ZBrush Retopo Preview

[Kadda67]

what is retopology good for?

[XtremTutorials]

Its Fred!

[TERRANCIO]

boring to watch

[Imahaxxor]

It's a great program, but I FUCKING HATE the interface, it's so hard to navigate

[Seano71]

activate local and it'll use where u last clicked as a pivot when rotating

[effilang]

@Imahaxxor I recommend Mudbox then, much easier and just as good ^_^

[dahahaka]

what is this tool for?

[csmtotoro]

zbrush y'can find it easy in this site. it's great, of course. :)

[Jacper60]

@dahahaka 3d modeling

[dahahaka]

@Jacper60 did he mean zbrush with retopology tools?

[mosgba]

how do u start this? do u have to start from somewhere or scritch ?

[soulmman]

You could start from a simple zsphere (like a ball of clay) or any other preset shape you wish.

[kidfromukraine]

that is awesome!!!!!!!......the neck looks burnt though lol

[jmtm00]

dude......that retopology tool is OWESOME....if only You could show how to use it? Thanks in advance! Peace !

[kingcognito]

Actually, no, it isn't.

ZB is awesome in many ways, but unfortunately ZB's retopology tool is limited, buggy, and cumbersome to use.

I really, really hope that instead of useless gigapoly features and other marketing bs-features Pixology would spend some time on important features - like retopology.

Shaky retopology tool is of course in no way Thomas's fault - nice vid, man!

Cheers! :)

[hugemalakaa]

Indeed. Its all about Polyboost, and now the best retopology tool is directly in 3DS max 2010, where theyve completely merged polyboost into 3ds. Amazing graphite freeform and retopologizing toolz ftw.

[kingcognito]

Polyboost seems nice for many modeling tasks, I', not familiar with it's retopology though. Best retopology tools I've personally seen are by far in 3D Coat.

There are a lot of videos in it's site which show the workflow - can't recommend it enough. Sculpting may not yet be as good as in ZB, but retopology is awesome.

[LostFanFiction]

Wow I didn't know that, I'm gonna have to upgrade my 3D max :)

[Pjuker]

zBrush 4 comes in august 09, let's hope it will bring some better retopology

[Alusaint]

do you know where to find free human head references.

[filipfie]

On your shoulders. ?

[davidsaso1234]

but what if he's an alien

and thats y he's asking?

[thudds]

cool mate, thanks for sharing

[thomasmahler]

Guys, since I still get quite a lot of requests about doing a detailed tutorial, I decided to do just that. I'm currently planning a whole video series that details a complete character creation pipeline, analyzes and simplifies every single step you'd usually take for a production model.

I'll post more info on this as I'm moving it towards the finishing line :)

[okalm]

good idea ! i can't wait anymore now you talk it about ;)

[Gm3Beats]

@thomasmahler cool thank you!

[SEspider]

Can someone PLEASE direct me to a Video Tutorial on how to do this in Zbrush?

Thanks

[FootballKingSA]

wat program do u use to make this stuff? its nuts

[benwil1785]

zbrush

[youmasora]

thomasmahler great video... but u mentioned topogun .. is it better than zbrush ? or offering something better than its retopolgy system?

[EaglesScream]

I've never figured out how to paint in zbrush...

[MAKESENCE7]

looks cool, but i dont get what you are doing ;( its like you are remaking the geometry to have a perfect mesh structure for the sculpt ?

[thomasmahler]

Exactly. It was just a little thing I did as Z3 came out to show some of my friends how the retopo tool could be used.

Basically, you'd sculpt away using a very basic basemesh and just design without any technical stuff in mind. Then you do the retopo and rebake all the details and stuff, so that you've got a clean topology.

Nowadays, I'm using Topogun for Retopologizing. Great application!

[Cybermonkeyy]

Why do you actually have to retopo when you can extract displacement/normal maps from the base mesh? It'll take less time like this and the result can be greatly comparable to the *retopologed* one...

[thomasmahler]

Cause you'd actually have to start with a detailed basemesh. Also, even a detailed basemesh could become rather unusable after some heavy sculpting and if the art-director goes wild after the initial vision. So it's smarter to sculpt from simple baseModels and do a retopo later on that's perfectly based on the hiRes Sculpt.

[FSAthe1st]

@thomasmahler besides, isn't good topology essential for animating?

[youmasora]

huge difference between zmapper and retopo:

1)if u r restricted to a base mesh that have bee approved and annoted that u dont change the sellouite or its a simple model and u dont wanna spend more time in it so u go with Zmapper (normal maps).

2)retopo is used as a process of character devolopment u got sent back 2 ur office cause some new ideas popped up in the manager office or u just like ur "new" sillouite changes in ur character .. i hope i helped ;D

[MagnusRulerHardt]

NIIIICE! How much time did you spend making it?

[McAlen]

so basically you were doing edgeloops, right?

[indykurt]

its fonzee, henry winkler

[hitcowpoop]

looks like the "infected leader" from i am legend

[rampageh209]

xept

its like a fuking old guy but kinda i suppose

[Algae998]

Good demo and nice topo flow.

Are you viewing your adaptive skin preview with projection on?

[buttsahib912]

Excellent model and tutorial as always.

One question,

How did you retain the texture while retopologising?I cant seem to do that. The texture,even though applied, disappears when i start and all im left with is the base mat_cap.

Cant seem to find this issue in the zbc thread.

Thanks again :)

[stgsux]

Nice model, I was wondering have you been able to stop/resume retopologizing without it giving you errors/problems? I find when I select a different tool and then go back to the retopo model, it doesnt update changes to the topology for some reason :/

[JosephD79]

Have to save as new tool, not over origional! model.

then when you want to continue,

1 load both tools,

2 draw the retop one,

3 under topology- select topo- choose the origional model to retop.

or something like that. I know this was 2 months ago but what the hell maybe someone will read this.

[stgsux]

thanks!

[Algae998]

thanks, it helped me! :)

i was hoping you didnt have to do this all in one sitting haha.

[Algae998]

kinda lost on the purpose of topo...is it to get a better poly flow? hah, im such a noob.

badass model by the way :)

[OldManHippo]

Bad edge flow = bad animation, yes. But evening out the size of your faces and putting more polygons in more complex areas saves you system resources. (less subdivisions required for the same detail, and often more subdivision levels available as a result.

So, why not just build a good topology from the start? Because it's creatively liberating to not worry about structure while you're blocking in forms, and even -more- liberating to make a production artist fix these things for you.

[alogli]

It projects the texture straight to the new topo???

WHOAAAAA, Nice!

[buffyguy10]

umm where is the rest of the topology..

[thomasmahler]

Note to myself: Never, repeat, never sculpt a model that you want to retopologize with closed eyes and a closed mouth.

:D

No offense, dude, but it's not that hard to figure out the rest on your own. It was just one of my testing sessions and I thought it'd help people to see how well ZBrush actually traces the colorData from hiRes Sources to the newly laid out topology, which is just such a kickass feature.

[Zonde32]

no offence dude (im a big noob im only 14 yrs old and im inerested :P) he looks quite beaten :)

[Dragon4Bitter]

How do you download ZBrush?