I’m new too, and if I didn’t have low polygon character I’d find it impossible to animate (haven’t got that far). It would be hard to create morphs if I had to deal with thousands of polygons around a mouth or eye just to get it open, or to get bones weight maps painted and deform right.
But a side effect of using low polygons is good topology for edge flow and deformations. As you’ll most likely use subdivided smoothing (more polygons than you see) for the model at render time, and you’ll want the polygons to smooth and flow into curves that match features of the character, like around ears, mouth opening, eye sockets. If it was random topology, smoothing wouldn’t get much done, it would be hard to add details and move things. So in a way, good topology and low polygons can be used to create great detail without the need for 10 times as much random polygons that would be permanent and hard to manage.
Not to mention 3D animation programs can’t handle huge amount of polygons sometimes like Zbrush does, so being efficient seems to be really important. Combining displacment maps when needed, or normal maps to to add incredible detail without having to use millions of polygons at render time like displacement would need.
An example:
Look at this low base mesh for a mouse head I made out of a polysphere, the flow around the eyes and other areas is not existent, so it’s pretty bad and subdivide smoothing would lack detail unless I used the high subdivision with 1.9 million polygons for the entire head with ears:
http://other.toonguru.com/3D/zbrush/brisby_wip_007.jpg
Now look at how I went to the high subdivision and used Zbrush to plan the retopology with painting, keeping the polygons as even sized as possible, 4 sided, and made them flow with the shape of the face, like loops around the eye:
http://other.toonguru.com/3D/zbrush/brisby_wip_008.jpg
Now look at the new mesh of just the face, and then smoothed, showing how when smoothed, it flows with the curves, remains sharp, but lacks real detail at the moment.
low poly: http://other.toonguru.com/3D/zbrush/brisby_wip_009.jpg
Smoothed: http://other.toonguru.com/3D/zbrush/brisby_wip_011.jpg
I had planned to add full detail like lips, eye lids, nose with displacement maps. Like you see here in Zbrush in this earlier version: http://other.toonguru.com/3D/zbrush/brisby_wip_005.jpg
But when it came to animation, trying to use such a high polygon mesh or the low poly you saw first with displacement map would be too hard to manage and animate. Not to mention taxing on the system. I kept getting errors too displacements.
I gave up and took the retopology of the entire head and opened it in Hexagon, my modeling program and added the features with only a couple extra loops, so once smoothed it did better than a displacement map at a fraction of the polygons.
Note, the original sphere at the level of detail I wanted in Zbrush was 1.9 million polygons. WIth the retopology, the same detail in zbrush was only 300,000 because now all the polygons started off even around the head, no spots that had 5 times as many for no reason.
In the next image, look at the basic mesh of the head unsmoothed afte rI messed with it in Hexagon, and then smoothed. And you’ll see having it low poly means closing an eye, raising an eyebrow can be done with little work:
So notice the detail once smoothed, curves and folds around the eyes, the sharp lips. And it was only subdivided and smoothed enough so it’s 20,000 polygons there, not 300,000 to get similar results with a displacement map, and the placement and flow of the topology worked to my benefit. You have to exagerate a little as smoothing relaxes things. And now if I wanted to lower the eyelid, it’s only a small amount of polys, and will flow naturally:
But I’m just a newb so some the more advance stuff, I don’t know how it works. This is only one reason to work this way. By cutting the polys as much as you can will make your system praise you once you setup a whole scene and creating morphs are simple. Even simple loops around an elbow allows it to bend more naturally, and other joints.
Of course this might only work in certain workflows. You might start a face or body in Zbrush, and a certain point before you go into too much detail, you should retopology it, then get in as much detail as you can or need, then go further in zbrush to add finer details to be later used with the lower mesh as a dispalcement or normal map.
![[ATT=]how.jpg[/ATT]](http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%27%27,%27how.jpg%27,1,0%29){kind=link}
