Retopology in Blender - Polybuild tool 

Yes! This is a great workflow. And if you use the Multires modifier, you can then use that to bake all that detail into either a normal or displacement map. I cover those steps in another video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-R2q7oZLs0GE.html

@@JamieDunbar true that getting a discplacement or normal map out of it can be useful when exporting your project to an other engine, but if you plan to stay on blender would you use the map or keep the model with the multires modifier ?

If you have a really detailed model the multires modifier can make your file size really large. So I’d usually bake out the maps. That said, Eevee can’t render displacement maps, so you may want to keep the multires.

@@JamieDunbar Ah true ! hope they'll do something about that soon... Also, I hope they'll upgrade it so we can have bouncing lights. There was the SSGI add-on but it mess with the shaders...

@@sh4dow2a I'd be so ecstatic if they found a way to add something like Unreal's Lumen to Eevee.

Kind of breaks your brain the first time you realise it's there - Where has this been my whole life!!??

Yay! Success!! 😁

❤️❤️❤️

Thanks Murillo 🤩 I’ve really only been making these videos for the past year. It’s slow going, but it’s actually been faster growth than I expected. It all just takes time.

Heya Benny! Happy to have helped :D

Haha, thanks Spence. I'm glad it helped you ;)

It's been quite a few years since I last used Max. For some reason I thought Max had half decent retopo tools. Is this not the case?

@@JamieDunbar you can retopo but its not so smooth

Have you checked out the Speed Retopo addon? It basically takes all of those tools and packages them up in a nice UI. It also has a one click button to help get around reapplying the shrinkwrap modifier after smoothing.

Naw, thanks so much Ann-Louise. Retopology is a difficult idea for beginners to wrap their heads around, I think because you have to learn both *why* you need good topology and *how* to do it at the same time. Which of course also makes it hard to teach! Really glad you got so much out of this video.

@@JamieDunbar Hey Jamie. I don't expect you'll see this, and I'd be rude to expect an answer, but I figure'd I'd ask because I havent gotten any worthwhile responses on Reddit or BlenderArtists. Do you have any advice for topology where the eyes open VERTICALLY? I have a creature sculpted where the eyes basically open and close at a right angle, perpendicular to the mouth. And it didn't dawn on me until I started retopologizing how MUCH it breaks open the typical facial edge flows, and I CANNOT for the life of me figure out how I would do it. Is there any advice you might be able to offer?

Hey Michael. Retopology can be painful until you’ve wrapped how to set up good edge flow. Even a small change like the shape of the eyes can easily throw you off. There’s probably not special secret here though - ultimately you should be able to use the same topology, just scaled in and up. You may need to add or remove a couple of edge loops to adjust for the shape difference. The fun part of course will then be figuring out where these new edge loops have to go 😅

Thanks Emmy. That's brilliant to hear. And yes, I have the same issue where I need to apply the shrinkwrap periodically. Unfortunately I don't think the shrinkwrap was designed with retopo in mind, so although it works it's far from perfect. I believe there's plans to update the retopo workflow in the future - which means I'll have to make a new video at some point!

Thanks Plabs. A lot of retopology is hard to understand, so I'm glad you're able to comprehend it easily!

@@JamieDunbar That's only because you explained so well!

Interesting workflow. I'm curious how big a difference it makes. Firstly, some tris are acceptable. You want them in strategic areas so subidv modifiers don't give strange results, but most models will have at least a couple hidden in armpits or on the bottom of feet. Perfectly normal. Using a subdiv with simple smoothing - does that really make much difference? The whole point of smoothing is to...well smooth. And using simple doesn't actually smooth, it just doubles your polygons. I'm curious what this is added to your workflow? But I'm really curious about adding the triangulate modifier. Doesn't that make it harder to see how your quads are laid out? I'm assuming you delete this once you've finished retopo?

