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

What is a UV map?

To start out, what is a UV map? A UV map is a 2D representation of a 3D mesh. It is where you take all of the faces of your mesh and flatten them out. In Figure 4.1, you can see a cube next to its UV map:

Figure 4.1 – UV map of a 3D cube

Figure 4.1 – UV map of a 3D cube

To view your UV map, it is easiest to navigate to a different workspace at the top of your screen. The workspace you are looking for is the UV Editing workspace. You can see this workspace in Figure 4.2:

Figure 4.2 – UV Editing workspace

Figure 4.2 – UV Editing workspace

Now that we are in the UV Editing workspace, your screen should match the layout of Figure 4.1. To see your UV map on the left, go through the following steps:

  1. Select the object in Object Mode.
  2. Then switch to Edit Mode.
  3. And finally, press A to select all of the faces of the model.

By default, you can only edit the UVs of faces that you have selected.

With all of the faces selected, you should now see...