just a quick question really. I have seen people use the painting the new topo onto the surface method to create the new topo. Is this just a guide to put the zspheres in the right place?or can you convert this polypainting directly to the finished mesh? i also seem to having problems when i try to retopo with zspheres theres just too many triangles.! is there a hard and fast rule to this or doesnt it just come down to practice?
many thanks
Painting your topo is just a guide.
There is no hardfast rule to the number of tris you place in your mesh. And in all actuality during rendering everything is converted into tris anyway…well, in Mental Ray, Vray, etc.
The number of tris you have and where you have them totally depends on what you want to do with the mesh you’re creating. Is it just a retopo so you can sculpt more and have a better flow? Is it a final mesh for a static object in a game, is it for a low poly character in a game, etc.
If it is for sculpting, having as few of triangles as you can is optimal, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a few here and there. You also need to take into account that as soon as you divide 1x there aren’t any triangles in the mesh anymore.
The reason people draw their topo is it is faster to erase/change/edit/add to when all you’re doing is painting over your old topo and then just drawing out the new.
Anyway, I hope this helps to some degree.
thanks for that.!
i think this painting the topo first is a good idea , you can plan out the mesh better, can you imagine if you could just convert the painted mesh into a real one!? man,that would speed up the workflow!
cheers
Doing the actual retopo is just like painting it on.
So while you do the retopology you can still plan and adjust.
tyrellcorp - 3dCoat actually has a function where you draw in the topo and it converts it…we’ll see what Z4 has to say about that 