1. Geometry Takes Labor to Modify (Simplicity Is Key)
Detail is production value. Time is another resource to consider—every additional vertex included in one aspect of your model, such as the edge of the nostril, will cost you more time to manage every time you’d like to modify the appearance of the element.
When you have only eight vertices to worry about, you can shake things up dramatically with relatively little effort. Remember this every time you think about adding another edge loop, for example, or dive in for another round of sculpting. All of these things add up—for this reason, we not only recommend starting with the bare-bones basics but also carrying this philosophy through every time you retopologize your mesh.
Take a lot of time making the character or object your own, but do what you can to isolate these creative forays and to contain them within themselves. This will equate to much less time cleaning up after yourself—why retopo the nose when you’re still working out the shape of the eyes, the mouth, and the ears? Polish it all off, and then rework it.
2. Consider Your Endgame
Are you creating a model for a static, rendered image? A short animation? A video game? All three scenarios include their own benefits and drawbacks, many of which should be factored in well before you’re done creating it.
Optimizing a mesh for something like a video game will often involve some effort to reduce the mesh’s poly count as much as you can, as well as potentially creating variants of the same mesh at different scales of topological resolution.
If you’re just making a really cool, complicated, high-poly model for fun or to share on sites like Sketchfab, your retopo process might end up being much different from that of a 3D artist catering to the rigors of game development. A clean and lean mesh is always something to be proud of, but there’s no reason to steamroll over each carefully-wrought detail if the model is just for show.
3. If It Moves, It Should Look Like It
For many 3D models, the face is usually the most exciting place to start, especially when you’re still learning. You’ve got three major holes to work around; if the mouth can’t flap, how will you animate the puppet to speak?
The broad planes of the forehead and nose bridge should be kept as simple as humanly possible. The sockets around the eyes, though, should be afforded a little extra geometry, breaking the straight hierarchy of the rows of uniform quads that would occupy the space otherwise. These features break the mold, and the more that you have to grab onto later, the more control you’ll have over the model’s performance.
A few more edges playing into each corner of the mouth make creating expressive poses much easier—we’re simplifying, but your retopo mesh should always stay true to the model that you’re cleaning up.
4. MatCaps Are Useful When Planning
In many cases, the goal of retopology will be to smooth over pinching, stretching, sharp artifacts, and other detritus from an intense modeling session. Some of these undesirables might be difficult to pick out using your ordinary viewport shader settings—enter MatCaps, one great way to see your mesh in a new light, no pun intended.
MatCaps, also known as material captures, is a material and a light source all rolled into one. Some are highly specular and super shiny, but not all of them. The former is what we recommend for retopo. This “orbiting” light effect always ensures that you have enough light to discern imperfections and discontinuity in your model’s surface. It makes finding problems and addressing them so much easier.
5. Face Loops Are Important
Your mesh should comfortably envelop the subject of your choice; with simple shapes derived from geometric primitives, this will happen naturally to some extent. After a lot of free-form sculpting, however, things might start getting messy.
You can find a lot of examples of idealized meshes depicting things like human faces and other complex subjects, all treated to retopology resulting in straight, even, congruent faces configured in edge loops that stack upon one another attractively and logically.
Always watch your lines—a good tip for 3D artists retopologizing manually might be to plot out a few key edge loops and face loops around important parts of the model to follow. Two face loops wrapping all the way around the head on both the X-axis and the Y-axis make figuring out the rows that follow much easier. This will also help you maintain a consistent mesh resolution of geometry throughout the entire process.
6. Quads Are Ideal
There are a lot of reasons to choose quads over triangle polygons and N-gons—they allow you to take full advantage of edge loop and face loop tools, for example, and they’ll often be able to facilitate a more attractive performance in terms of animation.
This isn’t to say that you should break your back to avoid using triangles when they’re the best way around a part of your model; sometimes, that’s just the game. Use your best judgment, and try the Grid Fill command if you have any huge holes to address.
If your model is destined to be ported into a game engine like Unreal, they’ll be translated into tris when all is said and done. Still, it never hurts to start with a model that’s clean before simplifying it further.
7. Add Resolution as Needed
Once you’ve established the general idea of what you had initially set out to accomplish, you can start to hone in on some of the stuff that this first version glosses over.
Even something as simple as adding an edge loop around the head gives you a lot of power— you can fine-tune the shape of the skull, draw out the apples of the cheek, and even add more detail to the bridge of the nose, all in one fell swoop. Confining the addition to one single edge loop also prevents your mesh from becoming totally unmanageable—you can even dissolve the entire thing if it doesn’t work out.
8. You Can Always Do More, but You Can’t Do Less
The goal of retopology is to take the detail and character of the base mesh and to simplify it as much as possible without losing anything important. Once everything that deserves a place on the mesh has been accounted for, take a moment to step back before continuing to subdivide.
We always recommend making a backup copy of your mesh whenever you find yourself in a good place. This allows you to keep cutting in without working yourself into a corner. Again, the model’s eventual purpose will be able to give you a good idea of where you should plan on stopping and moving on to your next 3D project.
An artist’s work, truly, is never done without some sort of goal or objective to meet. We could end up being here for a while otherwise.
Retopology Tips for Beginners: Every Moment Is an Investment
At first, the retopology workflow might feel like a lot. Soon, however, you’ll look forward to this part of the process just as much as we do.
After expending all of our creative energy, there’s nothing like sitting down with a model and perfecting our vision. Whether you need something game-ready or just want something cool to play with in Blender, these best practices for retopology are all great ways to get it done.
