RETOPOLOGY was a daunting idea as I knew how many components my model had already and how difficult this could have been to manually Quad Draw. However, I actually really engaged and enjoyed the elephant task earlier in the Semester, and find retopology quite a fun challenge.
The main goals I knew from practise before were:
- No triangles (i.e. no shapes with sides above or below 4)
- Loops where possible
- Start in the middle when you think you might need to.
The process in the end was fairly straightforward and the result was successful; I did one Smooth which brought me to *just* under the limit of 40,000 polygons (phew). Below are some images of my retopology process and my model’s wireframe.
*In the end, I had no triangles whatsoever in my topology.
Hoodie
Hood
One thing I learned that was super helpful was to go small when you need more detail. The quadrants can vary in frequency and this allows for smaller portions of the sculpt (e.g. the fingers or mouth) to be more pronounced, and larger more vague parts to take up less poly counts in comparison.
Face
Legs
Retopologised full character
‘Fingers’
One thing I learned that was super helpful was to go small when you need more detail. The quadrants can vary in frequency and this allows for smaller portions of the sculpt (e.g. the fingers or mouth) to be more pronounced, and larger more vague parts to take up less poly counts in comparison.
When I was completely happy with my retopology, I was able to move on to UV mapping and texturing in Substance Painter.