ZBrushCentral

Understanding when to retopologize.

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

My goals are to make basic static models for my environments (not characters) in XSI or Max to import into Zbrush for detailing. Then to export back into my 3d app to apply the normals and texture maps from zbrush.

I read about people retopo’ing after they get back to their 3D App. But I think they only need to do this because for character models everything has to be perfect for animation.

In my case would I ever need to change my basic low poly mesh to better suit my normal map or whatever reason people retop?

Any insight would be great
Thanks.

#2

retopo is done to give you a “better” poly flow for lowpoly work. When you’re sculpting you want evenly spaced quads, for games you’ll want to pull certain edges out to get the lowpoly as low as possible, anywhere an edge doesn’t help your silhouette or isn’t needed for the final model is when you want to retopo.

basically, a sculpting mesh is different than the lowpoly. Sometimes a “retopo” is as easy as pulling out the extra edge loops that you put in for the sculpting process, some times it is creating an entirely new set of topology.