Topology for game character
Hello guys I really need some clarity of the workflow when retopologizing a character for a game. I have a cat character wearing clothes and i have to make it animation ready. I know that most likely it should be a one continuous mesh but i have some doubts - sleeves of the coat and it`s bottom aren`t close to the body, if i add thickness to the cloth and connect with arms and legs, will it give me issues on animation stage? Should i leave it as separate meshes and one sided cloth?
I would appreciate any help!
I would appreciate any help!
Replies
I'm not sure I understand the model enough so here are some "if this, maybe do this" options that would weigh in on how I would proceed.
If it's all squishy, like cloth and flesh then welding it together is probably ok, just try to make the inner topology roughly matches the outer so they deform the same way. If you have normal maps or are baking textures it will avoid seams if it's all one piece. Of course sharp bend or V shaped cavities can have their own baking issues.
If there is no baking you still have to worry about smoothing seams with seperate objects. You can edit normals to get the smoothing correct but getting those normals to survive export/import and all of the processes that recalculate normals, can be a huge time sink. If the object breaks are around natural breaks in the model then seams might not be as big of an issue.
If it's hard armor, with natural object breaks around the pieces then seams won't be an issue. I would lean toward making them seperate objects because 1) seams aren't an issue and 2) you can weight the soft squishy bits different than the hard armor. When they get welded it can get weird because you have to stretch one while also stiffening the other.
If you shell, you should make the topology match where the two meshes meet. Also make sure that topology on the inner and outer matches, so that the two surfaces bend and deform the same way. I would probably push the thickness up a bit more so you have some more room before they start clipping into each other.
I shy away from welding pieces to the body like what you have on the shoulder because it creates different topology underneath than what is on top and keeping that from clipping through could be a royal headache. If it can match, it will be easier to manage, you can copy/paste weights so the skinning is identical.
Wow... there are a lot of ways you can take this, ha and it can all work, it's just what kind of headache do you want to deal with.
If it's cloth I would probably weld a lot of it together, kind of like this...
- Blue, weld to body.
- Red, float it, possibly shell a lip making the inner topo match the outer.
- Purple, legs as separate object but the topo matches at the seam.
- Brown, depending on how much head movement there is, where the joints are placed and what kind of material it is, I might separate the head/hood from the rest of the body. But that's only after doing some deformation test.
Keep in mind that just because you might be in the skinning phase soon-ish, you're not locked into the topology. You can copy your model, make your edits, delete history, rebind and copy the weights from the old mesh without losing a lot of work. So don't be afraid to jump ahead in the process and see how things deform. That back and forth can really help you zero in on the best solution possible.
This is a soft coat i believe and shoulder part exactly what i`m worried the most now, I tried to weld it with keeping the edgeflow but its quite a pain!
What I`ve managed to do so far - connected everything, will bake now see what will happen