@Mike-Amos well, in this case i started with a basic trace of photo references, I use components, so that I can use different photos for different pieces but then the components are nested in the main assembly so they end up in the right place..

They also gave me a pretty bad photoscan, so I used that just to intersect it with a plane and extract the basic profile of the seating.
I then smoothed the extracted curve with Curvizard and normalized it with Polyline Segmentor

Then I created a base grid for the pattern with the proper real world measurements.

I then created a repeated component with Curviloft Skin

Same for the buttons

And then create a different variation of that component for the sides

And another variation for the corners

then I joined all of them together.. please notice that In this stage I try to keep the quads as even as possible, because I'm gonna deform this stuff

Then I extracted the diagonals for the sewing and used "Lines to Tubes" with quite low poly geometry.. and of course I did some cleanup with quadface tools for the overlapping geometry which will not be seen.

I then created the base shape of the seating using Curviloft ad Quadface tools.. and extracted the grid were I need the upolstered thing..

Then I use the QuadfaceTools "Unwrap Grid" feature to extract a flat grid from that.. which has the exact same lenght and topology of the seating that I'm going to replace.. and here is the flowify rig setup that I used to send the geometry to the curved surface.

WARNING: you need to use "flowify without cuts" to avoid messy topolgy and keep quads.

From this stage, it was just a matter of stitching and tweaking.. with the usual VertexTools, QFT, Artisan shenanigans

Meanwhile I also added the studs.. I used profile builder assembly to place them and then manually repositioned some bits in the problematic areas

And this is the updated version with the studs..
I hope this was helpful to better understand the process..

It's a bit different every time.. the shoe and the skatepark used a quite different process.. and the other sofas I posted before of that, is another different story..

Bowl du Prado.

The infamous Marseille Skatepark.

I''ll do some minor tweaks and a bit of housekeeping (organizing layers, purging, renaming, setting scenes and styles and whatnot)
Then I'll share this model (including the lowpoly cage, the pbr maps and a 3d printable version) for you guys to take a closer look at this workflow.
I will probably do a separate post with the download link and a bunch of screenshots to explain the main steps of this workflow.

Another free one you could look into is the "radial bend" feature from Fredoscale. The plugin also includes other really useful features such as tapering, stretching, twisting and so on..

@gabino yes I did a few test of animated objects in Unreal, but for real production I've used it only for archviz flytrough, because it has good visual quality and reasonable render time.
I managed to make it work with animated objects coming from 3dsMax both using animated/skinned fbx and alembic cached animations (mainly for particle systems, animated splines/booleans and this kind of stuff).

In real production, for animated objects I tend to prefer Unity 3d over Unreal.
I find Unity timeline interface more straightforfard compared to Unreal sequencer.
I find it easier also to keyframe objects in Unity itself (alongside with the usal imported fbx and alembic animations).
I'm not into "proper" character rigging, but I do sometimes use animated entourage people from 3dsMax "Populate" crowd system and also some Mixamo take for more specific characters with some particular animation.
I import those as skinned fbx files (with skeletons)

I also did some conveyor belts animation, one of which you can see in this video.
This was made with 3dsMax particle systems and controllers to be used in Unity, but it could absolutely be imported in UE5 with no problems at all.

Animated conveyor belts.mp4

In this post I shared a video of animated objects rendered in Unity 3d
All of this objects could be imported and used in UE.. except I find it more cumbersome and just prefer to use Unity for this kind of stuff and Unreal just for camera animations.
But probably it's just a matter of taste and habits..
You could do pretty much the same in UE.

A few models I made recently for a manufacturer that makes custom sofas to fit on yachts.

Another bunch of screenshots from the same series..
All modeled using QFT, VT2, SUbD and a bit of Curviloft, JPP and Artisan mixed in the process.
The UV mapping was done in Wrapr..

