Hey guys,
in a tutorial a man says: “Animation topology is not always good sculpting topology!” What does he mean with that!
Is a mesh which was sculpted not good to animate!
Thank you and have a nice day! 
well…both can be true actually.
A sculpting topology should be mainly quads with as few poles as needed.
An animation topology can have tris and odd poles whereever deformations need to happen. Think the hips, you can either have a row of polygons to flow from the upper hip to the crotch in a V pattern, or you can just add some edges to cut those areas in to help with the deformation of the object.
Same goes with knees, fingers, etc.
So while the animation mesh will deform correctly for animation, it won’t sub divide correctly for sculpting.
Typically a sculpting base will animate fine…with some tweeks here and there.
An animation base typically doesn’t sub divide well.
Make sense?
Ok, but you can sculpt anything you want and you can animate the sculpted, isnt it?
Animation topology is about economy, and generally about having as few polys as possible…resulting in tris, poles, and long rectangular quads, as goast mentioned.
To get the best results sculpting you’ll want all quads, with any irregular geometry tied up in obscure parts of the model, and just as importantly, the quads should be fairly uniform, square shaped, and evenly distributed.
Yes, you can animate the latter, but it tends to generate many more polygons than necessary for something like game animation, in which performance concerns are paramount, and people with less restrictive animation projects often prefer topology that is more deliberately and logically modeled which can help with things like more accurate deformation when rigging.
Hi!
Thank you for your answer! I understand what you mean. But therefore is the GOZ-Feature and the Decimation Master i think, right? With GOZ the whole topology will be exported to another 3D-Application with Decimation Master the polygoncount will be reduced to a minimum.
Goz is meant to streamline the process of editing typology.
Decimantion master is usefull for reducing polycount while maintaining surface detail.
obj is the format for exporting models bewtween 3D apps
I agree with what has been said with regard to animation and sculpting typology, but want to add…
Edgeloops/edgeflow are paramount to good sculpting and animation, as they are based on anatomy. The difference between typologies is important for rendering and animation.
For rendering in TV and Film all quads is best, sometimes this requires a mesh to be subdivided to convert any tris into quads (that will multiple the polycount by 4 times)
For games tris are the best way to control the polycount, and still requires thoughtfull edgeflow for animation. However some engines will convert quads to tris (actually so does mental ray) it is still better to explicetly place all your tris. Then you would bake your normal map onto the low rez game mesh.
So you could sculpt the high rez game asset however you please, then retypo and bake for ingame asset.
Where as in TV and Film the sculpting mesh is the animation mesh (base level) and most importantly the mesh which gets rendered…
hope that helps
This is why modern workflows involve, and Zbrush gives you the tools to, work with multiple topologies over the course of a projects lifetime. You might use one mesh to sculpt, then capture that detail in a displacement or normal map, and then apply that map to a lower poly, more deliberately constructed mesh outside of zbrush.
And why there are only few ZBrush animtion projects? I would like to see some animation with ZBrush created models.
I’m pretty sure it’s fair to say that a staggering amount of film, game, and other media animations have had Zbrush involved in their pipelines, some way or another. No animation package can handle the amount of pure polygons Zbrush can. That’s why the detail sculpted in Zbrush is captured as displacement or Normal maps, and applied to lower poly version outside Zbrush.
As you learn more about the subject, you’ll get a better feel for the answer to the things you dont understand here.
Ok Thank you!
M i right with these two ways:
1.) I can create a base mesh in Maya and export/import it to ZBrush. Here i can add details etc.
2.) Or i can create the Model in ZBrush export it with a very low polycount and import it to Maya. In Maya i can add the Displacement Map from ZBrush etc.
Have a nice day! 
Lately, I’ve been in the habit of ignoring my rigging (animation) topology until the end. Tools like Topogun and Modo have made it pretty easy for me to structure the rigging topology right before rigging rather than consider that too deeply while developing the character.
I don’t go out of my way to build an unriggable character, mind you. I just don’t focus on it until after the character is designed. This is a bit of change for me where I used to put a great deal of effort into starting with a highly riggable base-mesh before sculpting.
-K
Animation vs Sculpt topo…they each have specific qualities in their most extreme examples, but I don’t see why they have to be mutually exclusive.
I’ve been trying to build happy-medium topology, where I’m keeping my faces as quads and keeping them as square and uniform as I can (so ZBrush is happy), but I’m also minding my edge loops and making sure that they’re conducive to the kinds of deformations those areas will be expected to perform. So joints have more loops, and rings flow in a natural direction. If the edge loops reflect on the range of motion, then rigging shouldn’t be an issue.