Looks fine, but you can tell the topology isn’t good based on the lack of wireframes.
The wire frame is going to be unrecognizable-bad.
Still a ways to go.
> Given a text prompt provided by the user, Stage I creates […] a 3D mesh.
Expectation vs. reality: https://i.imgur.com/82R5DAc.png
It absolutely does. But great, let's look forward to Printables being ruined by off-model nonsense.
If the topology is a disaster...no.
If you're hand massaging every poly you're rather defeating the purpose.
That's a bit of an overstatement. Fixing normals is far less time consuming than creating a mesh from scratch. This is particularly a win for people who lack the artistic skill to create the meshes in the first place.
I've got a lot of technical 3D skills after using 3DSMax for years as a hobby. Unfortunately I lack the artistic skills to create good looking objects. This would definitely allow me to do things I couldn't before.
Instead, the claim is that it’s “nearly^{TM}” solved, so the proof being an abandoned repo from half a decade ago actually speaks volumes: it’s solved except for the hard part, and nobody knows how to solve the hard part.
I don’t think you can truly “solve” any problem if you think about it.
If you need a model to move, you give it to a rigger. If the mesh is bad, they will first need to remesh it or the rigging wont work right. This is the problem. They will solve this problem using a manual, labor intensive, process. It's not particularly difficult, any 3D artist considering themselves a professional ought to be able to do it. But it's not the sort of thing where you just press a button and turn some knobs and you're done either. It takes a lot of work, and in particularly bad cases it's easier to just start from scratch - remeshing a garbage mesh is indeed harder than modeling from scratch in many cases. Once either of these mechanisms have been applied, the problem will be solved and the rigger can move on to rigging.
So yes, algorithms exist that pretend to remesh, and every professional modeling systems has one built in (because your sales guys don't want to be the ones without one), but professionals do not use them in production environments (my original claim, if you recall) because their results are so bad. Indeed I'm told several meme accounts exist dedicated to how badly they screw things up when folks do try to take the shortcuts.
If this project was aiming to solve the problem (which is possible, as I have just explained), they would not have given up 5 years ago. Because it sure isn't solved now.
It gets you somewhere closer, but not a fix.
Moreover, depending on what you have at hand, the resolution of your remeshing might destroy a LOT of detail or is unable to accomodate thin sections.
Retopo isn't a solved problem. It only is for really basic, convex meshes.
In my field, analog IC design, if we face a wall, we often do some literature review with a colleague and more often than not, results are not relevant for commercial application. Forget about Monte Carlo, sometimes even there aren't full PVT corners.
In research one learns that most (almost all) papers oversell their results and a lot of stuff is hidden in the "Limitations" section. This is a significant problem, but not that big a problem within academia as everybody, at least within the field, knows to take the results with a grain of salt. But those outside academia, or outside the field, often don't take this into account.
Academic papers should be read a bit like marketing material or pitch decks.