@Rich-O-Brien said in SubD examples and models:

Yummy, I'd try to resolve this area to be more uniform

Yeah definetly, I was still fiddling around with loops, but I already did yesterday after posting those screenshots, because that 3 to 1 was causing a noticeable bump after subdividing.
I also modeled the inside of the shoe, started to reshape the sole better, figured out a bit about the lace pattern and started to add tickness to the various layers of the main body.

@Rich-O-Brien said in SubD examples and models:

Does Topogun allow you to do quad patches?

It does and they are interactive, you can preview them and dynamically change the number of segments for each curve and change how the topology is arranged. You can create multiple patches at once, with 2,3,4 or more splines, join them and so on and so forth.
Once created you can't change them anymore, but you can edit them with the usual topology tools like move, extrude, draw, cut, collapse, brushes for soft move and relax and the usual stuff.

2025-05-16 14-02-28.mp4

@Rich-O-Brien yeah, in Sketchup is hard to imagine this kind of stuff working in realtime.

For simple objects sometime I do some basic retopology using Tools on Surface, or Artisan Knife or Intersecting geometry, then extract the edges, weld and run QFT "create quadfaces from wireframes".
Another workaround is to pre-triangurate (with qft diagonals) small patches and then use the "Drop To" plugin to trow/conform them over objects.
I usually do those tricks for smaller portions of models.

For massive retopology on heavy meshes like this (this model is 120k+ vertices) I usually run Topogun (whith QFT oj import/export) then import back the base topology to refine and detail it using VT, Artisan, Edge tools, Qft, fredo corner, JPP, Flowify and basically every plugin compatible with quads (and basically whatever tool and plugin as long as I use the pretriangulation trick).

I did a quick video to demonstrate this tecnique a few time ago..

@rv1974 of course you have that Retopo modifier if you have a new version of Max..
But I'm still on older perpetual version..
Btw I have quadremesher, which is quite similar (but not as good as the modifier) and of course the "classic" manual retopology tools from 3dsMax in the "freeform" panel.

There's no need for Vietnamese Plugin because with QFT exporter/importer to move quad models back and forth between SU and Max.

The reason why I use Topogun most of the time instead of Max, is actually that the dynamic patches are sort of halfway between the speed of auto-retopo and the full control of manual retopo.
If I reacall correctly, only Blender has something similar in retopoflow, but the patches are limited to 3 or 4 sides.
In topogun you can have patches from 2 to whatewer-you-need sides, and they can be changed interactively.

Let's go

@pkbrooks said in Toposhaper Issue:

picking each tag, selecting the geometry, re-tagging it to "Untagged"

Next time you may want to try the "Cleanup" plugin by Thomthom.
It has a one click "geometry to layer 0" feature which is perfect for such situations.
You just select the whole model (or the imported cad), run it and it will put all the geometry (not group and components) on layer 0 at once..

@fredo6 said in Toposhaper Issue:

It's always better to launch TopoShaper by selecting the group from outside

Intersting.
Never noticed that.
Honestly I never encounter this kind of problems.
Maybe it's because I always have my actual loose geometry on layer 0?
Or just luck?

If it's not a giant model, you could wrap the whole model into a component, duplicate it and rotate it -90° on X axis.

@gabino yes I did a few test of animated objects in Unreal, but for real production I've used it only for archviz flytrough, because it has good visual quality and reasonable render time.
I managed to make it work with animated objects coming from 3dsMax both using animated/skinned fbx and alembic cached animations (mainly for particle systems, animated splines/booleans and this kind of stuff).

In real production, for animated objects I tend to prefer Unity 3d over Unreal.
I find Unity timeline interface more straightforfard compared to Unreal sequencer.
I find it easier also to keyframe objects in Unity itself (alongside with the usal imported fbx and alembic animations).
I'm not into "proper" character rigging, but I do sometimes use animated entourage people from 3dsMax "Populate" crowd system and also some Mixamo take for more specific characters with some particular animation.
I import those as skinned fbx files (with skeletons)

I also did some conveyor belts animation, one of which you can see in this video.
This was made with 3dsMax particle systems and controllers to be used in Unity, but it could absolutely be imported in UE5 with no problems at all.

