Retopologising Question

David Wakelin

Thanks for reading my thread,

I'm currently a student studying Games Design and specialize in 3D modelling; I enjoy both enviro and characters but other then my first and second year work; haven't made anything "professional" so I'm currently undergoing some character work for my portfolio before I head back to my final year.

My question is that, I understand modelling a base mesh; and sculpting along with creating base clothing and sculpting before finally placing ontop and retopping then texturing; but when it comes to retopping do I retop the meshes together or as singular objects ontop of each other.

Breakdown of what I'm trying to get across:

if for example my character is wearing a coat or a backpack would an arm be underneath this - or would the coat itself be connected to the hand?

Or if for example my character is wearing a backpack would this be connected to the coat or just a retopped lower poly version sitting ontop of the coat?

Cheers for any replies

David

Mark Dygert

Often you have a lot of sub-tools or seperate pieces so that you can take each piece to a higher resolution and work on the details seperately without having the entire mesh slowing things down.
Then when you retopo you typically combine a lot of the pieces but which pieces you do or don't combine is often a call that each artist has to make based on certain parameters of that particular game. Typically you don't bother creating meshes inside of other meshes like arms inside of coats or legs inside of pants unless there is some reason for it, but typically you don't add geometry that you will never see.

• Are there interchangeable parts?
  • Are there multiple heads going on the same base model? If so the head should be separate and the break should probably be hidden by design.
• Will they ever take the backpack off?
  • Will the topology match exactly if they are separate?
• How far will you see up the sleeves?

There rarely are rules that dictate heavily "YOU MUST ALWAYS DO THIS OR THE WORLD ENDS!" most of the time you have to gather up some info, ask a bunch of questions and then make a judgement call. Personally I gather up the info and let my lead/boss make the call so its on his ass not mine... but that's just paranoia about getting fired for things I can't control, heh.

Normally you want to combine as much as you can unless there is a reason it needs to be sperate, or seperating it gives you a workflow advantage like making it easier to uwnrap or the two pieces have drastically different materials and require different shaders, but even then its a toss up because different engines handle that differently.

Another reason why things get joined together is that if you have one mesh floating above another, unless the topology and skin weights are identical they will probably clip when the mesh deforms. This kind of forward thinking (how will the mesh deform) is highly prized in character artists and is a noob hallmark "oh I'll save a few polys WEE I iz smartz, oh crap it deforms like piss..."


So in one game you might join everything together and things look like they where cast in plastic all at the same time from the same material, and other times you might need to separate a bunch of stuff. But typically you want to provide the highest detail while using the least resources. Just don't get so caught up in being a resource minimizer that you screw over the model in some other way.

So... yea experience and learning what not do are probably going to be the best ways to learn what to do.

Never fear failure, it is a necessary component of success.

David Wakelin

Cleared up alot;

Thanks - especially to you mark