In class, we had a lecture on retopology. Sculpting characters in Blender gives the 3D modeller alot more creative freedom but results in thousands of subdivisions making the model extremely difficult to animate. Retopology is the process of correcting and reducing topology by making it easier to understand, manipulate and animate.
Our in-class exercise was to retopologize an elephant model. It emphasised the importance of loops within topology creating an organic flow in the shape and where it’s acceptable to place the inevitable star shapes where vertexes of multiple faces converge. Triangles and Nygons disrupt the flow and move unpredictably.
I was recommended by my lecture to save time and use Mayas auto retopology tool. I had spent too long sculpting in Blender and didn’t have time to manually retopologize the character.
The downside to auto-retopology is that it can change the shape of an object with undesirable flow in the geometry. The final product shows the decorative ribbon around the dress looking very tattered rather than smooth. Despite this, I continued to Uv map and paint my model to meet my deadline. If I had more time I would have fixed the skirt decor to better match the 2D concepts.
High Poly Model
Low Poly Model
Below is a comparison between the auto retopology skirt ribbon and the original high poly version.
