMB on vertices to add or remove corners as needed
  • Hit Enter, Ctrl LMB (not on the selected vertices) or F to accept the fill
  • Select the edges around a hole to fill it
  • Select boundary edges to face step them
    • When the selection ends in a corner, it will step and connect similar to the F2 add-on, but this works for entire loops not just single faces
    • Ctrl Scroll to step multiple times
    • Shift Scroll to adjust the step width
  • Select perpendicular boundary edges that form an L shape to fill it
  • Select parallel boundary edges facing each other to create a bridge
  • Select three boundary loops with four corners that form a U shape to fill it
  • Select any n-gon to replace it with a patch
  • Select a corner vert to make a quad, same as the F2 add-on
  • Ctrl Scroll can be used to cycle through solutions when multiple exist
  • Shift scroll before or after filling a patch to rotate the solution
  • Alt R on any selected faces to rotate the topology in any tool
  • Solutions with triangles and n-gons are supported when quad solutions don’t exist
    • non-quads are highlighted and very obvious
• Added new hotkey F to access Patches from any tool
  • Tapping F will auto-fill the selection using the Patches algorithm
  • Holding F will temporarily switch you into Patches, giving you an interactive preview of the fill, which you can adjust as needed and accept with LMB or Enter
• The Patches fill operator can be used outside of Retopoflow by pressing F, from the Retopoflow context menu, or the Edge or Face menus.

Contours

• Added new source processing method, SDF, to Contours
  • It is much faster than Walk but slower than Fast
  • It is slightly less accurate than Walk but much more accurate than Fast
  • It can handle flipped normals, split edges, and overhangs just fine
• Added Shift Scroll hotkey to twist in Contours
• Added Ctrl Scroll after extruding in Contours to adjust segment count
• Added Curvature and Space Evenly controls to Contours that determine where new points are placed
• Added Refinement option to Contours Fast method that improves quality without much overhead
• Exposed the Contours Walk method source object cache so it can be managed manually if needed
• Increased max span count in Contours

PolyStrips

• Added Ctrl and Shift Scroll operators to adjust segments and width at any time in PolyStrips
  • This is also a standalone operator that can be used outside of Retopoflow
• PolyStrips now has insert size methods similar to Strokes
  • The default, Snapped, properly interpolates when drawing between any two quads
• Improved edge placement when creating strips
• PolyStrips now snaps to adjacent geometry, so you can draw alongside existing edges
• PolyStrips face sizing now matches the faces you snap to or from by default
• Significantly improved PolyStrips curve handles

Strokes

• The curve handles are now available when working in Strokes and PolyPen as well
  • Expanded the curve handle system to work with edge loops and patches of faces
  • Hovering over a control point and pressing v toggles the handle type
  • Toggling the handle type to or from Vector automatically inserts or removes corners
  • Handle visibility can be toggled with Alt C
• Stokes now snaps its span sides to nearby connected vertices
  • This makes it so Strokes can fill holes without creating overlapping verts
• Strokes now places verts at sharp angles in the drawn stroke
• Strokes now projects in world space, fixing spacing and redo issues
• Strokes can now use world space units as the span length
• Closed loops drawn with Strokes have a new slider to make them perfectly circular
• Switched Strokes and PolyStrips brush size hotkey to Shift F to free up F for filling
  • All brush based tools can now use the bracket keys to change the size as well
  • Fixed incorrect brush preview size when adjusting radius in non-default UI scales

Tweak and Relax

• Added Nudge, Nudge Loops, and Pinch / Magnify modes to Tweak tool
  • Nudge is now the default instead of Grab
  • You can hold Alt to quickly toggle loops mode in Nudge
• Tweak and Relax now default to affecting only one mesh island at a time
  • Can be changed in the Masking options
• Relax is now significantly faster

CAD Snapping

• Added experimental low poly hard surface / CAD snapping
  • Enabled via the new Snapping menu under Source Feature Detection
  • You can snap to sharp angles, creases, seams, or edges marked as sharp
  • Works while grabbing, brushing, or creating new vertices in all tools
  • Inludes a new caching system for the source objects
  • Can be slow in heavy scenes, so it is only recommended only for low detail scenes for now

Misc.

