Action Hero - Damage

[pgarcia]

Maxinkuk,

Great job. I know the basics but I am still learning. When you say you are going to retopologize, I know what that is but why do you need to do that?

thanks

[maxinkuk]

Hi Pgarcia, I just finished retopogizing actually, and it took me all night, it's a long job, but in my opinion it's worth it. Tomorrow I'll post a couple of screenshots so you see the difference,it's mostly about mesh efficiency. The mesh produced by the ZSpheres is unbalanced, some parts are unnecessarily dense whilst others cannot be smoothed enough without a very high polycount or as in the case of this character an impossible polycount. I here had 5.5 million polygons and there were areas like the mouth and ears that were severely faceted and from there I couldn't subdivide again.
I now have a 2.1 million polygon mesh that's perfectly smooth and can eventually still be subdivided if needed.
On top of that I have a geometry that follows the muscle flow and that will make a difference when posing as it won't deform in horrible ways.

[maxinkuk]

Here's the character pre and post retopologizing.
On the large figure you can see how the distribution is more even and how the face benefits from this. The polygons in the old one are very dense over the hands but very very sparce over the head.
In the face detail it's evident that in the old mesh the lips and ears are heavily faceted and this was making it very awkward to sculpt, also as it already had 5.5 millions polygons it could be not subdived again.
The new mesh has 2.1 millions and is very smooth.
I reprojected at subdiv level 4 so getting all of the muscle and the detail that I needed from the old model but also smoothing all over as if he had actually a skin. Those details that are lost but I want back can be resculpted and they would be much sharper as the mesh follows the muscle flow now.

[SolidSnakexxx]

I can clearly see on the face...with Retopology, the mesh's far better suite for overall details and you won't get the stretchy effects.. Looking good so far.

[KrakenCMT]

Your retopo work is nice. The polys flow well with the form, especially in the forearm and thighs.

The clay tubes are so fun to work with, aren't they? I use that brush because it makes the process of digital sculpting feel more organic.

[maxinkuk]

Thanks SolidSnakexxx.

KrakenCMT thanks, last night I looked at various meshes to understand best practice for this retopology, yours was one of them . It was the first time that I first planned ahead by polypainting the topology before placing the points. It paid off.
The clay tubes rules, most definitely my favorite.

[maxinkuk]

Here's the outcome of some sculpting done over the new topology.

[maxinkuk]

Two hours of sculpting later I feel very thankful towards all those artist that posted amazing anatomic studies on Zbrush Central. What a resource!

[maxinkuk]

And 2 more hours later again here's what I think I'll consider the last one for this stage. I'll still be touching it here and there no doubt, but I am quite happy with it and anyway when posing there's another round of modeling attached.
I now move on to give him teeth, a costume and most of all his gear that comes with some serious mechanical design.

[dismantled]

the base really finishes it. for this stage... the anatomy is stylized. quite different than the typical generic anatomy that we always see.
its more your style? ...

its interesting to see the effects of retopologize... i would of tired to bypass that step.. i know it takes time..

Does symmetry work for retopologizing?

[Gordon Robb]

Maxinuk: This looks absolutely fantastic. When you retop, do you loose any detail you had put in up to that point, or do you somehow trasfer the higher details back on to your retop'ed mesh?

[maxinkuk]

Hi dismantled, I surely try to stylize a bit at this stage, one can always mess things up at a later stage. I mean messing up artfully.

The topology tool works in symmetry as well. I did this with x axis symmetry on.

By the way, I also "fixed" the topology further after I finished using this neat trick here:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/sho...4&postcount=73

Just edit the topology on the low res subdiv level, then delete the mesh in the Tool>Rigging palette. After you've done that in the same palette "select mesh" the higher sub div level and project details. Awesome.
I added a few polys into the ear and did the equivalent of spin quads in a few places after I retopoed. Basically with this trick you can almost add geometry as with any traditional 3d application.

[maxinkuk]

Thanks Gordon Robb. It's difficult to hold on to all details, there are controls to fine tune the way you project, but if you try to project a very high level of subdiv you're likely to run into issues with the projection misinterpreting the mesh you want to pick up. It is surely possible to project very fine details and not have issues but it is surely better to retopologize at an earlier stage before you put in those details.
In this case I came out with a 130k polys mesh and 4 levels of subdivision, level 5 was giving me some troubles that I just didn't want to bother fixing.

[Teyon]

The progress is good, remember though, he's meant to be in an action oriented pose, so his facial expression will need to show that too. Not sure if you were planning on doing most of that via transpose but you may want to also sculpt in some of that once you've decided on a final pose. Keep going!

[sendhilv]

Good man.....