So I’m currently modelling a chibi male base mesh. It’s supposed to be animated as it will be used for a game in the future and I’m still learning how to do proper topology.
I was hoping to get some advice from anyone with more animation topology knowledge. I ran my model in Mixamo to get it rigged and see if my mesh checks out. Noticed there were a lot of bumps, protruding polygons, awkward sections that are really bad when light hits it. My goal is to keep the poly count to a minimum without the model suffering too much.
As a rule of thumb I use square polygons as often as I can. Only triangles when theres no other way out. And never 5 or more vertices to a polygon. Also, the polygons should resemble a “square-shape” as much as possible. I can see on the last image where the knee bends, there is a square polygon that actually has the shape of a triangle, this breaks your polyflow, and polyflow is essential to get a good light on your mesh. This basically means that you should be able to follow a ring of polygons all around your model both around the leg in horizontal but also up along the side of the body fx, vertically, and that these rings should follow smooth curves.
Another thing that can break the light where it should be smoother, is a long edge of vertices where suddenly one vertex sticks up a bit further than the rest, you probably need to go through the model and tweak those vertices so that they align smoothly on the curve you want to make.
All in all it looks good enough, but I think those few places where there are bumps and odly shaped polygons, creates those lighting issues for you.
Topology and polyflow can be a bit tricky at first, I hope this made sense Maybe some polyflow tutorial videos could help you.
Maybe some polyflow tutorial videos could help you.