Retopology Question

[SHELLCASING]

Hopefully this is the correct place for this question.

So I’m working on this model where the figures belly is large and intersects with the legs (see image below). Right now the body and legs are separate dynamesh subtools. I’m trying to figure out the best way to go about retopo-ing the entire mesh together. I was planning on manually doing the retopo in Zbrush using the zsphere method, but I know that you can only select one subtool at a time to do this and merging the body and the legs prior to retopo might make it difficult to do the retopo where the belly and legs overlap.

I’m hoping someone might have some suggestions for me as to how to go about this.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[AlexxCentral]

This is a very interesting question, I have that problem often, too, with intersecting clothes for example…

• Sometimes I split it into subtools (which is not perfect).

• I remember, that there is a keep groups option at dynamesh. Maybe you can play around with that, maybe it keeps the meshes separated?

• The best workaround would be, to move the belly up, so that they don’t intersect.
  As long it is a polygroup, you will be able to grab it good.
  Keep a copy of the shape you need later.
  Then remesh it (use of course Zremesher after dynamesh).
  And when you have the good Topology, then bring it back into the position.
  And use you old copy as reference while sculpting.
  It shouldn’t be such a problem…

Let me know, which way you found…

[SHELLCASING]

Yeah I didn’t want to retopo with zremesher. I needed to manually retopo. So I ended up just exporting to maya and using quaddraw to retopo. This way I was able to alter the live mode for torso and legs as needed. It’s still a struggle, but doable. I think it would have been impossible with zspheres.

This is how it’s looking with quaddraw.