Retopology in Blender: explained

This is how I retopologize in blender.
17:20 Free retopo tool by Cédric Lepillier:
gumroad.com/l/speedretopo

[@AlimayoArango]

Good job on the video. The tips about merging the edges are spectacular. Thanks.

[@samdavepollard]

Very nice. I've only just started goofing around with retopology and this is super-useful. Many Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@Larry3D]

This video is very helpful. Thank you. I do not understand why there are negative reviews? I like it. Thumbs up.

[@remedyproduction8650]

Amazing content. It's awesome to have someone with your diverse skill-set. Quality tutorial, keep it up!

[@GamedevFred]

Thanks! appreciated!

[@georgevasiliadis4228]

Great intro!! Finally!

[@jrkassel8729]

Great video man, really helped me out!!!!

[@ginescap]

thanks a lot, very well explained

[@DarkerCry]

Good video and good taste in headphones!

[@MrHwizard]

Very helpful.. Thanks

[@vanduytrinh5728]

Thanks you, this is a very good video

[@GROENAASMusic]

I realize the snapping method is definitely less convoluted than the shrinkwrap method. The con is that it's more time consuming but the pro is that you get to control the details yourself. Thank you. I can now retopolgize my sculpt without it looking jagged and ugly.

[@globanusopp3046]

"Project individual elements on the surface of other objects": Say you have a quad in edit mode that should be snapped to a sphere, all four verts are selected. Depending on the setting Blender will either snap only the active vertex and keep the offset of the others - or it will snap all of them by projecting them on the surface from view. "Align rotation with snapping target" is trying to align the rotation to the surface normal which is represented by the line. But it behaves sort of weirdly in edit mode. It's nice for placing meshes in object mode, though.

[@GamedevFred]

Awesome! Thanks for the clarification.

[@pauljs75]

Align rotation in edit mode makes more sense if you're placing an n-gon face onto something with individual elements turned off. (If working as expected, it'll align the overall normal to that of the face it's placed upon. Seems like it's not always consistent depending on the version being used though, so maybe some bugs?) Self snapping is mostly useful for vertices if you have auto-weld turned on and want to quickly pull some together to close up part of a mesh. Also using control during an operation quickly inverts the current snapping mode, so it's useful to remember too.

[@raymonde91]

Thank you so much :)

[@jameslavery2958]

Nice. Thanks for this.

[@GamedevFred]

+James Lavery no problem, I'll work on a better more informed retopology video soon.

[@jrkassel8729]

Cant wait my friend! I can use all the help I can get on retopology.

[@activemotionpictures]

Thank you so much for sharing. Would you do another tutorial showing a regular retopo session, please? Awesome addon!

[@GamedevFred]

Hi, yeah I can totally do that. Probably some time this month.

[@tomasubi]

nice! Thanks

[@eXifreXi]

Hey there, thanks for the tutorial. There is something about Retopology which I'm a bit more interested in and it would be a good addition to this one. Could you show how to retopo specific, common mesh parts? For example: - A small hole - Or any other smaller details that goes in or out of the mesh - A bigger beveled edge - etc. Because I have a lot of trouble finding out where I need to retopo more or less. Can I retopo a highpoly beveled edge with one sharp edge or do I need to bevel it in the low poly too (but less). Do I need to actually copy the whole hole or can I put a face over it and let the normal simulate it? That would help me a lot getting more confident with retopology, because it's really demotivating if the normal map looks bad all the time or details just don't look how they should.

[@GamedevFred]

Cedric really great comment! I am planning of making a more detailed retopology video for the butcher hatchet video series and will try to cover your suggestions. thanks!

[@neo7108]

Hi, how do you bake texture of sculpted object in Blender ? So that you can apply textures (normal and AO) to retopologized object.

[@pixunPL]

**RetopoFlow 2.0** Guys if you want fast retopology in blender, you totally must check RetopoFlow 2.0. This is sick sh*t!

