(Noob) How to Retopology

[Dinonoms]

Hello everybody...

so without much flavour text here is the question...

So I modelled my Alien thing in Zbrush and then exported it as OBJ-File to Blender for animation (I didn't know that 8 Mio Poly is to much for Blender at that time lol)

So I kind of learned the basics of Retopology and why I have to do it, I'm slowly making progress. But there are a couple of things I can't handle.

Because the new topology needts to be a lot of Quads I cant figure out how to

-Model pointy things like horns, teeth, claws etc.
-How to fill the the nostrils after i layed down the basic shape
-how to retopo a very thin object which serves as some sort of connection between lower and upper jaws

Im using the shrinkwrap modifier

and also the mirrior modifier, which gave me a headache because it mirrored all over the place but not the axis until I selected my alien as target

Thanks for listingen to my terribad english and thanks in advance

Sharknoms

[The Renderer]

Originally posted by Sharknoms:

Sorry what? Im not that great in Zbrush only started recently. I know it has Zremesher but it kind of produces bad result espacially around areas with more complex geometry. Also it literally destroys pointy stuff like the hornes on top of the head. If there is something magic i really want to know 😀

Also the idea was to bake the high res to the new retopology... Whatever that means

Baking the high res to the new retopo is exactly what I said ("baking" in this case means creating a normal map). I still think it's easier to do that in ZBrush, but it works either way, I guess.

[Dinonoms]

Originally posted by The Renderer:

Originally posted by Sharknoms:

Sorry what? Im not that great in Zbrush only started recently. I know it has Zremesher but it kind of produces bad result espacially around areas with more complex geometry. Also it literally destroys pointy stuff like the hornes on top of the head. If there is something magic i really want to know 😀

Also the idea was to bake the high res to the new retopology... Whatever that means

Baking the high res to the new retopo is exactly what I said ("baking" in this case means creating a normal map). I still think it's easier to do that in ZBrush, but it works either way, I guess.

Perhaps bad english on my part. What I meant was how do you do that in Zbrush? Could elaborat that a little more? As I said I know about Zremesher but again it seems to unable to create a even topology.

[still__alive]

Originally posted by Sharknoms:

Originally posted by The Renderer:

Baking the high res to the new retopo is exactly what I said ("baking" in this case means creating a normal map). I still think it's easier to do that in ZBrush, but it works either way, I guess.

Perhaps bad english on my part. What I meant was how do you do that in Zbrush? Could elaborat that a little more? As I said I know about Zremesher but again it seems to unable to create a even topology.

I know it is possible to manually retopologize in Zbrush, I've watched some tutorial videos about that. However, I don't use Zbrush (someday I'd love to buy a copy though) and the manually retopologizing process, to me, didn't look as efficient to do as it does in Blender. The polygonal modelling aspect of Zbrush looks more fiddly to me and the tools for it don't seem as nice as Blender's toolset.

Could be wrong about that though, again, I'm not a Zbrush user. Here is a tutorial video for Zbrush retopology that I just went and looked up. I haven't watched most of this one so I can't speak to how good of a tutorial it is. Scrubbing through it quickly it does look like a good one though.

Oh, and forewarning to those who might be bothered by nudity, in this tutorial he is retoplogizing a nude female model. Possibly NSFW.

Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns5iRWRii5c

Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Ak66N0cAw

[Dinonoms]

Originally posted by still__alive:

Originally posted by Sharknoms:

Perhaps bad english on my part. What I meant was how do you do that in Zbrush? Could elaborat that a little more? As I said I know about Zremesher but again it seems to unable to create a even topology.

I know it is possible to manually retopologize in Zbrush, I've watched some tutorial videos about that. However, I don't use Zbrush (someday I'd love to buy a copy though) and the manually retopologizing process, to me, didn't look as efficient to do as it does in Blender. The polygonal modelling aspect of Zbrush looks more fiddly to me and the tools for it don't seem as nice as Blender's toolset.

Could be wrong about that though, again, I'm not a Zbrush user. Here is a tutorial video for Zbrush retopology that I just went and looked up. I haven't watched most of this one so I can't speak to how good of a tutorial it is. Scrubbing through it quickly it does look like a good one though.

Oh, and forewarning to those who might be bothered by nudity, in this tutorial he is retoplogizing a nude female model. Possibly NSFW.

