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

Deforming Topology

In Chapter 2, we were introduced to the quad-based grids that make up models. One of the important functions topology serves is determining how a model is going to deform when using an armature, or doing a physics simulation. All of the rules that we learned are going to help us ensure that the model deforms the way that we want it to.

To get more comfortable with topology rules and how they relate to the deformations, we will be introduced to some standard joints and deforming geometries. We will work with bending joints, compressing and stretching meshes, and folding cloth using simulations.

The three rules discussed in this chapter are what I have discovered necessary to apply while working with 3D models that need to be bent, stretched, or twisted. In this chapter, you will understand both what these rules are and why they are important to apply.

In this chapter, we will be learning about the following subjects:

  • Applying the bending and stretching...