[@build859]

Thanks, awesome video! Explained a lot. :) Are u planning to do a tutorial on baking normals after retopo in blender? Just cant get it done right, and have no luck finding a good tutorial. P.S. Lower the threshhold and turn up release a bit on Noise gate. :)

[@GamedevFred]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll look at the audio settings you suggested. I will go over normal map baking but wasn't planning to use blender for that. Although I may look into that.

[@RivenbladeS]

at 19:58 how did the vertices merged without alt+m?

[@GamedevFred]

There's a button at the bottom that looks like two arrows pointing at each other named: "Automatically merge vertices moved to the same location". Activate that. Then in the left panel (press T) go to the "options" tab and adjust the "double threshold" to your liking. It will adjust how close two verts need to be before merging automatically. I believe I mention this stuff in the video around the 3 min mark.

[@RivenbladeS]

Gamedev Fred ok thanks for the answer

[@keebler6001]

What is that on-screen menu system you use at 1:08 and other places in the video? Is that an add-on, or a built-in feature I'm not seeing in the setup? (I'm using 2.78)

[@EGeorgev]

it's an old addon, but maybe it has been built in by now,

[@keebler6001]

Thanks for the reply, but...how do I find info on this? What's it called for search purposes? Etc.

[@EGeorgev]

Ok, just tested this. Go to user preferences and just type menu and two "pie menu" addons appear. Don't know which one he uses, though.

[@keebler6001]

Thank you! I had no idea what to search for to do this on my own. I feel silly, but there you have it! Thanks again!

[@andrecayo2288]

Why does the GMS tNice tutorialng doesn't soft sa way like it did in the video?

[@aleph-tav]

What do you use to bake normal maps? How would you do that boot?

[@GamedevFred]

I mainly use substance designer's baker. But there are plenty of alternatives. It's on my list of vid topics to make.

[@aleph-tav]

Thanks for the reply, I use Substance Painter myself. But use to be Maya and started with Blender a week ago....Massive growth pains.

[@circle2867]

could i just start off by making a fairly low poly model of a character, duplicate it and sculpt on that? then bake the high poly to the low poly model.

[@GamedevFred]

You could do that for sure. But usually what happens is by the time you finished sculpting the lowpoly no longer matches the highpoly shape which then means your bakes will be of lower quality. Regardless of how you want to tackle it, in the end the closer your low poly matches your highpoly the better the maps you bake. Another workflow is to "model" (instead of sculpt) your highpoly with subdiv (and only use sculpting) for tiny surface detail. And then use your subd 0 as the lowpoly. Many ways to skin a cat. ps: don't skin cats

[@circle2867]

Thanks for the advice. retopologize does seem like the best method then.

[@thedemonjesterclownaroundt2294]

Circle 25 couldn't you use the create base on the multires modifier?

[@ayhamaz7287]

why do we retopology after sculpt??

[@Nightlurk]

Nice video, one note, please have your mic turned on at all time during the recording, I think you had it on voice activation for this video and it is very painful to listen as the volume just spikes from null to full every time you say something. It doesn't matter that your mic is not a pro mic and that there's background noise.

[@impulserr]

retopology + creating UV is most pain fo rme that stops me from creating anything

[@michaelwarner7311]

Same dude

[@SekretZdzicha]

Good tutorial but the microphone really need some adjustment or downright replacement.

[@doublestarsystem]

5:48 dont ever try to snap flat surface verticies over a curved surface it just dont work

[@koppito3652]

Thanks, really good video! Shit audio though, but nonetheless good video helped a lot!

[@GamedevFred]

thanks! I've since upgraded my audio setup. Maybe I'll revisit the topic.

[@koppito3652]

Maybe to get more in depth, but with this video it's more than enough! Greetings from Argentina!

[@axesofevil9]

I was trying to learn, but i ended up looking at the cutie in the corner for most of the video. Very distracting!!

[@EGeorgev]

Audio is pretty crap and you're very quiet. But still, good tutorial.

[@Zeriel00]

This is bad, you can't even see the polygons being created and moving vertices around 1 by 1 is a mess. Blender needs some real Retopology tools!