Thanks you that looks very interesting and requires further investigation. Although the guy in the video is way to quick for a tutorial.

[still__alive]

Originally posted by Sharknoms:

Thanks you that looks very interesting and requires further investigation. Although the guy in the video is way to quick for a tutorial.

Ah, sorry. I didn't have time to watch it myself so I just scrubbed through it and it looked like it was potentially good. But yeah, there are methods and tools for retopologizing manually, I know that much for sure.

[The Renderer]

The main reason I am suggesting to use ZBrush is that at some point your models in ZBrush will become so detailed that you simply cannot load the full model into Blender anymore and will have to do the baking in ZBrush, which means you will also have to do the retopo in ZBrush. Sure, there are ways around that as well (splitting up the model for exemple).

That said: if it works right now in Blender, just stick to it. If you found a way to get the job done, that's perfectly fine. You can still learn how to do it in ZBrush later on if you ever need or want to.



There are many ways to retopo in ZBrush. I'm by no means an expert but a good way is probably using ZSpheres. I'll just link one video here, from Michael Pavlovich, who is a bit of a guru on ZBrush. But there are many more on Youtube, just search for "ZBrush Retopology ZSphere" if you are interested. And yes, he talks fast, but that's what pause and speed controls are for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiKaWl4rcyc

Edit: Watch the next video to see him generate the actual geometry (or just watch a different tutorial on this, as I said, there are a lot).

Edit2: Also, as mentioned, there are other ways as well. You can look into using Polygroups, using the ZRemesher, using the Topology Brush, and more.

[Dinonoms]

Sorry for reactivating this Topic so late...

But I run into 2 more inconveniences:

1)
This is proably an mishape on my end because I should have done it in another order...
But I retopo the inside of the throat of my Alien thingy and now the geometry obscures my view when trying to retopo the neck of my creature. Probably an issue with using "backface culling"?

2)
The retopo I did so far (I wish I had so much more time for 3D-Design stuff) is rather messy. So I was wondering is there a way to move as much as possible in a way to get nice equal sized and shaped Quads?

[Sersch]

1) Do you have a screenshot? I'm not entirely sure what you mean. If your retopo mesh is rendered completely in front of your high poly mesh, even if the high poly should cover it, you have most likely enabled the "In Front" render setting for your retopo mesh (this was called X-Ray in Blender 2.79). You can toggle this setting by selecting your retopo mesh and opening the Object settings in the properties column. It's the yellow cube icon. The setting can be found in the Viewport Display category.

If your faces are simply facing the wrong way, select them and press Alt + N -> Flip.

2) There's a method to relax the topology while keeping it aligned to your original high poly mesh. This just relaxes the topology you have created, it doesn't clean it up.

First, add a Smooth modifier to your retopo mesh. Second, add a Shrinkwrap modifier. Go to the Shrinkwrap modifier and select your high poly mesh as the target. Then play with the Smooth modifier values until you are happy.

[Dinonoms]

Originally posted by Sersch:

1) Do you have a screenshot? I'm not entirely sure what you mean. If your retopo mesh is rendered completely in front of your high poly mesh, even if the high poly should cover it, you have most likely enabled the "In Front" render setting for your retopo mesh (this was called X-Ray in Blender 2.79). You can toggle this setting by selecting your retopo mesh and opening the Object settings in the properties column. It's the yellow cube icon. The setting can be found in the Viewport Display category.

If your faces are simply facing the wrong way, select them and press Alt + N -> Flip.

2) There's a method to relax the topology while keeping it aligned to your original high poly mesh. This just relaxes the topology you have created, it doesn't clean it up.

First, add a Smooth modifier to your retopo mesh. Second, add a Shrinkwrap modifier. Go to the Shrinkwrap modifier and select your high poly mesh as the target. Then play with the Smooth modifier values until you are happy.

Thank you very much. Yeah it really seems to be an issue with the "in front" Option. Probably simply hidding the annoying part will solve this. Sorry couldnt upload a screenshot right away. To bad steams screenshot function doesn't work in Blender. Gonna upload something later. Im on my way to work.

I also tried to apply the smooth modifier but it caused the retopo geometry to go haywire on me. Shrinkwrap is enabled since i started to retopo