3 Question About Retopology

[JSOC]

I’ve been sculpting w/dynamesh and not really paying attention to topology but I keep seeing/hearing the term “retopology” and I’m a bit confused. I also heard that retopo-ing is a PITA.

1. Aside from creating animation-friendly topology and a low poly mesh, what is the purpose of retopologizing? And why do some people export their model to Max or Maya to retopo their meshes instead of using ZRemesher + Zremesher guides, then projecting the detail of dense mesh onto the new one?

2. What IS retopology in Max or Maya? I mean, what is the actual process? Do you create new topology over your mesh?

3. If you’re creating a zbrush sculpt for the sole purpose of rendering and comping a 2D image, is retopology necessary?

Hope this wasn’t too confusing.

[Altea]

If you Google this question you will see that it has been asked numerous times and you can get extra information.

In any case with Dynamesh you could avoid in theory the need to do retopology. But even when Dynamesh work fine in early and medium stages it is not so good in final stage when you are refining the detail. With very high poly can be slow, destroy fine detail/polypaint and don’t allow the creation of UVs. Also the brushes of Zbrush react in different way depending of the mesh density. With high density is easy to do detail but not global form etc.

Zremesher is a fantastic automatic system, and if you do it in the medium stage instead in final stage (very high poly) is done in 10 seconds. This allow you to return to low or medium poly stages when you need to do more general shapes changes, poses, UVs, it is faster, polypaint is stable etc.

For quick sketches Dynamesh can be enough, for more ambitious work Zremesher is needed. For organic models there is no need of re topology in Max or Maya except if you are in a bigger pipeline inside a company that has specific needs for animation etc. Max and Maya allow more precision with the cost of extra time.

[JSOC]

That makes sense, thank you very much!