Zbrush/Sculpting: Your Topology Philsophy

jocose

I'm trying to improve my sculpting abilities.

While I am "just diving in" and seeing what works best for me. I still haven't done enough work yet on complex surfaces to understand exactly how important topology is.

I've seen many artists that ignore topology completely and just sketch from a sphere, and others that retopologize their mesh constantly. What I am concerned about is developing bad habits with all my practicing.

Is it really just a workflow thing, or is there some props that will always benefit from better topology regardless of how you visualizing the problems and working through them?

cryrid

From my experience it's one of those things where there are pros and cons to each, and you just have to sort of look at what you're trying to create and know what you and the program are capable of. Sometimes you can get the job done faster without worrying about topology (there's a lot of tools available, and sometimes more polygons can just sort of brute-force a shape into being). Othertimes, I find having a nice topology can mean a greater chances of having more subdivision steps, which means you can drop down to a lower level and make broad changes at once. And many times, there's the best of both worlds. Rough out the shape you want, retopologize, and keep sculpting.

The current character I'm sculpting now, some of the subtools started out with an existing basemesh with clean topology and a nice edgeflow, other subtools I've found it faster just to hack stuff together and convert it to a unified skin.

jocose

Thanks cryid, I just started using group loops and loops from polypaint and im loving it, no need to retopologize there.

Why wouldn't you use group loops for something like a bust or character given how much more time consume re-topo can be?

Ace-Angel

For a middle ground, I suggest you watch this tuto here: http://eat3d.com/zbrush_hardsurface

My step is alittle different then what the guy did in this tuto, I essentially made it so that for every sculpt I get in a 8-10M polygon brute forced in a shape mass, almost like a 3D sketch, I take it back into 3DS Max and retopo it, do extra corrections and add support loops as needed, then import it back.

It's a different workflow mind you, you need to know naturally how to avoid import/export problems with ZB, where to add loops and where you'll require more topology density vs. minor area with larger, more blurred details, but works non-the-less.

Again, I suggest you start with most of what Eat3D has to offer for ZB, they're the best so far in this area.

AnimeAngel

Ya those eat 3d zbrush tuts are awesome. Well worth the investment and they give a few techniques for handling retopo stuff.
Ace's method works good too because GOZ is awesome, only issue is whether your max can handle the polycounts.