Retopology - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering - page 104

Figure 7-15: Adding embellish-
ments by combining retopol-
ogy with regular modelling
techniques

x -axis to flip it to the other side of the body. Later, I
could use the Make Duplicates Real operator ( ctrl ‑
shift -A) to convert this group to real geometry (still
as linked duplicates of the original objects), but for
now, this was a convenient way to preview the entire
model without creating unnecessary objects (see
Figure 7-18).

to Normals and then using S 4 Z 4 Z 4 0 to scale the
selection along the surface normals to zero, making
it perfectly flat.
I repeated the same process for the abdomen
(see Figure 7-16) and the legs (see Figure 7-17). In
some areas, my sculpt had lumps or areas that didn't
quite polish well enough while sculpting, so I had to
tweak things a bit once retopology was finished in
order to get nice clean edges.
Because I sculpted only a couple of variations
for the different leg pieces, I had an easy time when
retopologizing. Each unique piece was retopolo-
gized only once (as shown in Figure 7-17) and then
duplicated as linked duplicates to create the copies
needed for the legs. As in the case of the body, I
also used a Mirror modifier to mirror the leg pieces
across their axis of symmetry.

Tips for Retopologizing
In summary, here are some general tips to follow
when retopologizing your models:

• Model the important edge loops irst and then
fill in the rest.
• Use support loops or creasing to tighten edges.
• Use Blender's retopology tools to add extra
embellishments to your model.
• Try to keep an even polygon density, unless
you are specifically adding more detail in a cer-
tain area.
• Pay attention to the silhouette of your model.
Usually you will be looking at the area you are
retopologizing face on, so be sure to look at it
from other angles to see that it works.
• Try to work with larger polys where possible.
Don't use more than you have to!

Duplicating Groups of Objects
Because I didn't really need to copy the legs to the
other side of the body properly at this stage, I added
all of the leg pieces to the left side of the body as a
group ( ctrl -G in Object mode) and then created
another instance of this group ( shift -A 4 Add 4
Group Instance 4 Name of group ). The result was a
noneditable, duplicate instance of all the objects
in the group. I then scaled this group by −1 on its