• LMB drag away from geometry now falls back to the active selection tool
  • Can be disabled in the Tweaking menu under Selection
  • You can change the fallback tool with Blender’s Alt W hotkey
• All Retopoflow tools now respect Blender’s Alt+B clipping region
  • Useful for isolating areas while working
• Tools statusbar now shows the result of Blender operations such as Merge by Distance
• Added new custom icon for Loops tweaking in tool header
• Cleaned up tool header UI
• Added more tool options to the pie menu (default W)
• Improved extrude vs. knife decision tree in PolyPen
• Improved automatically switching between screen space and world space snapping
• Improved normal calculations when transforming or creating new geo
  • The option to turn off recalculating normals moved to the new Snapping menu

Fixes

• Fixed crash and removed hotkey block for Maximize Area
• Fixed performance issues when using some pen tablets or non-official Blender distributions
• Fixed performance issues when frequently using the Relax and Tweak quick switch hotkeys
• Fixed proportional editing circle size and location
• Fixed non-uniform scale issues when drawing in PolyStrips
• Fixed wire and solid mirror display in Blender 5.2

4.1.9

• Added 5.2 compatibility
• Fixed occasional incorrect normals when tweaking without transforms applied
• Fixed theme not always being reset when exiting Retopoflow
• Fixed error in add-on preferences Tweaking panel
• Fixed issue with Contours Walk method when adjusting source object modifier between strokes
• Fixed status bar hotkey hints not drawing in Blender 4.2
• Fixed issue with drawing with Apple Pencil when mouse isn’t in 3D View

4.1.8

• Fixed issue with Relax brush with mirror boundary clipping
• Improved stability of Relax near mirror boundaries

4.1.7

• Improved Relax at extreme scales
• Improved Relax Equalize Faces
• Fixed crease and sharp sliding in Tweak and Relax

4.1.6

• Significantly improved Relax performance
• Added option to slide along seams, creases, and sharp edges in Tweak and Relax
• Added vertex and edge sliding when pressing G during transforms
  • Clamping is off by default for boundary edges so you can easily slide outwards
• Added Tweak Loops option to PolyPen, Strokes, and Contours
  • This will select and slide loops when clicking and dragging from an edge instead of grabbing the edge
  • It is per-tool and on by default in Contours
• Improved auto picking projection method during transforms
  • If a lot of vertices are selected or any of their normals are not pointing towards the view, Face Nearest is used. Otherwise, Face Project.
• Added option to specify specific objects or collections as snapping sources
• Added option to disable auto picking projection method
• Added option to disable loop cutting feature in PolyPen’s knife
• Added option to disable transforms correcting face normals
• Minor UI cleanup
• Increased default Face Nearest snapping steps
• Fixed PolyPen attempting to loop cut when it should bridge
• Fixed several PolyPen knife issues
• Fixed transforms flipping normals on thin curved surfaces
• Fixed snapping to self during loop cut and slide
• Fixed some Blender settings not being returned to previous values when exiting
• Fixed double click to loop select in Blender 5.1+
• Fixed crash when disabling the Retopoflow add-on while using it

4.1.5

• Added new Edit Mode Auto-Save feature for backing up modeling sessions
  • Blender’s Auto-Save does not work in Edit Mode, so this fills that gap
  • It uses the same location and time increment as Blender’s Auto-Save
  • You can recover using the usual File -> Recover menu
  • You can disable this feature if you already use another auto-save add-on for Edit Mode
• Added new vertex smoothing algorithm option for Relax
  • This is enabled by default and should make most cases significantly more stable
  • It uses a Laplacian method and behaves similar to Blender’s smooth brush in sculpt mode
• Relax’s Straighten Edges option can now work without spreading out the vertices
  • This helps fix issues when working with non-square rectangles
• A new Relax option, Equalize Faces, combines the previous face options while additionally averaging the area of each face
• Added a new Auto mode to Relax for automatically setting the number of substeps in the simulation
  • This makes it more stable at low vertex counts and faster at high vertex counts
• Improved Relax behavior at extreme scales
• Fixed issue with creases when jumping straight to object mode
• Fixed theme preferences being incorrectly saved in Blender 5.1 if exiting Blender while Retopoflow is active
• Fixed silent error in console when using Relax on geometry without faces
• Fixed issues with PolyPen attempting to knife when it should create a triangle

4.1.4

• Fixed PolyPen knife sometimes trying to insert loops when it should not

4.1.3

• Fixed issue with PolyPen freezing when operating on loose edges
• Fixed issue with faces flipping when using proportional editing

4.1.2

• Added option to constrain new knife cuts to the UI
• The status bar hotkeys now correctly show customized hotkeys
• Added hotkeys, Shift P and Alt P, for pinning and unpinning
• Pinned verts are now skipped by default by the clean up operator
• Fixed issue with verts interpolated from pins unable to be unpinned

