Nia - Retop

 16-18/02/22 - Week 6

Trying to catch up from the beginning of the week, I got right into retop. I mostly mirrored what I was doing last term - I am again using max as I feel that I am more well versed in the program and have much more control over it than retopping in zbrush or maya. My budget is up to 70k tris, though my character is semi-stylised so I think somewhere around 40-50k is more reasonable if I feel the need to go up that high.

I first started with a very low poly version of my retop, with minimal poly usage. This was so I can get the correct animation loops and basic shape down without having to be very precise and manage more than I could handle.

I then used turbosmooth to add more polys and used conform to morph the polys onto the surface. I first started with the face then moved onto the rest of the body. I also didn't retop the hair here as I do still plan to have hair cards for at least this character. I then moved on to the body which included the same method of keeping it low at first, I extruded areas for the arms and legs, still considering animation loops, and used swift loops to place the polys mostly evenly. I think I have made a couple mistakes looking back on this retop as I feel there is a few too many loops around the arms in comparison to the legs and rest of body, but this can be fixed by removing or adding loops depending on what I choose to do.

I wanted to spend a couple days on this character then move on to unwrapping but this didn't really work out with my plan as I ended up using all three days for retopping. Once I noticed this I decided that I will be leaving the unwrapping for when I can do it, if that means that it will be before texturing that will be fine as I should be able to manage giving up a couple hours to sort out unwrap.

I think I have started to improve my understanding of unwrapping and I can see a difference in the quality between my previous project and this one as I have allowed myself to not be as stingy with tri count. Even after finishing retopping the whole body I have found that I'm on around 20-30k tris which I think is very reasonable. The way I have approached this - using turbosmooth also allows for wiggle room.

This is my plan for next week, I've removed unwrapping from the workload so hopefully a couple days for the next character will be enough since I have warmed up on retopping.

I've then left the second half of the week to the third character, as there is a lot more to think about with this one.