Glad you like it! We have a couple of more tutorials like this on our channel, where we discuss various things while working, should you be interested.
Here's a tip i learned the hard way, if the quad draw tool is sluggish (e.g. taking like 20 seconds to create a quad) make sure to delete the history on the mesh
You guys do not know how important it was for me to learn quad draw tool and retopo inside maya....Thank you so much for sharing the info. Very easy to understand but moreover what i like most that when you 2 describing all pros and cons...it makes really comfortable to learn...thank you again.
Thanks! It's really fun for us to read comments like this! We try to not just describe the tool, as you can use a manual for that, but instead HOW and WHY you'd want to use a tool.
Thanks for posting this guy. I love the banter between you guys, it's so fun and relaxing. I get asked "how do I create uv maps" and I always tell people it's like game where you have to clean everything up and find a space for everything yet I've struggled with retopology for years. Such an eye opener to see you use the same description for how to retopologize a mesh. Thanks so much for this.
Thanks a lot! It's interesting how many similarities there are between the various parts. I find that the better you understand the foundation, the easier everything becomes. Glad it helped! /H
Subscribed! I just wanna say I absolutely love you commentary and your calm, chill yet funny conversations here and there. I, myself am retopologizing in maya while listening in to this and it makes me so happy because you are not only the best maya teacher I've found but you have your fun while at it too 😊❤ I'm a university student and I rely on you to quite a lot to get me through my assignments. Thank you!
You guy's are absolutely brilliant, one of the best concept to teach is when you two discussing about what you do and how should things be for industry. BIG thanks for everything you do!!
Great video guys. The dual commentary works great. A lot of these tutorials, although technically interesting, can be painfully boring with the wrong delivery. Nice one!
My goodness, sooooo therapeutic! I love how you guys are like, what do you watch when you do Retopology? And you guys are like Netflix or a good podcast - I'm like, put on a Playlist of FlippedNormals. Lol! You guys are awesome man. I'd love to see more Retopology vids for doing complicated shapes like ears, feet, hands, wings (for creatures), etc.! And it would be so cool if you guys showed how to do this kind of stuff in Modo, as well! I know the technique is the same, but really just the proper tools, and the equivalents of this type of efficient workflow of using features like Relax and stuff like that from Maya, in Modo. Anyways, amazing vid again! Cheers!
Awesome :D I think everyone should put on some FlippedNormals in the background, but I realise my bias :D We definitely want to do more retopo videos in the future on all the topics you mentioned! I also really want to make some more videos using MODO for retopo. It's been my main retopo tools since 501 and it's really good. In a lot of ways, I prefer it over Maya. Btw, if you like long FN videos, we just posted a super long one (over an hour) on the life as modeller in film :) Maybe you find that to be interesting.
Nice! I'm literally watching it right now! I can't wait to see what else you guys have in store! And it's cool to be biased - you are for good reason...you two are the BEST!
Love videos like this. Sometimes you learn a lot just from watching someone else's workflow. For instance the absolute transform tool at 19:10 is awesome! Never knew you could do that.
12:40 This is something I'm glad you mentioned. Back in college, one of my professors insisted we couldn't have any poles/starfish in our face model project, but to this day I can't figure out how he thought that was possible.
@@Mega6501 Well it was my second modeling class, so we were all fairly unfamiliar, which means he should have specified. Especially since the pole he pointed out while showing us a speed modeling video was on the cheek, which is very common on character models.
Casey DeWitt Yeah I’ve heard that some teachers don’t really know what their talking about regarding topology. I’m knew to CG so I was just thinking that was the reason. On the side note I left a message at the top of comments maybe you could maybe give me a answer to my question I would appreciate it. Thanx.
You guys are great, good video. Also I was the one asking about your approach for fabric retopo, and I went down the zremesh path for a hot second. I actually quite liked the results in certain spots, but in the end, ended up doing manual retopo, based on the zremesh output. For that workflow I placed a strong blinn material on the zremesh output and followed the specular highlight with quad draw making nice edge loops (with plenty of triangles and stars, hah). Just wanted to share!
