Is this a good female body topology (for posing/animation)?

kornel

This is my first try at retopologizing a female body, and I'm not sure if its good for rigging and posing / animation. The limbs are missing, but those are easy to do, my main concerns are the torso, the hips, and the shoulders:



Thanks in advance

RN

For posing + animation you're gonna need more loops at the groin region when doing the leg left/right movements. Undo those 3-poles, let them flow around.



Do the same on the other side, because the center of the back clearly needs more loops.

Mark Dygert

The butt topology is going to cause some problems. It is too concave and the loops aren't running in directions that will help support the shape when the leg lifts.

You really want your loops to be more horizontal, be lower toward the bottom of the cheeks and a little more compact so that when the leg lifts you have polys to work with. 

Typically you also want the loops on the front thigh to be higher than the butt loops and with a little bit of an arch. What you have on the front is pretty decent, but it will help to see it deform and to play with the weights and then go back and remodel it.

Some examples:
http://www.hippydrome.com/ModelingTorsoRear.html
https://www.pinterest.ch/pin/476818679276917221/

Personally, I suggest grabbing a quick rigging tool that legs you place joints and adjust skinning with rapid iteration. Then just deform your model and fix problems, it's one of the best ways to learn. 

kornel

Thank you your response, which rigging tool do you recommend?

Alex_J

Maya HumanIK is pretty easy. It's all I can suggest as it's all I've used though.

In addition to what others said, I'd say just make a quick rig and test it out. If you aren't already familiar with rigging, it may take a few days of studying to get familiar enough to do some basic vertex weighting, but once you know it you know it and it's pretty handy to be able to quick-rig and test your models. Then you can just add edge loops and see what happens when you bend the appendages in different ways.

Mark Dygert

It really depends on what software you're using?

Maya's quick rig tool is pretty good for something like this. It's pretty easy to use and doesn't require hours of setup. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1L3Unmm588

In maya I personally use Advanced Skeleton and The Setup Machine3 which create high quality robust rigs that are suitable for animation. But they require some setup time and it takes longer to learn how to use them than quick rig, but quick rig is fairly limiting if you start animating with it.
http://www.animationstudios.com.au/advanced-skeleton
http://www.anzovin.com/tsm3/

Modo has Auto Character Setup
https://www.autocharactersetup.com/

3dsmax has biped and CAT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2PUcA0eR3Q

Blender has some quick ways to rig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYiAd_08-0k

kornel

HumanIK looks really awesome,but I hate Maya. I hate it with passion. I tried to transition from 3ds Max to Maya years ago, but it's just too frustrating to me. It is extremely unintuitive and hard to use. To me, Maya is like Blender. Not worth the time and effort to learn it.

So I just used regular bones is 3ds max, and skinned only the legs and hips, and the problem is this:

When lifting the leg, with the first topology, the front is deforming really well, but the butt looks terrible, and with the second topology, the butt is good, but the front is bad:

I can't figure out how to combine the good back and good front topology.