I’m creating a character that isn’t going to require any deformation on the face, so I’m wondering how clean my retopo needs to be?
Aesthetically, the retopo job looks a bit ugly to me. More uneven than I’d like.
The mesh seems to subdivide just fine, so is my slightly ugly retopo a superficial concern?
Welcome!
For a face, you would ideally want a more even density than this. The bottom parts of the eyes and the nose will lack detail, while the top part risks having pinching and wrinkles because of excessive edges clustered together.
When doing a retopology, the idea is to start by surrounding every important feature with an edge loop that circles it. Those edge loops should have evenly spaced detail, with just the right density to capture the shape. Then, once every feature is bordered, the edge loops can be connected and the space between them filled.
Thanks for the response. For my purposes, will this do though? It’s a low-mid poly game with low res textures. The only parts of the mesh I need to deform will be the neck and limbs.
The main thing I’m looking to avoid are shading issues. Basically, I don’t want to start over if I don’t have to.
If that’s the goal, what you have will work, though you might have a bit of trouble making the area above the eyes smooth. If you know how to reduce/combine those edge loops, I think it would be to your advantage.
Do you know about edge loop reduction techniques, like those? They could be of help for this, though it’s important to place them carefully, so they aren’t in a spot where they cause shading problems.
No, I wasn’t aware of that sort of technique. Thanks for the tip. I’ll try and clean things up a bit. The clutter in the upper eye bothers me, even if only aesthetically.
So I added a sub d modifier and shaded smooth just to test. I assume this gives me a good idea of any shading errors, if any?
Looking at this, I can see some improvements to the eyes.
There could be an additional loop here for more control on the shape and so the subdivision is a bit rounder.
The borders of the eyes could use some support loops to sharpen the shape, like this (this is easier if you have an edge loop that circles the eye, but you can add one on the inside at least):
Awesome. Thanks for the tips.
Whenever I do retopo (every year or so), I seem to always struggle with too much geometry around the eyes. If I start removing edge loops, the quads further down the mesh just become too big. It’s something I’ve never fully figured out.
Sorry to bother you again. I fear I’ve made a pretty huge mistake, though.
When I sculpted my character, I went totally from reference. And the reference happened to have the character’s arms by its side. I sculpted the character with almost no space between the arms and body.
I have no idea whether cleanly retopologising that part of the mesh is even feasible. Am I screwed here?
This should be fixeable still, but you should re-position the arm before continuing.
You could do that by using the sculpt mode’s “pose” brush. It might require a bit of adjustment in the brush’s settings to get it right, but that brush can move a character’s limb. Because the arm is in contact with the body, there will likely be a need to redo a bit of sculpting to smooth and adjust the result.
Thanks. I’ll give that a try.