4.1.1

• Masking and pinning options are now shared between Tweak and Relax
• The pie menu, documentation, and report issue hotkeys are now customizable
• The default hotkey for reporting an issue is now Alt F1
• Fixed issue with starting Retopoflow 4.1 in Blender 4.5
• Fixed issue with starting Retopoflow 4.1 in Blender 4.2

4.1.0

New:

• Significantly improved knifing in PolyPen
  • You can now make cuts across multiple faces
  • PolyPen can now automatically adds quad junctions when cutting between adjacent edges on a quad
  • You can now add any number of cuts into the middle of a face and it will split when you connect to the other side
  • New knife points on edges are now correctly constrained to the edge
  • You can now start a cut from a selected edge without needing to fist insert a point
• Tweak and Relax are now sensitive to pen pressure
• Tweak and Relax now have a pinning system
  • You can either add pins yourself or use attributes like seams or sharp edges
• Added new Topo Rotate operator (Alt R) for rotating selected topology in place
• Loop selection in Retopoflow now ends at inner corners by default in Blender 5.1+
  • We added the option for this and other loop delimiters to Blender 5.1 thanks to your support!
• Fill Region is now disabled when picking shortest path (Ctrl Shift LMB) in Retopoflow
  • The Loop and Shortest Path default adjustments can be disabled in the Tool Switching preferences if needed
• Added preference for W pie menu to work from any tool or only Retopoflow tools
• Blender’s Status Bar now displays full hotkey hints for all tools
• Added preset themes for the retopology overlay
  • The new default is Blue for improved accessibility (and vibes)
  • You can use any custom theme you have set in Blender by setting the theme to “Blender”
• Added ability to change vert and edge thickness while using Retopoflow
  • Thew new default is 4px for verts and 2px for edges for improved clarity
• Added warning for Windows tablet users if they are using WindowsInk drivers
  • WindowsInk can currently cause some lag spikes in recent Blender versions, even without Retopoflow

Improved:

• Relax initialization and acceleration structure building is now up to 5x faster
• Contours is now about 2x faster
• Added retopology overlay offset to tool header
• Added mirror modifier merge distance to Mirror panel
• Deleting faceless edges is now off by default in the Cleanup operator
• Unused outer Contours sample points are no longer shown when using Walk or Skip
• Fixed PolyPen and Strokes not being able to extrude from a line of symmetry
• Fixed Relax crash when a vertex has invalid coordinates
• Fixed Tweak and Relax not using masking settings when using the quick switch hotkeys
• Fixed Contours crash when cutting a singular face that is behind the source mesh
• Fixed Contours breaking with a vector subtraction error in rare situations
• Fixed Contours breaking with a matrix error in rare situations
• Fixed Contours getting twisted on certain shapes
• Fixed issue when cancelling a Contours cut with a right click
• Fixed issue with mirroring on the -Y and -Z axis in Polystrips
• Fixed crash when a source object is a curve with a geometry nodes modifier that has no output
• Fixed Fade Inactive not turning on when tool switching
• Fixed wireframe mirror display mode in Blender 5.0
• Fixed issue with enabling the add-on with certain graphics drivers
• Fixed small memory leak in custom overlays

4.0.2

• Added option to only snap to selected objects
• Added support for Blender 5.0

4.0.1

• Fixed issue with detecting user keymaps

4.0.0

Retopoflow 4 is officially released!

New:

• Added Shift hotkey for moving in small increments while tweaking
• Added preference to disable warning that shows when starting Retopoflow without a source

Improved:

• The W pie menu now works when a non-Retopoflow tool is selected
• Improved Relax strength factor
• Tweak and Relax now treat edges between visible and hidden faces as a boundary
• Improved drawing from the line of symmetry in PolyStrips
• Added preset support to Clean Up operator
• Added PolyStrips and Strokes mirroring options to Mirror panel
• Fixed PolyStrips width when the retopo object has non-uniform scale
• Fixed PolyStrips creating sharp angles when the stroke is smooth but the source has sharp angles
• Fixed issue when deleting source objects while Retopoflow is running
• Fixed Strokes and PolyPen being able to snap to hidden vertices
• Fullscreening an area is now blocked since it can cause a crash on some machines
  • We will restore this functionality once we find a full fix

4.0.0 beta 7

New:

• Retopoflow can now use non-mesh objects like curves and NURBS as sources as long as they have evaluated faces
• The existing faces are no longer selected after using PolyStrips to bridge
• Added RK4 as a new iteration method for Relax
  • RK4 is significantly more stable overall but may apply too much or too little strength in some cases
• Added preferences for disabling the help and pie menu hotkeys