If the sculpted mesh under the retopology mesh is sufficiently smooth, the Shrinkwrap modifier will make the subdivisions from the Simple mode on the Subdivision modifier smooth, despite them being generated by the Simple mode. Although since I wrote the comment your replying to, I've started testing a new workflow. However, the idea behind this one, was to bang out a basic sculpt from a heavily subdivided sphere. Then create a _very_ low resolution retopology of it, and delete the initial sculpt. (I'm trying to work within tight storage space constraints. So the fewer polys the better.) Then I would iterate by creating a subdivided copy of the retopology, and sculpt that more to refine the shape. Then I "retopologize" it using the mesh that generated it in the first place as a starting point, by fitting it on top with Shrinkwrap etc. I then make changes to the topology to alleviate mesh density problems, and to reflect changes made during sculpting. Then I create a new subdivided copy (shaped like the sculpt because of the Shrinkwrap) for sculpting, where I do touch ups that I couldn't do before because of insufficient mesh density. After that, the old mesh gets refitted on top of the new sculpt, and I add in more detail to the topology if it needs it. Each new iteration should be faster, as the changes in the sculpting step will get smaller, requiring less editing in the retopology step. I will always use a mirror modifier for the topology mesh. Not only does it do the obvious of ensuring symmetry and cutting workload down by at least half. It also allows you to turn X-Ray mode on to see the topology mesh ontop on the sculpted mesh, despite any clipping. And you can use the circle select tool in mesh editing mode, in combination with magnetic snapping, and the move tool, to quickly select swathes of vertexes and snap them to the surface of the sculpted mesh without having to worry about accidentally selecting vertex on the opposite side, because if you position the camera right, there's only one layer of vertex in the area you want to select. If I'm repeating your own advice back to you, I am very sorry. My excuse is that this has all been a mad blur of 3D modeling at any opportunity I'm given. Triangulate doesn't really hurt my ability to see my quads. The human mind helps by recognizing patterns. I think I also poked some buttons on the modifier boxes, at the top, that affect how they show up on the mesh I'm editing. I think it was an icon resembling a quad in edit mode, or at least, what it would look like in Inkscape, due to the different stylization of vertex/nodes. Basically what it does, is not show the resulting wireframe of the Triangulate modifier. I sometimes hide its effect as well. It there more to help me visualize the end result of the final mesh. I might have also changed some viewport settings to lower the opacity of some kind of wireframes while leaving the rest at their normal opacity. I'm doing all this on a borrowed computer, to develope my skills in preparation for getting my own computer. (My previous computer died years ago, and is too outdated be worth the effort to revive.) When I do get my own computer, I intend to earn money making both commissioned custom game avatars, and customizable game avatars bases of unique species of creatures. I've joined a community where it's common for people use unique avatars as a form of self expression, in social VR games. Some people dip their toes in the water by using non-customized, publicly available avatars. Others buy base meshes that are already rigged, and either make their own textures, or commission someone to do if for them according to a ref sheet. Sometimes, people spend in the ballpark of $900 to commission an entirely unique avatar from scratch. I'm not really in it to become rich. It's just one of the first things I can honestly envision myself doing for money and enjoying. If I manage to scrape a living from it, I'll be happy. But right now, I am a newbie to all this. I've passively absorbed a lot of knowledge just from conversation that occurs in the community, and I'm not new to raster graphics or vector graphics. I actually have a modest education in graphic design, which seems to have some overlap in skills and knowledge with 3D modeling. I took it upon myself years ago to learn Inkscape, which has served to help me understand concepts in Blender. Right now, I'm enthusiastically throwing my time and energy into learning character modeling, rigging, texturing, etc. My next research subject is the Multi-Resolution modifier, which looks potentially useful for my multipass-iterative re-re-re-topology workflow prototype. But that's a research topic for the next few days. If it does work the way I hope it does, it should cut down the refitting step to almost nothing, saving a ton of work lining up the old version of the topology to the new version of the sculpt. I only read the Blender Manual page on the Multi-Resolution modifier, and it was a bit unclear to me what exactly it did. I was also so tired at the time that I had involuntary muscle twitches in minor muscles of my face, so that didn't help me any. P.S. The Triangle modifier is mostly there to help me visualize how the final mesh will be affected by the Triangulation modifier. I'm working under the assumption that a mesh made only of tris is less expensive for a GPU to animate in a game. And because I'm exclusively targeting a game with my models, the would be converted to tris at the end. And with the game I'm targeting being a social VR game, framerate is at a premium, as higher framerate equates to less VR sickness. No to mention it's considered somewhat rude to have a poorly optimized avatar when there are a lot of people present. If there's no appreciable difference in performance between tris and quads, I can just leave my avatars with their quads intact. I probably missed a point of two to reply to. But I'm a bit tired at the moment, so if you want to know something, just ask me again. And sorry for the mess of a reply.

