Retopology

Since I was happy with how my model was looking, I took it into Maya and began to retopologies it in order to lower the ploycount. I began by doing the body which I returned to the T-pose to make it easier to retop. I found the body simple to do as there are no complex edges or parts that required special attention. It was only for the arms that I was careful to create loops around the shoulders so they could be easily separated when UV mapping. When I finished I made sure the faces flowed correctly and there weren’t any irregularities in the mesh.

Next I did the eyes and nose as they were fairly easy.

 

The hat was quite complex and took me a bit longer to do. I first created loops around the bottom half then linked them together at the top and dividing up each bump. From there i just filled in each corner on the bumps.

 

 

 

Finally I did the feet which where the most difficult part. I really struggled with connecting the toes to the main part of the foot but after some help I realised that using less faces first would make it easier, then adding more edge loops to build the shape better.

After retopologiesing everything I returned the arms back down to the sides and used the soften edge tool to smooth it all out and take away all the hard edges. I also had to add more edge loops for it to smooth better however I had to be carful of how many more I added as I accidently went over the polycount while doing this. I ended up compromising some parts to stay under 40000 polygons.

 

UV Mapping

Once I was happy with the retopology of it all I began UV mapping. Most of the model was easy to UV map, the only trouble I had was with the glasses and hat. With the glasses I struggled to get each side separated properly but after some advice I learned that should map them from each plane of view. This method also worked for the hat and suited much better that me trying to just cut in half down the middle.  For the body I made sure to separate the arms at the shoulders. I did not have to worry too much about where the seams were on the model as I knew I would be using simple materials and looks on most of the model which wouldn’t show up on the seams.

 

 

 

Next week I will move the model into Substance painter and begin adding textures.