Best retopology tutorials (Zbrush/3DS Max)

system · July 3, 2019, 7:56am

Hi there,

i really love Zbrush but i really don´t love the retopology part…
I can work around some problems, if i know exactly what i´m after, by simple starting with a good basemesh.
But if i´m just sketching away, especially with the great dynamesh feature, i can´t avoid doing a lot of retopology…
I´m currently working on a fully armored character with tons of parts, and the retopology part just eats up most of the time i´m working on it, especially if i´m not just going for better topology for fine tuning the model, but for an animatable mesh…
I know i could just google it like crazy, but i´m hoping for some first hand experience here:

Which tutorials/ tips helped you the most for advancing your retopology skills?
I´m currently using Zbrush for simple retopology tasks (got to remember to NEVER delete lower subdivisions…:P)
and 3DS Max without any plugins/scripts for the more complicated ones.
Maxs graphite modelling tools are quite handy for that (for example: i love using ALT+Relaxbrush to quickly smooth out the new topology…), but i´d still love to hear from experience, if tools like Topogun are that much better (and by better i mean faster of course) and why.

Most of my problems are probaby just due to lack of exercise, but i´d still love some hints in the right direction!

Cheers!

Zeddicus · July 4, 2019, 12:15am

For static work involving displacement, autopo in 3D Coat can speed things up considerably. Then it’s just a matter of cleaning up the low-res mesh it creates which is pretty easy once you understand how the tools work. If there are very few errors, such as n-gons, I’ll just fix them in Max (usually takes no more than 15 minutes). I don’t care much for the retopo toolset in Max, and even less for the one in ZBrush, but everyone is different so YMMV.

Getting good topology for animation is always going to require a fair amount of manual labor though, regardless of which app you use. I’m excited about QRemesher for ZBrush and am hopeful it will be the ultimate answer to retopo work which, lets face it, nobody enjoys doing lol. If you do a quick search on Youtube, you’ll find quite a few tutorials on ZBrush retopo.

Not sure how many will help speed things up based on what your desire is though. The BSurfaces plugin for Blender (there is a video on Vimeo for it) looks like it might be a fairly quick and painless option, but I’m not sure I have it in me to learn yet another 3D application. Other folks swear by Topogun and the upcoming 2.0 version does look interesting as well. In the end the only way to know is to try them out for yourself. Some are free, and all others have free demo versions.

system · July 4, 2019, 12:15am

I just watched the demovideo for 3D Coats Auto-Retopo feature and it looks indeed like a huge timesaver.
Iï¿½d still have to try it out to see how well it actually works, but for now buying yet another app isnï¿½t an option for me anyways…

I donï¿½t mind cleaning up some errors to make my mesh animatable, but especially with dynameshes i really donï¿½t want to go over and retopology the whole thing again and again…and then for every subtool…

So letï¿½s hope Qremesher does a good job with providing a good starting point with its auto-retopo feature!

system · July 4, 2019, 12:17am

Well, i just tried out 3D Coats autoretopology tool and at first glance it does an excellent job at providing a workable basemesh.
Since i try to go for animatable mesh right from the start, just for good practice, i noticed a few things though:
It tends to create a lot of spiral-like edgeloops, wich in some areas is really annoying and rerouting those just takes way too much time.
So yes: For static displacement it seems fine, if i´m going for an animatable mesh, i still have to create the topology manually and for that it just takes alot of practice and the tools provided by max are plenty enough for that task imho.
I think i´ll just watch every tutorial available for creating animatable topology and then practice alot…some parts i already get, some parts still drive me crazy (having a very hard time cleaning up ngons with 5 verts especially, without rerouting through the whole mesh)…