i need to retopologize my zbrush model. this character will not be animated. should i stay away from triangles all together? some people say not to worry about tris all that much.
can people post any retopology videos they may have or know of. Its around the face, hands, and limbs that things start to get really tricky. most of the videos out there are speed videos making it a bit harder to see whatsup.
Id say avoid triangles whenever possible ...but I dont know much about those things, so I can`t guarantee that this is right.
All I can tell you is that I had a lot of problems with triangles and 5-sided polys.
Regarding the topology – yeah, I totally agree with you… thats a very tricky thing. Im still not sure if I understood everything .
Here`s a link (in the first post ) which helped me a lot:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=72941
It`s just about face topo but I hope that helps a little bit.
You will end up with either poles or tris a lot of the times. Your end goal is animation, so edge loops matter. Tris and poles are how you connect these loops. Otherwise, you could just divide a cube a bunch for your head, a rectangle for your limb, etc. Then it would have no edge flow though.
Tris will not deform well in animation so I hear. I don’t think poles matter quite as much for that. In ZBrush, poles will leave small pointy artifacts while sculpting. So pick your poison, but try to hide tris and poles in places that aren’t as visible, or won’t deform as much. Won’t always work because you will need to connect edge flow in these areas. I personally don’t animate, so the poles are what I dislike the most.
Either way, as many quads as possible with good edgeflow for animation is your solution for an animation workflow.
actually in my first post i mentioned it is NOT for animation. But i think my main issue… and perhaps other people’s issues are not with the usage of the retopology tools but with the application of good edge flow.
when trying to retopologize the head area of my model, I just dont know how to put it all together b/c of the mouth and eyes and ears.
I just dont understand when people mention (and you’re not the first) to hide triangles in hidden areas (armpits, mouth, eye socket, etc.) and how to do it. Proper application of edge flow methods I think are a major hurdle for a lot of Zbrush users who may simply be sculpting with the program without prior knowledge to these principles and practice.
Since retopology has become something with importance and inevitable prominence in zbrush, perhaps pixologic can provide us with some zclassroom vids of proper retopologization (probably not a word) in these problematic areas of organic forms.
I don’t think it’s as much of a ZBrush lesson as a 3d modeling lesson as a whole. There’s tons of info out there, especially on character and head modeling.
Google!!!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=head+polygon+edge+flow&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
i guess practice makes perfect.
also WrapIt looks really interesting…although it appears its a 3dsmax plugin… not for me as a Maya user.
http://www.matt-clark.co.uk/spe.php?o=163
Also study the edge flow of good models. Google images can turn up lots of good examples. Pay attention to how the loops circle around the important parts, and flow with how the actual form would move.
here is my first attempt at RETOPO. notice the 2 areas with 5 points… is this bad?? ignore the problem polygon all the way to the right.
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I’m no edge loop master, but that looks like a good start. Actual animators may have better input. There’s actually two more poles on the inside of the eye.
Realize though that even the demo head that ships with zbrush has poles in similar areas. They don’t seem to cause problems. To have edge loops around the right areas, you gotta have poles or tris to connect the polys. If you get little sculpting artifacts, brushes such as the clay tubes will clean it right up.
Good luck and keep at it 