@@World_Theory Wow, that was a mammoth of a reply! :P Definitely look into the Multires modifier. It sounds like it could simplify your current workflow a bit. Also, have you looked into the sculpting 'remesh' tool? You do tend to lose a bit of detail with it, but it's kind of a quick and dirty retopology and it's much faster than sculpting with Dyntopo. Again, might help simplify your current workflow.

No worries Ashini. I often find it hard to practice certain skills, because there can be SOOOO much work just getting to that point. I'm happy to help you skip ahead :P

Heart back at you. Glad I could make your life just a little bit easier 😁

Haha, thanks...I think :P What part are you still having trouble with?

Haha, it’s been so long since I last used Max it didn’t have retopo tools 😅 Blender does alright with retopo, but if you were doing it a lot I’d definitely be recommending you pick up Retopoflow.

Naw, love you too Tulian. I'm glad you were able to figure things out.

Retopoflow is still in beta (although I received an email a few days ago saying the full release is close) so it definitely has a few issues right now. But once those bugs are fixed I’d say it’s worth the price. Assuming you’re doing a lot of retopology anyway.

@@JamieDunbar I haven’t gone into retopology yet but at least there’s such an add-on that will speed up the workflow. Thanks for the information

It's free atm, you just won't get any customer support if you face issues github.com/CGCookie/retopoflow

Haha! I’m always concerned I waffle on too much explaining all that extra detail. It definitely adds an extra 5-10 minutes to each video. But I think beginners can get discouraged and lost when things break - and knowing that’s perfectly normal and how to deal with it has got to be helpful, right?

Which one is the quadremesher? I did a quick search and the only thing I could find was an automatic remesher- is that the one?

Thanks Retro. I really wanted this first one to be as beginner friendly as possible, coz the next two will add a good chunk of complexity. It's actually my birthday this week, so I'm heading away for a few days. Hoping to get the next video (Speed Retopo) done the week after that. Retopoflow will likely be another two weeks after that, so apologies, you'll have to wait a bit. The plus side is, I just got an announcement from Retopoflow and they're about ready to put out their new 2.9 update. Hopefully by the time I do the video the final, full version will be available!

@@JamieDunbar Thanks for the reply! :D And happy pre-birthday 🎂 haha and I totally understand, hope you have a good time, cause with this video you earned it haha, I just was really curious on how long I'd have to wait for the next ones, it's quite a bit, but not that much, I just subscribed to your channel, so I think in the meantime I'll watch some other of your videos :D

Yay! Thanks mate. I’ve had a few people ask when the next video will be out, so the pressure is there to get it done ASAP. I’ll do my best 😜

OMG, watching to the end, it blows my mind how much harder I make it on myself trying to do things by hand

@@FuzzyImages Rofl!

These days it probably is more common, but by no means is it the only way. I started learning before sculpting really became a thing, so we had to poly model everything by hand. You can really see the difference if you check out my earlier works on my DeviantArt: www.deviantart.com/archdragon/gallery/24079483/old-3d Broadly speaking (because there isn't really a "right way") - if you know what the character already looks like, poly modelling can be faster. Check out my Lapras sculpting video to see what I mean. But if you're still making up the character, sculpting is so much easier to suddenly change a design on the fly. Like if you randomly wanted to add a tail - sculpting is much easier. Sculpting is also great because it separates the creative side of designing a character from the technical side of getting the topology right. Personally I struggle to be both artistic and technical at the same time, so I really like this workflow.

Usually yes. You’d definitely apply the shrinkwrap. You may or may not apply the subdiv modifier. Depends if it’s for film or games. And for films, you might delete the subsurf and instead add a multires modifer.

@@JamieDunbar ed for game? It’s the same?

