In my humble research I found that it’s a common practice to combine assets in one mesh when retopologizing. However, this is a bit confusing to me as to how to decide what to leave as a separate object and retopo on its own and what to fuse together with other objects.
Take for instance the model below. Do you think it would be a good idea to make the belt and the skirt as a single object? Or the bracelets fused to the hands?
Well, it really depends on what is actually one object and what isn’t. If those bracelets are permanently attached to that character, they should be fused to the hands and retopoed as part of the character mesh. If those bracelets can be removed or swapped out, they should be separate. Assuming you’re talking exclusively about game development, anything that can be removed or changed should be its own asset.
Does it mean that if the clothing on this character is not to be changed, does it mean it has to be fused to the body?
Doesn’t have to be, but it’ll be a lot lighter on polygon count if the clothes and body are one manifold mesh. It really depends on your game engine, polygon budget, etc.
I see, thank you! I’ve asked specifically about the clothes fused to the body because I’ve been having a very hard time trying to do it in my own character. The problem for me arises when I have to work on the inner side where I not only have to finish the thickness of the ‘skirt’ but also manage to connect it to the parts of the legs hidden behind it.
Being zoomed in so further makes it a real pain to retopo as most of the time I spend is on trying to rotate the camera/viewport and zoom.
Is there any way to make this job simpleror faster?
It’s probably easier to start with them as separate objects and then join and merge by distance. That way you can make the skirt without having to worry about the legs
Having hair, clothes and necklace as different meshes helps to animate their physics.
Also I like to keep things simple, so when I combine meshes, I will combine textures and shader too.
Don’t model what nobody sees…
Yeah, I guess I obsess too much about these things. 
