1. #1

    Default Topology criticism please.

    BASICALLY, any advice on my topology is appreciated here (criticise away)

    I have been retopologising a high poly mesh and would like to know if some of my topology is considered 'ugly' and if so, how can i do it differently? Because there's no break in the mesh here it's hard to hide some changes in detail level, and because the hands and face have a nice number each***65292;but because the numbers don't quite match i've had to do some trickery to keep it quadded and smooth(also the bit in the chest)
    I've done this quite a lot here and i'm a little worried a hypothetical employer might look at this as 'bad topology'


    and as for the leg, this part you can see i'm halfway through, BUT if i continued to make topology around, it won't connect to eh same layer... i.e. like a spiral staircase, it just spirals down, rather than being neat rows of square


    any comments are welcome, if you have any questions please ask
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  2. #2
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    Default

    ZRemesher gives pretty good results, and quads. Many options too. BTW, there' a P2 version of ZBrush, check for update.

  3. #3

    Default

    I find in models with faces, Because it assigns polygon counts relatively evenly regardless of detail, the eyes and mouth holes become too small/shapeless/smoothed out.

    So even though people often suggest this, i really can't see how i can use it.

    ALLLLSO, while i'm on this subject. how do i get the triangle count rather than just N-gons

    --
    Do you think it would be better to have triangles in some cases rather than fiddle around with these types of puzzles?

  4. #4

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    just took a few minutes to demonstrate my ZRemesher results... now lots of people are suggesting this method so i don't know if i'm doing something wrong, but i can't see this as being the desired result... but the tutorials seem to just say 'click the button'...

    An example of the retopo (now the render looks a bit off because i just did a quick zbrush unwrap) but the normal map looks more or less fine

    but you can see that the mouth and eye loops are... pretty much none existant. as well as losing detail..
    i suppose if i could zremesh the rest of the model and connect the 2 things together that might be ok.

  5. #5
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    Did you draw Guide curves? There's more to it than hitting the ZRemesher button.

  6. #6

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    no....

  7. #7
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    Hey there this tutorial I found very useful you might want to take a look at it. http://youtu.be/CVoFi2mnyhA

    basically you need to make sure the adapt button is on for more organic models. You also are going to want to use the ZRemesher guides brush found in the brush menu and make a nicer layout. The video explains the edges around the mouth. You always want to keep an original copy of your sub tool that you are ZReMeshing using the duplicate button in sub tools. Then once ZReMeshed you can sub divide until your are close in geometry to your original sculpted model then hit Project all button in the sub tool project menus that way all of your sculpting and colors will be transferred to your new topology model. You should do this even if you are making topology with the Zsphere like you are. Project all will project any sub tools that have the eye on so if you have other sub tools besides the one you are building different topology for then you want to make sure they are off at the time of projecting.

    you might also want to slide up the target mesh slider to a higher count to have better topology. Also for getting better poly or point count in the face, hands, feet of a model since they will need more than the rest of the body to have finer details placed on them try the use poly paint feature to paint the areas blue and the rest red or leave uncolored. I have found using a light blue helps with not putting too many points there. Use the slider there to change the color (for mine it is backwards lol for some reason) and then paint the lighter blue on the areas and then smooth with just RGB on and ZAdd off.

    as far as the topology you have going here I would be careful with those areas that have squares like that ending in the middle of the arms and legs like that. You may end up with some problems I too have made topology like that in the past it has it's problems. I would suggest trying to Change flows like that in the underneath part like the arm pit or in between the legs near the backside under the feet to hide it and sometimes you will need triangles but put them in places like that they are usually hidden then. The cool thing about ZReMesher is that it will only make square polygons. The fingers look fine though from what I can see.

    I use this way of topology with the zsphere for joining two or more meshes and/or clothing now since the ZReMesher is truly fast.

    Ps if you find ZReMesher taking way too long or freezes hit escape check the integrity of the mesh in the geometry menu if it has problems fix it if it still has problems use dyna mesh on a duplicated model go back out of dyna mesh, check it, fix it then try the ZReMesher again.

    I hope this helps. Good luck and have fun

  8. #8

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    The blue/red (or red/blue. mine is also reversed it seems) thing works quite well in lowering the detail. however it is still giving me a lot of distortion (around the cheek)... i'm feeling like a total noob doing this...


    In that youtube video the guy does just press 'zremesh' without doing anything else and the topology is somehow perfect... so that didn't really help.
    I tried to use the z-guide lines brush and looked it up on the zbrush website help... didn't seem to affect anything though sadly.

    i was going to go back and add more but for some reason, the zguide brush decided to think it was an 'insert disc' brush instead (See below)

    As for heightening the polygon count, i like to make all my models around 8-10k tris (which is annoying to guess from polys to tris in zbrush... i thought you could just double it but that doesn't seem to give the right number)
    My original model (below) is 16k, so i could have just used that, but i figured i could improve the topology a little and lower it a few thousand tris


    It just seems like it takes so long to mess around with this stuff and the end result isn't great anyway and you have such little control over things
    Am i the only one who thinks this tool is worse than useless for organic models?
    ... i don't understand why in the tutorial videos it just seems to automatically have a great topology *sigh*....

  9. #9

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    ALTHOUGH i must say, after applying the red/blue thing, it fixed most of the model, it's just the weird cheek bit that i can't understand. dunno if that's particular to this model..

  10. #10
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    2 buttons, freeze border and freeze groups. That would have an influence combined with the other settings. You can merge tris in the geometry pallette. Not sure how active point count relates to tri's vs. quads. Those discs are weird, do you have the latest P2 version of ZBrush?

  11. #11
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    It looks to me like the weirdness in the cheek is being caused by the mouth guide's influence being extended too far our into the lower face. Try adding a guilde from the corner of the mouth out and back along the cheek, and maybe one from the lower edge to mirror the down stroke you have on the muzzle above. You also might try and circle about the nostril to give some looping there in support of that feature, that would allow for some low res posing of your nose holes which could aid in expression. Facial topology is a complex problem to solve with an automatic topology system like Zremesher. It's good, but it's not magic after all. You have to find a balance between giving it instructions (guides) and letting it make decisions. Too many guides leads to bad solutions, too few, awkward solutions. It's much faster than manually doing a retopo, but it won't let you be so choosy. Also, in that last pic there, looking at the left arm of the model, chest area it appears you have a 6 sided pole (vertex with six edges). That's a potential problem smoothing wise. Might want to give Zremesher a little more guidance on that armpit as well.

  12. #12
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    Also, holding the Alt key while hitting the ZRemesher button gives different results, maybe better, maybe worse. Hit Undo and try again.

  13. #13

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    I've been playing through it for a while, i've sort of got a hang of it... dunno why it was making weird discs before but after restarting it was playing well again...

    feel like i should probably put this in the questions forum but while we're talking about the Zremesh.. Why does the target poly count seem to have nothing to do with the poly count of the Remeshed object..
    I mean i've turned adapt off, and i've used the 'target poly' option and also the 'half' option
    it's crazy, i mean my mesh is about 9,000 on it's lowest level and pressing 'half' gives me just OVER 9,000, i've been putting 3 and 4 in as the target poly count and it always comes up over 10,000

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