Half way there!
next up - hair, textures and skeleton! Then I’d like to make some parkour animations…
Q:
I wonder if I’m gonna run into some troubles when bending, for instance in the elbow areas, I have really messy topology there, I wouldn’t think it’s a problem but I’ve heard lots of people talking about “proper” topology and how it looks really bad when you have a triangle in your mesh :/, or does it apply to the face only?
(you can see it on the 3rd picture, elbows, left knee and the neck is what I’m worried about… you should be able to see it, even though the picture shrinked down a lot for some reason)
Good work so far! But why dont you just continue the edgeflow on the arms, i think the triangles arent really necessary and easy to fix ?
Though i dont have that much experience with skinning and deforming, It will definitely look nicer in an animation if youve got consistent topology around your joints. Same thing at the left knee, mybe you could separate the patch and make it follow the pants later on.
Triangles can be problems anywhere in a mesh, but they are more noticable on the face, since subtle deformations are much more obvious on a face than on a leg or arm. People focus on faces. What I’d suggest is you build yourself some test knees and elbows, put a simple armature in them, and start bending. See what happens. Test different topologies until you find one you can work with.
Or just make a separate blend file, rig the elbow (two bones) and try deforming your actual mesh.
There is no optimal topology. Ice skaters and weightlifters use their bodies in such different ways that a mesh that deforms nicely for an ice skater would probably fail miserably if you tried to get that model to clean and jerk.