Improved:

• Fixed random crashing in Strokes and PolyStrips in Blender 4.5
• Fixed occasional flipped normals in Contours
• Fixed several smaller issues

4.0.0 beta 6

New:

• Added preferences for what to name newly created retopology objects
• Added limits to how far Relax can move geometry as a percent of the brush radius
• Added option to apply retopology settings to non-Retopoflow tools
• Added option to revert retopology settings if they were applied to non-Retopoflow tools
• Added option to reset all Retopoflow tool settings

Improved:

• Improved drawing PolyStrips across and along the line of symmetry
• Increased default vertex selection distance in response to feedback
• Fixed PolyPen crash when closest edge has zero length
• Fixed PolyStrips crash when bridging two faces that share a vertex
• Fixed info menu icon missing in Blender 4.2
• Fixed twisting in Relax when rotation was not applied
• Re-enabled Face Angles and Face Radius in Relax by default
• Fixed crash when toggling maximize area
• Fixed issue when switching workspaces into Retopoflow
• Fixed retopology overlay not being enabled in all 3D Views in the workspace
• Fixed issue when packaging Retopoflow using Blender’s extension build command

4.0.0 beta 5

New:

• You can now draw across the symmetry line in PolyPen, Contours, and PolyStrips

Improved:

• Fixed issue with Blender 4.5 on Mac

4.0.0 beta 4

New:

• Added quick hotkeys for Tweak and Relax
  • Shift drag for Relax
  • Ctrl Shift drag for Tweak
• Added option to use Blender’s native transform to the Tweaking panel
  • Allows snapping to the edges and verts of the source object
  • Allows all bonus features like edge slide and constraints
  • Great for low poly or hard surface objects but not for high poly organic sculpts
• Strokes now takes into account the line of symmetry when a mirror is enabled
  • New options for behavior at the line of symmetry and determining which side is being mirrored
• PolyStrips has a new stroke preview that shows the width of the resulting strip.

Improved:

• Fixed issue with Tweak and Relax not working when the retopo object scale was extreme
• Fixed issue with transforms not working when the retopo object was not at world origin
• Fixed crash when restoring factory defaults while Retopoflow is enabled

4.0.0 beta 3

New:

• A Mirroring panel with quick actions was added to the tool settings
• There is now a warning if entering Retopoflow when no sources are detected
• You can now control the merge distance of the Strokes brush

Improved:

• All tools now use Face Nearest snapping by default
• Masking corners in Tweak and Relax now respects concave corners
• The Tweak and Relax brush falloff control is now much more user friendly
• Strokes bridges can now be untwisted in edge cases where they are twisted
• Improved visualization for proportional editing
• Fixed several issues with mirror modifier clipping
• Fixed conflict with keymaps that use Ctrl LMB Drag as box or lasso select
• Fixed case where Relax would mangle n-gons if they had multiple sides on a boundary
• Fixed case where Relax would affect vertices outside of the brush
• Fixed Strokes merge circle sometimes highlighting when the result would not be merged
• Fixed Retopoflow exiting when maximizing the 3D View

4.0.0 beta 2

New:

• Contours can now extend from the correct boundary regardless of which loop is selected
• Improved Relax performance
• Disabled Relax Face Radius and Face Angles options by default since they are not always stable
• Renamed Stroke Smoothing to Stabilize to match Blender’s term
• Added Stabilize control to Strokes
• F1 now opens documentation and F2 reports an issue

Fixed:

• Fixed crash when a conflicting add-on listens for mesh changes and frees bmesh while we’re using it
• Fixed issue with flipped normals when the retopology object’s origin is far away

4.0.0 beta 1

Retopoflow 4 is a complete rewrite of Retopoflow that massively improves performance and integrates the tools directly into Blender’s Edit Mode.

Some key changes include:

• General
  • The tools are now in the Edit Mode toolbar
  • Ctrl scroll is now used instead of Shift scroll for adjusting insert count
• Contours
  • A new Fast method was added, which can improve performance on dense meshes and work in some cases where the mesh is split
• PolyStrips
  • Proportional Editing can now be used for smoothly affecting the surrounding geometry while adjusting existing strips
  • The angle at which new strips are split to create sharp corners can now be specified
  • Strip spacing is now calculated in world space
• Strokes
  • Several new stroke shapes are now supported so drawing new geometry feels more natural
  • Extrudes can now match the curvature of the original geometry if the method is set to Adapt
  • A smoothing control has been added for naturally blending between strokes created at different angles
  • The new default insert count, Average, always creates perfectly even quads when extruding