Retopo after Zbrush booleans

AXEL

So what would be the best workflow to retopo booleaned Zbrush objects 
For example, I'm trying to retopo this now to practice
Im using 3ds max mainly but Im willing to try a different software just for retopo
I tried Step Build and Extend in max but they just dont seem to work as intended for me 
So how would you retop this ?

oglu

grab a cube and a sphere and do the boolean in a polymodeler... on the exact same position...
a lot of times its easier to recreate the object in a polymodeling tool than trying to create a retopo on the high surface...
i often model stuff by hand and move some verticies around until they match the highress... 

clicking on the surface with a retopo tool like topogun does create often a even quad distributed mesh... which is not what it should be...
old-school modeling is in a lot of cases much faster and more exact...

AXEL

Thanks, @oglu
Ok that was a rather simple case but what if what I boolean is more like this 

If i go thru hell that would be to boolean this in lets say max I really don't think it would look anything like this

oglu

create a plane move it slightly inwars and start to cut in those shapes... move cut move again...
create a sphere move it in place.. reverse the normals... cut the cube shapes in... delete the rest...
on some areas use topo tools... everything is allowed...
just do it... there is no magic trick...

musashidan

This is a project I did a while back that's fully manually retop using Max. I built the high poly using a CAD program as a workflow test, but It had no advantage over my usual 'high/low simultaneous' workflow. Even though I got the retop done in a single sitting it still has no advantage over traditional modeling imo.

Alex_J

I don't have anywhere near as much experience as the suggestions already posted, but my personal opinion is that retopo is such a chore for me that I almost always work low-to-high poly. That is, I build my game mesh first and subdivide from there. Usually I build a very rough block version in Maya and use Zbrushes superior move brushes to get everything into the right position. I don't think a lot of people work like this, or at least I don't see this workflow described very often, but to me it's 100x better, faster, easier. As soon as I finish the sculpt, I UV and bake. EZ-PZ. 

How that ties into original post : I'd say build the thing with minimum topology in Max first. I never use boolens, but then I'm not much of a hard surface modeler. To me, I'd rather spend a little more time building things piece by piece and having total control, rather than making a mess and then doing clean up.

AXEL

Yeah I've always done low poly base shape that I turn into high poly while keeping the same shape (for bakes later) more or less and go into zbrush for smoothing and extra details it's just that zbrush boolens are soo good and soo fast that it's almost hard to resist all that power but if that comes with a cost of manual retop over the hp mesh than it seems not worth it ...