Mesh Repair, "Torn" Mesh with Holes, Shrinkwrap Modifier?

Question

I am currently working on a project that requires me to convert multiple 3D meshes into voxelized models. Clean voxelization requires clean original meshes. However, the meshes I am working with are very... "corrupted." My pictures show this clearly, the meshes are composed of multiple disconnected faces and vertices, and the entire mesh has a "torn" look to it. However, the overall shape of the mesh remains.

I'd like to somehow approximate the general shape of the entire mesh, including bends/holes/etc. Basically, imagine automatically stitching together all the broken faces to create a single manifold mesh.

For one of my simpler models, I actually manually repaired the mesh through hours of selecting vertices, making faces, and moving stuff around: (Before and after)

However, this technique is very slow and tedious. I came across other solutions such as the Shrinkwrap modifier, however it doesn't work well around sharp angles/doesn't preserve the original shape well. Converting to a Convex Hull also loses all detail. I found the Point Cloud Skinner add-on, however all the random chaotic vertices in my model produce very bad skinning results.

For example, here's a mesh I want to repair, in a similar fashion to the first example. Any tips/advice on what tools/methods to use to repair a mesh like this? Also, since my voxelization has pretty low resolution, I don't need great detail in the repair, just a clean, general shape.

Thanks!

Answer 1

How about trying to retopo it? I see that mostly it is composed from easy shapes like circles, boxes and ovals, that you can easily create manually and everything else you can retopologise turning on and off snap to the surface when needed.

Answer 2

yea so the bad geometry should be fixed by just remaking the model in like 3 minuets and fixing all the bad geometry. then if you want to evenly space all the verts (which ive never heard someone wanting do do) you could be a bit crafty and select parts of the mesh and use the remove doubles function with the distance set to the length you want. Thats just one method though and you would need to select only specific parts of the model so that it doesnt merge things that you dont want merged. k, yea, keep at it dont give up

Answer 3

I figured out a simple, approximate repair method for this particular mesh (I'm hoping I can apply this to other meshes). Basically, I recognized that this mesh is composed of multiple similar parts, simple geometric shapes. The primary issue with using a convex hull tool came from the convex hull filling in all empty space between parts. However, in edit mode I individually selected each distinct region of the mesh and applied a convex hull to each portion. Therefore, I "repaired" the mesh part by part. This was the final product:

However, there is one small problem. (Also, I'm pretty new to Stack Exchange so I'm not sure if it's fine to include this). I would like to have all my vertices of my model spaced out in .5 cm increments. Currently, all the vertices are spaced unevenly. I'm assuming I could use the retopo tool somehow for this? Or an edge loop tool? What would be the best way to approach spacing out all the vertices evenly?