Retopo - which pieces do i combine & which should stay separated"

bosko

Hey guys, 

during character modeling i ran into the following question: I've started a highpoly sculpt for a game character in ZBrush and especially in terms of clothing i am now wondering which part I should keep als separate objects in terms of Retopology, Texturing, animation,...
In my opinion it would most comfortable to keep everything separat and just combine the meshes later into one object. Do you guys know whether this is the right attempt? or will it cause any issues for example in the animating process because the top isn't physically connected? attached you can find a screenshot where i colored each subtotal in its own color. 
I´d be a happy to hear your suggestions about what to combine and what to keep separate. 
Moreover I´d like to keep the poly count fairly low so do ju think i can just bake in the ornamental parts? (grey, blue and greenish ellipsoids)

Thanks a lot for your help guys, really appreciated!

bosko

no one any suggestions? Every hint would be really appreciated, pls let me also know if my question isn't clear enough or if there is a thread or anything about this topic. 
Happy to here from  you

Alex_J

it really depends on what the model is going to be doing. If this is just portfolio work or practice, I'd probably keep it simple as possible and just let it be a single contiguous mesh. I don't see any particular reason to have these elements separated as multiple objects.

If combining the overcoat with the underpiece is a major pain the butt, maybe you could let them be separate but that could be trouble for rigging and animation unless they have the same topology with vertices right on top of each other.

For texturing that is pretty easy as there is tons of options. You can bake an ID map from your colors there. It may make sense for many of those parts to be separate UV islands as well. So separating for texturing purposes will be a cinch.

if you don't get answers to questions like this don't be afraid to just go ahead and try things out. As long as you are backing up your work smartly there isn't anything you can really break. The more you experiment the more you'll understand and then have the experience to make judgement calls like this based on your project goals.

Ruflse

As Bigtimemaster said it depends, but most of the time for portfolio artwork I'd retopo it as one piece or remove parts of the object that are not going to be seen to avoid clipping, wasting time and excesive polycount.

I'd also recommend having in mind beforehand if you are going to make the topology as one or multiple separated pieces and model the blockout according to that choice. This way you waste less time and avoid having huge files for the highpoly, since then you would be subdividing part of an object that you are not even going to retopo for the lowpoly, and trust me it can get out of hand very fast with complex characters, having 100 million polys for something that could be 50 million or less. This also helps making retopology faster later, since you can use the topo of the blockout as a base.

For this case, I'd handle it like this:

musashidan

Here is a tutorial from 10 years ago that still holds up today(Mashru is a well known 3D artist) The workflow is solid and is broken down as plainly as possible. It is a great example of creating a real-time character with no fuss. I remember it at the time 10 years ago and it's always stayed with me. I would advise anyone new to real-time character creation to read it.

https://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/street_cop_workflow_by_mashru_mishu/

bosko

thanks a lot for your really detailed replies guys! It is really helping me a lot hearing how you would tackle these things. Yes, It´s just meant to be a portfolio piece. I wasn't really sure whether I should combine everything because of the overhang of the cloak or even modeling the inside of it like Rufes mentioned. But yes at the end i guess Bigtimemaster is very right with his suggestion that i should just try a couple things ^^. I guess i ll try to keep it very low and try to combine as much things as possible and see what the bake will look like. then i ll work my way up from there. Also thank u a lot musashidan! that tutorial looks really helpful and i ll definitely have a look at it! ill post my results as soon as i have some