Are there retopology specialists?
I have a concept model that needs retopology. Is it easy to find freelancers to work on retop only? i havent seen much online. Is it difficult to get retop done on concept art and does the original artist usually work on it themselves? Where do i look?
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Its all depends I am not sure if there are ppl that solely specialized in retopo but most artist in theory should be able to do what you want
Its tedious and sometime boring task but you wont have hard time finding someone Might be difficult base on how complex the model is
You could post a job offer here on polycount in the job section of the forum
in VFX its not unusual to have to compartmentalized in its own department, in games it's not really a thing. Unless you have like interns that do this stuff and UVs for you.
ideally we do not get there, because lets face it, it's a shit job, the least interesting in the process. But also one that will have implications on follow up work (texuring, rigging, animation) so to me this is all part of one character pipeline that a artist can work in fully.
The VFX attempt feels too much like an assembly line to me, with a bunch of high profile sculpter gods amongs retopo peons...
the thought alone sucks so hard to me, i wouldn't wanna do that to any emerging artist. that doesn't mean they won't do it to learn it, but that sole purpose must be so life draining... ugh!
Yes in VFX there are Artists doing retopo. But they do also other modeling stuff. They need to know how the blendshape system does work. There is back and forth between rigging and facial department and the modeler doing the topo. For complex creatures you can do topo for weeks.
I've seen that in games too - months spent obsessing over optimal facial topology. As it happens the guy who lead that department went to work for Weta afterwards, doing much the same. But faces should generally be a rather simple retopology case - all things considered - just with a lot of attention on them.
I wouldn't mind personally, I enjoy UVs too (with the right background music).
However - if the OP has some messy 'concept' model of an asset with a million subtools and all in some wonderfully dynameshed state then the sky is the limit as to how long it might take someone else to familiarize themselves enough to understand and retopologize it and how many surprises end up lurking in that asset that destroy any initial budget estimate. You'll probably want proper UVs too and possibly a bake?
Probably best to buckle down and do the retopo yourself, OP. It might even teach you how to avoid extensive retopo in the future.