QuadForge — Automated Retopology for Blender (Sculpts & 3D Scans)

Voxel remesh + QuadriFlow quad solving + shrinkwrap pipeline with feature-edge preservation and normal transfer. Clean quad meshes from dense sources.

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Why QuadForge

Manual retopo on a million-poly sculpt is a day's work. The free options give you blob meshes that lose silhouette and sharp edges. QuadForge runs a curated voxel + QuadriFlow + shrinkwrap pipeline that preserves the source's volume, solves to near-100% quad topology at your target face count, bakes the high-poly normals onto the result, and keeps hard edges hard — no cloud, no API key, no per-asset cost.

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Features

• Local pipeline — voxel remesh + QuadriFlow + shrinkwrap, runs on your machine
• True quad output — near-100% quads at the requested face count
• Feature edge detection — sharp edges preserved as creases
• Normal transfer — high-poly normals baked onto the retopo
• Topology relaxation — configurable multi-pass smoothing for cleaner edge flow
• Auto-UV — optional Smart UV Project on the retopo result
• Honest reporting — "Reduced N → M faces" plus a normal-deviation score on each result

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Compatibility

• Blender: 3.2 and later (tested on 4.2 LTS and 5.1)
• OS: Windows / macOS / Linux

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Limitations

• Quad flow is automatic — character animation rigs that need hand-placed edge-loops around joints may still want manual cleanup.
• Best on closed manifold sources; flat planes and open shells have no volume to voxel-remesh (the addon reports a clear error and suggests Solidify). Very thin / hair-card meshes may need pre-processing.

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What you get

• QuadForge add-on (Python only, no DLL)
• README with full quick-start guide
• Free updates for v1.x
• Support through marketplace messaging

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Install

Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install... → pick quad_forge_v1_1_0.zip → enable. Press N in the 3D Viewport → QuadForge tab.

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License

GPL-3.0. Standard for Blender add-ons.

v1.1.1 — Optimize Topology now explains what to do instead of failing with an internal error when pressed on a mesh that is not a retopology result. Two panels also asked for an icon named BRUSH_SMOOTH, which no longer exists in Blender 5.x — a bad icon name aborts the whole panel, so the Results and Tools sections came up empty. Every icon name is now checked against Blender's own list. Retopology now says when it had to fall back. QuadriFlow needs a closed, manifold surface; on a sculpt with open edges it declines, the fallback solver runs instead, and the result is about half quads rather than near 100% — measured: 100% on a clean sphere, 50% on a mesh with 168 non-manifold edges. The result used to arrive silently; it now names the number of non-manifold edges and what to do about them.