Retopologizing Clothes for Rigging

djordan

Hello, I'm fairly new to Maya and this forum. I have a couple questions about retopologizing a human character for rigging. 

I have a human model that I sculpted in Zbrush. I'm almost done sculpting it and I plan to export that as an .obj mesh to Maya so that I can begin retopologizing it with quad draw. After I finish retopologizing the body, I want to retopologize the clothes.

My question is, does the clothes topology have to match the body topology in order to make rigging any easier? I've never rigged a clothed body before and I wonder how topology plays into this. 

Second, what is your approach to retopologize, say, a shirt? I understand that the mesh must be thick enough to render correctly, right? Would you retopo the back and front sides of the shirt, or extrude faces to add thickness?

Thanks in advance for answering my noob questions. I really need help. 

phixel

Hi, the clothes and body do not have to have the same shaped topology. Just make sure your lowpoly clothes match the shape of their highpoly version for best normal map baking/silhouette. Also, like with the body have support loops in your topology for proper deformation around joints for animation. As far as retopo for a shirt or any item of clothing, will depend on what your goal is for the character you are creating. Will you ever see the character without a shirt? Or have different outfits/shirts? If no, then technically you can delete the characters arms seeing as they are hidden underneath the shirt sleeves and you will never see them. You can model in shirt material thickness around areas where you will see it (like collar or cuffs) but it is not necessary to have double thickness for the whole thing.

djordan

Thank you so much! I think that answered my questions! 

Neox

phixel said:

Hi, the clothes and body do not have to have the same shaped topology

i disagree 

if the clothing will be on top of the body. hell yes make it match the body topology as good as possible. Otherwise you'll fight clipping all day when skinning/animating your character.

If the body underneath doesn't exist animator, you would still want to use a similar topology just to make sure your skinned deformation works well. if you do whatever the hell you want just because your cloth is going wild, you'll have a fun time later on.
And if not you, the rigger/skinner/animator will just hate you.

phixel

@Neox Yeah you're right, but i was speaking more in general for say a baggy shirt with lots of folds that doesn't match the shape of the underlying body. Joints will definitely be more critical as far a clipping problems when animating if the topology doesn't match.