26/11/2022
3D Creation Pipeline for Film & Games
Week 6:
Hello, I am back with a new entry this week. Now let's discuss the things we did this week in class and my independent study over the week. We started this week with reintroduction to retopology and edge flow and rerouting.
What is edge flow and rerouting?
Edge flow is the practice of ensuring that the edges follow the curvature and the model's features. This helps us when we are animating something, as if there is no proper edge flow then creating an animation will be deformed. Rerouting means to move the direction of the edges and reroute them to another edge to have a clean workflow and minimize the edges to have an optimal workflow.
What is Retopology?
This is a process where we simplify the topology of the mesh and make it simple and clean, so the model is easier to work with.
When you are sending the model for the pipeline, we need to consider a few things like the Range of motion, even sides, maintain the volume for high deformation and optimal number of the polygons to support shape and supplying the base for the baked details. We should also keep in mind of the edge flow and its optimization, localize the aeras for denser topology, use quads for clean loops, use poles when rerouting and last but not the least using tris for the game assets.
These points help the riggers and animators to work easier with the rigged model, since there will not be any deformation when the animators use the controls or the riggers who add the controls and joints to the model and it won't be deformed or break when we are adding the controls.
Examples for retopology.
Retopology Exercise done in class.
In the class this week we had to retopologies a sculpt of a head using the Quad-Draw tool, this tool helps to model in a natural and organic way. This is a manual way of retopolizing the meshes in a clean and organic way while preserving the shape of the reference surface.
We used this tool in class to create a retopology for the sculpt of the head, where we learned the hotkeys for this tool and how to create a clean topology, for example like the tab is used to extrude the edge. Ctrl+shift+LMB for deselecting the quads.
Surface off set is a component of the tool used to create an off between the sculpt and the polygon and the Auto-weld tool is used to snap the edges or the vertices of one polygon to another and create a continuous workflow for the sculpt.
Independent Study:
I have also been focusing on the basic blocking of the Hard surface model which I will be working on it. I have all the references needed and I have set up the image planes to help me with the modelling. I have also made the basic blocking of the forearm of my model.
Image of the blocking arm
Self-reflection:
I must experiment with the shrink wrap tool (by working on a different model to get the ins and outs of the tool) more and work on using bigger polygons for a faster way to retopologies.
Thank you, I will be back in a few days!
Reference and Image source:
- Pinterest.
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