What is the best way/ things to consider when retopologising a high poly character

Trill_Clinton

Hey guys so as the title suggests when it comes to retopology of characters I always hit a big wall. I am a studying character artist who is aware of things such as face and deformation loops and such however from past experience trying to retopologise one of my high poly sculpts by hand it became a mess trying to arrange and organise all the quads I have made. Ever since then I have been very anxious about the retopology phase. My question here now is how do you guys approach retopology. How do you have it so that the process is a more caluculated and easier process rather than it being somewhat guesswork and iteration over iteration of cleaning mistakes. In addition generally how and where do you guys start when it comes to this process. I am planning to retopologise by hand in zbrush but also experiment with topogun in the future. Anyway I hope to hear from you guys soon and thank you for allowing me to be part of a platform such as this.

Thank you

pior

Attempting to do a proper retopology pass in Zbrush will only be a waste of time. Either use Topogun, or one of the (less specialized, but still robust) solutions available in Max/Maya/Blender.

As for a strategy:

- Start by defining the outer edge of things, the symmetry lines of each part, and so on. Then fill in.
- Don't get obsessed with "quads". Of course most of your surfacing will be grid-based, but you will also need to convert three rows of edges into two, branch out at an angle, and so on. And sometimes a geodesic pattern can work very well in some cases.
- Most importantly (and as you mentioned it yourself) : avoid guesswork. If you are not sure about the way your geometry should flow, then take a screenshot of your model and sketch over it in photoshop to solve the issue. It will be much faster than aimlessly messing around in 3d.

Good luck !

Trill_Clinton

Thank you for the reply and wow I would just like to say you are one of my character artist heroes. May I just ask could you elaborate on "defining the outer edge of things" I'm not too sure what you mean buy that exactly. Anyway thank you for the reply. Thank you so much

pior

Hi !

What I am getting at is that instead of just surfacing a given element with quads without much of a strategy, you should start by first identifying the outer edges of a given part as well as all its logical construction lines (center of symmetry, and so on) and make sure that your mesh edges follow that first. Once this is well established, filling in with polygons will be trivial (with the added benefit of being able to very easily control the density of the final mesh by simply adding or removing edge "steps" on these constructions lines). As shown here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F5oR0T6yn0&feature=youtu.be

Note that the doubling of edges done in that example is of course not necessary in all cases - that too is something that can be scaled up and down easily depending on budget.

Trill_Clinton

Wow thank you. Thank you so much. This is a lot of help I appreciate the video so much as well. So much gratitude

kanga

Yep, you can see how your edgeflow should go to maximize the shape of your character and its often a case of putting the flow how you want it and making the other areas fit that. So you drive the mesh instead of the other way around. You can even lay down the joint loops where you know your character will have to deform first, or  at least early on.

Detaching parts of your underlying mesh so you can concentrate freely on difficult areas. As has been said ZBrush retopo is most useful at the modeling/sculpting stage but way too fiddly and not so robust when it comes to a final lowpoly cage, that would depend on how complex the character is though. I am retopoing in Blender for the first time and its pretty good so far and far quicker than ZBrush for that part of the process.

You probably know this but just in case: black your lowpoly out every now and then and orbit around it to check the  silhouette. You will be surprised how much you can miss by only looking at the shaded version of you cage.

Tris set you free so you can vary geometry density easily over your mesh with not much penalty. Watch out for 5 point poles though. Watch the direction of your quads and turn them where necessary. Many artists don't even use quads for game meshes.

pior

All sound advice ... except for the 5-point poles though  For instance, here's a perfectly retopo-ed dome :



(unless you mean something else ?)

kanga

pior said:

All sound advice ... except for the 5-point poles though  For instance, here's a perfectly retopo-ed dome :



(unless you mean something else ?)

Ah no, you are right. I am getting muddled with ZBrush. That is the one that doesn't like poles. I always correct my ZBrush base meshes and briging those back to ZB and poles dont sculpt well. That isn't the same as a final cage. My mistake.

Edit: On second thought, I do often chamfer verts and reroute edges if an intersection is too intense on a final mesh. This guy does it too: http://eat3d.com/character_lowres That is actually a very good reference for character retopo.

RN

From the point of view of another student like you, I noticed it's sometimes easier to think about all this in terms of rows of quads.
That is, two edge loops together form a row of quads that flows around the mesh.

When a row of quads interacts with other rows (meets, crosses etc.) there's usually some kind of pole around that part.

Trill_Clinton

Wow thank you guys so much for the help and feedback. And thank you for the video link kanga. So to sum would you guys say think about the silhouette during retop and then fill in the internal details to put it in laymans terms  

musashidan

The most important thing to consider when retoping an organised mesh(deforming/animated character) is the topology on areas that need to deform and therefore skin well: shoulders, elbows, knees, pelvis, facial topology, etc.

Have a look on the wiki here for some good examples.

Also, when first learning to lay down good organised topology a very useful technique is to polypaint your topology flow onto your sculpt before export. You can just give it a 1 click automapping PUV tiles unwrap before decimation and use it as a template to build your topology. It's much easier to get your head around it when you're just sketching it in rather than as you're building it.