In class we refreshed out retopology knowledge to prepare for retopologising our characters.
I didn’t manage to finish the exercise in class, but watching the recorded videos definitely helped in terms of reminding me about loops and topology etc.
I also gathered a bunch of references to help me out with the topology. The variety of references that I picked out helped me out in areas that I was struggling, and I definitely feel like my retopology went a lot more smoothly thanks to them.
Links: retopo refs for creature
Additionally, I expanded on my general references for my character as well.
The dog and dinosaur teeth references helped me especially! And as you can see, I did gather references for some accessories / added elements like algae and potentially a broken ship wheel as a necklace, although I didn’t end up including those on my character.
Retopology is still something I find pretty tricky, but it was a little easier to handle now after doing it two other times + gathering plenty and plenty of references. I definitely feel like the way I laid out my face retopology improved a lot since my previous model. The ear topology wasn’t perfect and I struggled with it quite a bit, and it was tricky because I had made the ears such an odd shape, but thankfully I ended up working it out.
Also, I decided not to use a shrinkwrap modifier as you usually do as in the past I personally felt like it got in the way more so than helping me. Simply having “in front” selected in the viewport ended up working very well for me, other than just a few tricky or frustrating moments.
Overall, thankfully the retopology for the rest of the body went fairly smoothly all things considered. Although the limbs for my character are such an odd shape, simple continuing the loop up to the bottom of the limbs and then making it connect together at the end ended up working very well.
Simply deleting some faces to create a gap for the mouth worked very well for me, as I was able to create a mask…
… and simply open the face up by using the grab tool.
However, I did find the inside of the mouth a bit of a struggle, especially as I had actually avoided creating an open mouth for my previous two models … in fairness, they didn’t really need it, but it made things a little more difficult this time.
My mouth topology wasn’t perfect, but it did work and my improvements in retopo as a whole definitely made this process a lot easier, even if it took some tries to figure out.
I had a little bit of trouble with the eyelids here, but that was fixed fairly easily with the inflate brush.
Now, when it came to actually bringing the head light into the retopo on the head, I did struggle a little bit.
I had a few retopology complications and had to remake this separately a few times, but eventually I did get a shape that I liked.
The mouth was still proving to be a bit of a struggle … but I got there eventually.
Now, the thing I had been avoiding, connecting the fins to this character.
I deleted some faces along the back of this character and slowly but surely connected things together, but I did end up needing to move the positions of lots of individual vertices when things didn’t line up right.
But I got it connected okay for the time being and decided to continue tweaking things with the main body.
There were a few spots where I feel like I had a lot of loops in one spot which would cause some weird shading issues, though bit by bit I was able to mostly eliminate those, however there are still some fairly dense areas on my model. Thankfully these weren’t an issue later when texturing.
Trying to figure out how I wanted the fins to be cut up was… complicated. it was definitely a long process of trial and error for me.
The retopo from the tail up was fairly simple for me, but the front two fins were incredibly tricky for me to figure out due to a combination of their shapes and the fact that they had a bit more vertices that I had to figure out how to connect.
I tried a lot of different things until I was able to figure out something that worked well, so it was definitely a challenge, but thankfully this area was fine while texturing too.
Things were slowly but surely coming together!
… until I noticed issues with the head light that I hadn’t noticed before.
This section took a lot of reworking and reconnecting vertices while trying to avoid weird shadows that also took a lot of trial and error.
Again, the topology for the ear wasn’t perfect, but I did manage to adjust it a little bit and add some final tweaks.
I was still dealing with some weird shading issues due to the areas with dense topology that I had to fix…
And again, I had a lot of issues with this area, and when I thought I had found a solution…
… more issues would come up.
Thankfully I did eventually, eventually manage to figure something out.
Or at least I thought so.
But thankfully here I just had to dissolve these edges and tweak a few things to fix the shadow issue.
And I simply adjusted the retopo to include a small triangle here.
I tested the subdivision on my model at this point, and although the shadows weren’t perfect it wasn’t looking that bad.
Still tweaking some things as I was checking my model and noticed some mistakes, thankfully I was able to fix them okay.
Adjusting some more details…
And then the main body was done!
Did a little bit of smoothing in sculpt mode.
For the teeth I initially thought I might use a cone, but then I once again used my favourite Blender shape, the subdivision cube.
This way I was able to create and adjust a shape that I liked a lot more.
Then with time and a whole lot of duplicating, I had a set of teeth for my sea dragon that I was actually really happy with!
I also added a simple little tongue as well.
And there he was!
Since my retopology was already relatively dense in terms of faces, especially in certain areas, I decided that I wouldn’t subdivide it too much.
I actually did my multires sculpting after UV unwrapping, but I feel like it fits more neatly into here.
I initially tried to create the jelly texture like this, but it wasn’t really working and ended up just looking … odd.
So I tried to smooth things out a bit and make the bumps more subtle, and that worked a lot better for my model I feel.
I didn’t overdo it with the scales, I felt that just adding a few here and there didn’t make the effect too extreme while still conveying the texture of this character. I initially was only going to go up to subdivision level 2, but I felt like the scales looked a lot better on level 3.
I didn’t go overboard with the details at this point, as I was intending to show a little more of that in the actual texturing stage.
Additionally, I created a simple low poly model of a fish to duplicate and use for my character scene, once again by using a subdivided cube.
I did add a little more detail later by sculpting and adding spheres for eyes, though.
Overall, creating the retopology for this character definitely wasn’t without its hurdles and challenges, but I think I’ve definitely been able to improve this tyear in a variety of aspects, and I’m thankful that the issues were mostly things that I was able to figure out in the end.