Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Retopologizing the Mesh
At the end of the sculpting process, you will have a detailed sculpture. There's a problem, though. The detailed
sculpture, at its highest multires level, is composed of a very large number of vertices. Even if it were editable
in Edit mode, it would have far too many vertices to deal with that way. If you reduce the multires level, the
sculpt detail also disappears. What's more, the fundamental topology has not changed since the first time you
subdivided the default cube. There's nothing resembling edge loops or the kind of shape-based topology that
polygon models require for good deformation and animation. In short, there's not a lot you can do with the
sculpted mesh as it is.
The solution to this problem is to use Blender's vertex-snapping features to create a new mesh with fresh to-
pology whose shape is identical to the sculpted mesh. You can then use normal map baking to bake the normals
of the sculpted mesh to a normal-mapped texture for the low-poly mesh.
To create a retopologized mesh of the baby's head with good topology and a lower polygon count, follow
these steps:
1.
In Object mode and Front view, select the completed sculpted object, press Shift+S, and then choose
Cursor To Selection to snap the 3D cursor to the object's center. Press the spacebar and choose Add >
Mesh > Plane to add a plane object to the scene with the Align To View option, as shown in
Figure 3-47
.
