Try This Free CAD Data Retopology Tool For Blender
Hardcraft gives you meshes that combine quads and triangles.
Hardcraft, a new Blender add-on by Vitaliy Yablonskiy, is now available in alpha. It takes messy CAD exports, including STEP files and Plasticity Blender Bridge exports, and turns them into clean, game-ready meshes.
"It is not a generic remesher and not an all-quad retopologizer. It reads the CAD structure that the export still carries, splits the surface into patches and curves, and lets you steer the mesh per patch with a few gestures."
The workflow starts by bringing your CAD model into Blender. From there, you create a retopology target and use the tool to detect the CAD surfaces and generate mesh patches. You can then adjust the patch boundaries and topology to get the desired edge flow and vertex density. Once everything looks right, you commit the result.
Hardcraft is compatible with Blender 5.0 and above. You can find the documentation here and download the add-on by clicking this link.
Andrei Bezgodov, a Senior Weapon Artist at tinyBuild, has also recently released a similar tool for hard-surface art. PatchGAP turns compatible Plasticity-imported CAD faces into editable mesh patches inside Blender.
Right now, it supports Blender 5.2. According to the developer, the add-on will continue to receive updates if there's enough interest. Scroll down to see some examples made with PatchGAP:
Andrei Bezgodov
Andrei Bezgodov
Andrei Bezgodov
You can purchase PatchGAP here.
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