Animated conveyor belts.mp4

In this post I shared a video of animated objects rendered in Unity 3d
All of this objects could be imported and used in UE.. except I find it more cumbersome and just prefer to use Unity for this kind of stuff and Unreal just for camera animations.
But probably it's just a matter of taste and habits..
You could do pretty much the same in UE.

@gabino said in sketchup to unreal workflow:

i was working with a big sketchup model (60MB)

60 MB is definitely not a big model for Unreal.
This one was 55MB and I consider it a small model..
I've used way bigger models in UE (using Datasmith) with no problem at all.

@gabino I managed to import SketchUp models into Unreal and Datasmith worked flawlessly.
As @Rich-O-Brien said, the model should be decently mapped and triangulated beforehand. The model being big or small doesn't matter that much.
Regardless the size, the model needs to be clean.
Decent grouping and a modular approach could be helpful to better troubleshoot issues.
If you mind to share some part of the skp model which cause problems, maybe we can look into it too see if there are specific problems or "bad practices"

@Rich-O-Brien said in Convert groups to components:

For me the Entity Panel should be the portal to many actions related to your selection

Wait.. aren't you actually describing that typical "inspector" panel featured in 99.9% of the 3d packages out there?

@Rich-O-Brien said in Convert groups to components:

I can dream....

Yeah.. keep dreaming

@rv1974 said in Convert groups to components:

I avoid using "Make Component" - I hate modal dialogs.

I also hate that window, because it's useless in most cases.
I have mouse buttons programmed to other things, so i just use a shortcut (ctrl + G) to make component and then hit "enter" to skip the dialog quickly.

@rv1974 said in Convert groups to components:

you don't need to select all instances before converting them to instanced component. only one is enough

That's definetly a "Doh moment"
So.. at the end of the day, I was wrong.. it actually needs just two clicks (a right click to open context menu and another one to pick the "convert options").
You could probably assign the very same command to your mouse button.
No need to install a separate plugin.

@rv1974 said

6 clicks is ridiculous

Well, regardless the plugin you chose, you've got 2 step to accomplish, first you need to select something, then you need to perform the action.
Provided that you enable the 2 commands in the right click menu, you need 2 clicks to open that.
You can actually just hover mouse to the "group copies submenu" without clicking on it (so they are potentially 2 click less), then you need a click to select and another additional click to convert.

@rv1974 said

trying to find something in this filthy right click menu

The Selection Toys UI is one of the best in my opinion, being that is TOTALLY customizable with a few clicks.
If you feel there are too many options in the right click menu , you can easily remove them at any time.

@rv1974 said

frequently used tool

It shouldn't be used that often TBH, you are supposed to use components from scratch whenever it's needed.
The tool is intended to fix errors due to lack of attention.
You should always pay attention to what you're doing, to begin with.

@rv1974 said

They're several dedicated groups to components scripts

Yeah, I know I've one of them and never use it. Selection Toys is more powerful being that it allows to select group copies that are nested into other groups and subgroups (and allow to choose if you want to pick all the copies in the model or only those into the current context).
It also has tons of other useful selection filters (which I use way more than this specific one).
If you know a plugin that requests less than 4 clicks to perform the exact same operation from context menu with the same level of control, let me know, maybe I missed something.

BTW if, for whatever reason, one need to use some specific command that frequently is a matter of second to setup a couple of dedicated toolbars buttons using Lord Of The Toolbars.
That's something I usually do for my most frequently used commands (which I don't use so frequently to deserve a keyboard shortcut, of course).

The attached video shows how fast you can perform the action on nested groups.

EDIT: apparently you deleted the post while I was answering, I'll reply anyway because the video and the advices could be useful for the OP or anyone searching for the same question.

@Dave-R of course.
In fact I'm answering to him who says that the plugin proposed by Rich is complex to use.
It actually only takes six mouse clicks.