Hey! That's a really good way of doing it! :) I find that Zremeshing sometimes does magic when it comes to topo, but I prefer to do it by hand like in this video, as I know then I have ultimate control over everything. I always decimate my models out of ZBrush, which is exactly what we've done here too. This reduces the polycount a lot while retaining the details. Super handy! Feel free to look into it; it's called Decimation Master. /H
Thanks for the video! Easy to understand and very clear. I really like it. It would be great if there was a Texture Baking video! Like: What are the important points? What should we pay attention to when we are making low poly models for baking? What is the minimum polygon limit to use in this way?
I love your tutorials! These are awesome! I just have one question - you mentioned in real production work, you don't usually start from scratch to retopology models, you use some existing retopologized shell and wrap it up to a new model. How do you do that? For example, how do you snap those vertices to the new model? It'll be greatly appreciated if you can talk about it further!
Great watching you guys work. Would love to see when you're not doing "quick and dirty" work. ( your words, not mine. :) ) Question: Do you really prefer Modo? Is it because you learned it first, or is it more sophisticated? ( like having a more mature tool set or better work flow )
Hey guys! First of all thank you! Your videos are awesome and easy to understand :) I just have a question: after this process, how can i reproduce details?
Nice talk on the topic of retopology. I find the whole process of doing retopology manually can be quite relaxing and you go into a sort of Zen mode, unless you are pressed on time... then it becomes a bit stressful! ;) btw the tools you are using here looks very similar to the retopology tools in Max (which I use). I have however seen some interesting videos on retopo in Blender. Seems very nice. Have you tried it? I’m very keen on investing some time in learning Blender.
Thanks a lot, Markus! I also really enjoy doing retopo, as it's relaxing and not terribly hard. I haven't used Blender, but from looking at it from time to time, it looks like a really excellent tool. Maya is great and all, but if getting a job wasn't a concern I had, Blender would definitely be on my list of tools to learn. /Henning
Hey guys! Nice channel you got over there! Congrats for both of you. Wouldn't ZRemesher with guide lines (or even polygroups) do the trick? Or do I have to do it mannually either way? Thanks!
Hey! Zremesher even with guides is deceptive. When you get the topo from it, it looks awesome, but the more you try it out, the worse it gets. You realize that you didnt get a perfect loop around the mouth, so you're now doing this by hand, and now connecting the new mouth you made to the zremeshed topo is a real pain. In short, doing topo by hand doesnt take that long, and it means that you have full control over everything you're doing - saving you a *lot* of time in the long run.
a big thanks ;) but the point is the more I enjoy watching it, the more I realize that I'm still a Beginner :)) and a question ... is there any way to retopo a hard surface model ?! I was trying to model a round and hard surface shape but it got messy !
I’m new to this haha so do you retopologize the low or high poly model or both? Also, do you have a video on how to go from a good high poly model to a low poly one?
Hi guys, how do you access the Absolute Transform dialogue box that you use to zero the co-ordinates of the verts when you do the mirror function? I'm new to Maya 2019, coming from 3DS Max and I'm finding it tricky to find things that I'm used to. Thanks for the awesome video.
what are you guys' take on stars in Topology? i.e. when a vertex is connecting 5 different edges, is it the same stance you have on triangles? Also, thanks for this video, very nice 😁☺
I love the tut and you guys are presenting the stuff super easy (especially for stupid people like me that are hard learners ) . I'd love to see on your channel the entire workflow for a model, from Zbrush-retopo-texturing-render
Good day, I'm a total beginner and I have, perhaps silly, question about mouth - should I add cavity and gums and teeth and tongue during sculpting, or insert them after retopology as a standalone model? Thanks in advance.
Thanks for this video I learned a lot from just this video.. I use blender since I’m still learning and want to know if I will continue before signing up on a yearly subscription with Maya or Zbrush. I have been starting out retopology on high poly count which takes me 24hrs within 3 days, didn’t know to start with less dense poly count. My question remains can I retopologize the mesh in little amount of vertices and then at the end subdivide the whole model to add the necessary detail?
There are a lot of methods to high and low models! You can definitely start with a low-poly mesh and add subdivisions for a higher model, then transfer detail from the high to the low using what's called "projecting" or "baking." I do this for objects that don't need TOO many details, but need beveled edges or something simple. Otherwise I'd suggest starting with high and building a low version. This method works really well with sculpting like in ZBrush (or Blender), because ZBrush is usually for models with a lot of texture details like characters or important objects. One thing I learned over the years is that you can do things in 3D modeling a lot of ways; some just might be slower for you.
