Character retopology questions

SuperFranky

Hey guys, I want to start retopology of my character, but I have some questions first that I would like to see answered:)

If I have belts strapping my character's body in various places, would it be a good idea to merge them and the body together in low poly? Or it would be better to have them as separate meshes? If meshes are separate, should I remove faces that can't be seen or there's no need to bother? If belts are separate meshes and I want them to deform properly with the body after rigging to pose the character, is there anything I should know about topology in that case?

How to decide when I should use continuous topology for lowpoly to cover separate objects and when it's better to make them separate?

Also, should I learn at least a bit of rigging before starting any retopology work? Would it help?


Thanks in advance.:thumbup:

AA3D

it very much depends
first ask yourself this.. what distance is the character going to be viewed from ?
based on that you should decide if you can get away with painted in belts or not .

jfitch

Something like a Dota character I would combine everything into one mesh unless it was armor that wouldn't deform. Something like a cinematic character I would have lots of separate pieces. Don't bother deleting backfaces unless you need to reduce draw calls or you'll really never see them.

If the straps look like they're glued to the body I would probably combine them to make things easier give it some supporting loops in the topology. If they are lose, I'd keep them separate because they wouldnt' deform exactly the same as the body does. Chances are they would deform very little other than moving with the parent bone.

It's all a matter of your best judgement when it comes to separating objects. I like to keep the head separate because it makes it easier to do blend shapes, and any hard surface pieces because they don't need to deform as much.

Knowing some rigging would help, but it's not necessary. If you're going to rig the character, then create a skeleton now and do text skinning as you go to make sure the topology works the way you want it to. And of course use all of the lovely reference in the polycount wiki.

Hope that was a little helpful at least!

SuperFranky

Thanks, jfitch , it was really helpful

jfitch

No prob m8