@@valentinagarrusso9286 Sorry, don't understand??

Hi there. When you say "apply modifiers" I assume you're applying the 'subdivision' modifier? The whole purpose of this modifier is to add more vertices, so applying will always add more. I'd recommend not applying the subdivision modifier, turning it off in the viewport, but on for rendering. This will give you a fast viewport, but more detail at render time. I'd also look into either displacement maps or normal maps if you want to capture that extra detail. I have tutorials for both. Here's the one for normal maps: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HPfqI8lB5Q0.html

Hey Elvan. Whether or not it matters will depend on your project. Obviously bigger polygons will mean less polygons - so that might be ideal for a video game model. For film characters you might add more. Generally though, you want to use as few polygons as possible. And it’s relatively easy to add more edge loops, or even subdivide the entire model. So try and have as few polygons as possible - just make sure they’re small enough to capture the detail you need.

@@JamieDunbar Thank you. That’s really the only thing that confuses me about Retopology.

media.tenor.com/images/35b07a9e7f2746fce6048419053d435c/tenor.gif

Heya Comander5. Someone else in the comments had a similar problem. His name was Sandborn if you want to find the comment. But he fixed the problem by enabling his gizmo. Maybe yours is the same issue? Here's what he said: "I had to enable the gizmo since I had it disabled because I don't need it. Turned out the Poly Build tool also requires the Gizmo to be turned on to function which is interesting. All I had to do is turn it back on."

@@JamieDunbar what is a gizmo? i dont see any blue lines with the polybuild tool either

just figured it out, I hate the gizmo so I always have it disabled

@@kingwalz Did you figure out the Polybuild tool? Other people have had that problem. I'm pretty sure all they needed to do was enable overlays to see those blue lines.

That would be pretty cool, but Retopoflow isn’t owned by the Blender Foundation, so I don’t see it being merged any time soon. Most of the problems I have with the default tools comes down to how the snapping in Blender works. If the math behind those could be tweaked, I suspect you could solve most of these problems without the need for a massive overhaul.

Haha, yeah I know. This was one of my earlier videos. I swear I’ve got a better variety of music now! 😅

Hi Shinique. My apologies, it's been a little while since I recorded this video. What is the 'random' you're referring to?

@@JamieDunbar Under the viewport shading you mention at 7:25 . Mine are always a similar color or the same color, and are usually all green.

@@_Shinique Unfortunately I think that's just bad luck. As far as I know there's no easy way to assign different random colors. You can however rename your object, or duplicate it to generate a new random color. Maybe this post will help? blender.stackexchange.com/questions/143444/is-there-a-way-to-reset-the-seed-of-random-material-in-blender-2-8-viewport

@@JamieDunbar ok I will rename. That helps. Thank you.

@@JamieDunbar and the thread helped as well. Someone said it may be dependent on numbers. I realize that I like to name my collections with numbers and I name everything under them starting with the collection number, so that must be why I see the same color all the time.

4th dimension? How on earth did you manage to animate them!?

What do you mean by 'patches'? I've done a little retopo in Maya, but admittedly not much. I did really like Maya's retopo tools though.

@@JamieDunbar haha,i man '' need creat a plane'',I don't understand the meaning of such a design. Blender is always like this. It is clear that only a small change is needed to make its own tools better

@@jochenfong3056 Ah yes, I see what you mean. There's no option to just click and start creating vertices. Not sure how you'd get around that in Blender, as you need to have an object to enter edit mode...

@@JamieDunbar ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VKLPHh3CYCU.html lookthis ,i think best blender retop tool PolyQuilt(ポリキルト)

@@jochenfong3056 github.com/CGCookie/retopoflow

Hey Rizzlord. Check out the second video in the series. At around 24 minutes I retopo the legs. It’s a different tool, but the principles are the same.

Yes! Wait...what are we talking about?

@@JamieDunbar this is not the way you do retopology. It will take forever this way.

This is a beginners tutorial. It’s not meant to be fast, it’s meant to teach the basics. If you want speed, check out part 2.

@@JamieDunbar I seen it already.

*Does Igor impression* “Yes master”.