Book Image

Squeaky Clean Topology in Blender

By : Michael Steppig
5 (1)
Book Image

Squeaky Clean Topology in Blender

5 (1)
By: Michael Steppig

Overview of this book

This book is an introduction to modeling and an in-depth look at topology in Blender, written by a Blender topology specialist with years of experience with the software. As you progress through its chapters, you’ll conquer the basics of quad-based topology using triangles and Ngons, and learn best practices and things to avoid while modeling and retopologizing. The pages are full of illustrations and examples with in-depth explanations that showcase each step in an easy-to-follow format. Squeaky Clean Topology in Blender starts by introducing you to the user interface and navigation. It then goes through an overview of the modeling techniques and hotkeys that will be necessary to understand the examples. With the modeling basics out of the way, the next stop on our journey is topology. Working through projects like a character and a sci-fi blaster, the book will illustrate and work through complex topology problems, and present solutions to those problems. These examples focus on deforming character models, non-deforming hard surface models, and optimizing these models by reducing the triangle count. By the end of this book, you will be able to identify the general flow of a shape's topology, identify and solve issues in your topology, and come out with a model ready for UV unwrapping, materials, and rigging.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Getting Started with Modeling and Topology
6
Part 2 – Using Topology to Create Appropriate Models

Optimizing deforming meshes

Optimizing a deforming mesh is very similar to working on a hard surface. Like before, the objective is to minimize the triangle count to improve performance. The main difference is that, now, we not only need to make sure not to disturb the shape too much but also ensure we do not affect the way the mesh deforms. That is why our strategy will be very similar. We will modify the areas of detail as little as possible, and also avoid deforming areas as much as possible. So, it is easier to start in areas that we know are not going to deform a whole lot. In this case, we will start with the side of the head shown in Figure 8.46.

Figure 8.46 – A close-up of the side of the head that we will start work on

Figure 8.46 – A close-up of the side of the head that we will start work on

Like our hard-surface model, we are going to use a vertex slide to merge these vertices into the row next to them. You can see the merged vertices in Figure 8.47.

Figure 8.47 – The first row of merged vertices on the side of the head

Figure 8.47 – The first...