Jonathan Williamson has published a tutorial on Blender's retopo tool on Blender.
From the Blender wiki: "Retopo (remake topology) is a tool for remaking the topology of a mesh. It's the opposite of the sculpting tools: instead of reshaping the model but leaving the topology the same, it reforms the topology, but maintains the same shape as the original model. You will not change the geometry of the original mesh in any way, you will be creating a new mesh that is projected upon an existing mesh."
Jonathan writes:
In this tutorial we will be taking a look at the retopology tools within Blender. The primary advantage to retopologizing a mesh is it allows you to easily create low-res models from high-res, sculpted models. The newly created low-res model can then be used to generate normal maps or displacement maps from the high-res model. This is particulalry useful in game developement. Let's take a look!
Link
12 Comments
What people use for generating normal/displacement maps in this case?
@mjordan normal maps allow a lowpoly model to look like a the highpoly model. its pretty hard to use highpoly models in games or when animating so animating. the blender wiki has lots of good info on normal maps and displacement maps.
mjordan - Blender has it's own normal map generating tool, but it doesn't have enough bells and whistles for my taste. Take a look at Xnormal, it's pretty comprehensive and also free.
Mybe this seem off-topic but is Blender capable of dispaly parallax maps in its internal renderer?
And also, are parallax maps available in crystal space?
Normal maps have the undesired tendence to not show boundaries properly....
I think it is better to set the lowpoly object to "drawtype: wire" and "xray"... Much better to work with retopo with these settings.
@endi,
Good point!
Thanks, Jonathan Williamson! Yes, good point, endi.
Now it's time for me to learn how to make a hi-poly face model in the first place! lol. ;) That is definitely something I could work on... as well as modeling the whole body. I could invest in the Montage Studio DVDs on modeling the female body... hmmmm, that could be useful.
retopo is a great tool. I asked for it. :P
@ banor if you use sculpt in blender you almost always end up with a hiress mesh.
I prefer to modell one face in make human, then add a subsurf, then add some sculpting, then make it real and then do the retopo ;D
I've really had tough problems with facial modelling and retopology stuff eversince I've been into Blender, and up to this point, I still am having those headaches with this.
Thanks so much for this input, I would gladly take a time or two to study this. Thanks. ^_^
-Reyn