Casey DeWitt Oh okay, my goal is to learn the industry way mostly so that I can cut down my learning progress time and produce workable models in a productive way. My focus is around realism which pertains to detailed models but I’m trying to see what would be exceptional enough in poly count and what I can get away with to accomplish this task without taxing render time. Thanks for your answer as of now I understood you need to be clever enough in graphics to reach an ultimatum that is compatible to current technologies for usability.
@@Mega6501 I'd suggest: -looking at polygon counts on asset stores like Unity or Unreal (I do this when I make trees) -finding ripped models from video games and importing them into Blender Both of these can give you an idea of what is a good polygon count.
Thanks for the video! Do you guys have any clue why then working with a high density mesh, around 90k, my quad draw start to run super slow? I can't find the problem with it. It is not the history since I turn it off when using the quad draw.. Maya should be able to handle more polygons than that...am I right? Any help would be super appreciated!
I know exactly what thats happening: Performance in Maya is, well.. crap, when it comes to retopo high poly meshes, unfortunately. I find that I have to split my model into separate parts sometimes when it gets too dense, and then stitch it all back together afterwards. It's rather annoying, and unfortunately I dont have any good fixes for Maya. I prefer to do my retopo in Modo, as I find performance to be better there. /H
Thank you, you really help me, but (there is always some "but") there is a plugin tool "Decimation master" in ZBrush. I think it is better than Zremesher and can ease face retopology. What can you say about it?
Good videos thanks. Still new to this world and I have a question: If you've already say made a low res mesh in maya, brought that to zbrush and added sub divisions and extra modelling details, why then do we need to bring it in to maya again to retopologize? Shouldn't it be maya > zbrush > substance painter (or some other texturing package?) Just trying to understand the how and whys of the workflow. Thanks in advance! :]
Hi Nick! That's actually a great question. If you already make a low res base in Maya, there's no need to retopologize it. Retopoing is for when you have a super high res mesh in ZBrush which has been sculpted from a blob without any consideration of topology. There's a huge advantage to doing it this way: You can separate out the creative (sculpting) and the technical part (topology) so that each part will be as good as it can. For instance, it's a lot faster and better to design characters in ZBrush than it is in Maya, as you can play around with designs in a completely different manner. Once you're happy with your design, then you can retopo it. If you already have a base mesh which is working well and you're just adding details to it, you already have the topology ready, so there's no need to redo it. If you have a mesh with topology: - Maya > ZBrush > Painter/Mari > Rendering If you're concept sculpting - Concept sculpt in ZBrush > Retopo in Maya > Reproject details in ZBrush >Textures in Painter/Mari > Rendering. I hope this helps! :) /Henning
Can i now use Sculptris Pro in ZBrush to create my own creature/character , then doing some Retopology whether in Blender/Maya/ZBrush to make UV Master be apled to my model again after making good topology ?
I notice that retopo in Maya, as you're showing it, isn't all that different from Modo, and the basic principles you discuss apply. Which brings me to a question: have you abandoned Modo, or do you just use various applications depending on what the customer wants or what the app is strongest in?
You're right - the principles are identical when it comes to retopo in Maya and MODO. I still prefer to retopo in MODO, to be honest - as I find the tools to have better performance. That said, as I work in Maya at my studio, it often makes sense to stick to one software, as moving models which have already been put into our pipeline between software is a bit of a pain. I definitely still use a cocktail of software, as they all have different strengths.
If I go out of the quad draw tool and correct something or add new polygons, like you guys in the inside of an eye, in the end my mesh has new seams (after in UV mode view) in these places and I can't get rid of them. Is there any way to delete these seams?
Hi, great tutorial ! I'm trying it right now but and i can't find the way you select a edge loop like you're doing at 24:23 I'm only able to select one edge at a time... is there an hotkey or something for that ?
what about areas the need to deform, in joints you want more vertices around the bending areas, does the same apply to faces/heads or should all be even?
also Im trying to make a char with a hoodie but the hood is down , so the inner part of the hood maya doesnt let me work on like Im no longer in the live surface.
I feel like that 'every other triangle' trick at the back of the eye is just aimed at keeping the 'total triangles' stat low so other modelers don't give you the stink eye.
