Retopologizing this cloth shirt

Ozz14

Hi all. I'm retopologizing this cloth shirt now and not sure how to proceed. As you can see at the bottom of the screen shot I've started trying to capture the wrinkles and folds in the topology of the shirt. I haven't modeled clothes this detailed before and don't know if this is common procedure (IE I don't know what i'm doing ).

I'm at this point where I can keep adding edges until the details are captured, which would add a significant amount of polygons to the finished product, or change direction. I haven't used baking for wrinkles before.

How much can baking maps be relied upon to capture the details of the cloth? Should I try to use retopology for wrinkles at all or scrap this avenue and just make the topology mimic the character's body for deformation?

musashidan

Not to be too harsh but, you should really put a lot more work into sculpting the cloth before worrying about retoo. As it is it just looks blobby and doesn't read as wrinkled cloth at all. Study reference of real clothing and you'll see what I mean.

Ozz14

Hey, did as you suggested and read up on drapery and its forms.  I went with the drop/flyaway method around the belt. I mostly used the move elastic brush, pinch, and standard. Definitely not perfect but I learned a lot, especially with making sure that the bottom of the skirt part matched the form of the folds going down the side. I'd be happy to keep working on it but still curious about my question regarding retopo and baking once its done! 

throttlekitty

Definitely an improvement For deep wrinkles, you'll want to reflow your geometry to support the changes in direction while also ensuring that it deforms properly during animation and let the normal map handle the rest. Here's a good example of keeping neat geometry, silhouette and deformation.