Making retopology great (...again?) - Share your tips & tricks!

Stachmo

Hey peeps,
Something I've been fighting with the past few days in my production pipeline is retopology - especially following the form of an organic model to create a mesh with clean spans for rigging and animation (so autotopo and decimation tools tend to create more work than help).

I can generally create a highpoly model in X amount of time, but am finding retopoing to take 3X, sometimes even 5X that amount. I can't help but feel like I'm doing something wrong.

I'm currently bouncing between ZBrush's ZRemesher, 3DCoat's retopo tools, and Maya's Modeling Toolkit.  I've gone through what feels like hours worth of tutorial videos online inbetween frustratingly tweaking individual vertices, but usually end up closing videos after seeing someone doing the same thing, saying to myself, "Really?? THAT's how they're doing this??"

What is your approach when retopoing a highpoly model (in my case, a dense character or prop that will be animated)? Have any specific tips / tricks that help you along the way? Whats your biggest time saver (maybe it even happens outside the retopoing step)?  What is something you suggest to avoid doing?

Thanks in advance!

lotet

try to stay lowpoly, its easier to ad loops then remove them. If you struggle with the edgeflow, do the key loops/strips first, then fill in the gaps. that way you can focus on the correct flow of everything.

I would also recommend to not start in a corner and build from there, build everything at once.

Jakro

If you're using maya try the quad draw tool while using a mid res mesh as a live reference. With that setup it stops being about the tools and more about the users skill and knowledge when it comes to topology and edge flow. Here's a video that showcases the workflow https://youtu.be/tdq-Pf-hmYs

Jakro

Also this thread is more suited to the technical section rather than the showcase and crit section 

Sunray

Get into zbrush paint some of your edge flow with poly paint and put that map in maya and work over it with the moddeling toolkit. Try to stay low so you can sdiv or add loops later on.

Stachmo

Good tips to start.
@lotet : I typically try to stay as low as possible, but some of the forms I'm dealing with are highly irregular and uneven.  If I start too low and add loops later, some of the vertices get "thrown" to other nearby surfaces or collapse the geometry altogether.

@Sunray : the polypaint guide tip is awesome! I'll definitely give that a try

@Jakro : I currently use quaddraw in the Modeling Toolkit the most.  I just find the tedium of placing individual vertices frustrating... it makes me feel like there's got to be a better way after awhile.

Also, you're totally right about where I posted this... any chance a mod can move it over to technical? My bad.

Jakro

@Stachmo  You could perhaps create some basemeshes that have really good topology and then use a shrinkwrap modifier to project your base mesh onto the highpoly. Then use soft selection to move the basemesh to fit the highpoly better. Maybe something like that may help?

bigodon

i'm not big fan of zbrush zremesher edgeloops orientation, but it certainly do a great job on reduction and make it flow close to it's original dense meshes. Weird or not i aways do this even not like it 100%. But it aways need extra work and post adjustments.

lotet

Stachmo said:

  If I start too low and add loops later, some of the vertices get "thrown" to other nearby surfaces or collapse the geometry altogether.

wait what?
you must be doing something seriously wrong if something as simple as adding loops is causing that much trouble. 

can you post a screenshot or something so we can see what your working with?

Stachmo

@lotet: here's a shot of a piece of the highpoly model I'm currently working with.  It takes up a good amount of screen space, so retaining the silhouette is imperative.  The ends will rustle in the wind and have other deformations (general stylized squash and stretch animation)


Working low has been the best approach, but vertices tend to get moved into nearby "crevices" when adding edgeloops to the lower poly cage.  Even if its just a bit, it ends up being enough displacement where I can't just smooth the verts into place and have to move them manually back vert by vert.

@Jakro : thats a good suggestion for some of the characters that come into production.

@bigodon : ZRemesher and other autotopo tools are great... when they can get me about 80% of the way to the final mesh.  I always expect to do some cleanup and tweaking.  It's when they only produce about 20% of something useful that I start questioning their output.

lotet

Wow. you didnt make it easy for yourself with that mesh.

honestly, I would probably do a proper lowpoly for the bottom half in this case, and then just use something like decimation master for the top, and then stitch it together.

I was bored so I even made an example.

Stachmo

Wow! Nice - thanks for the example.
Yea... the art direction and overall approach of this piece didn't quite make retopoing easy.
I think what's going to help the most is just planning better from the start of an asset, even before sculpting