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

Part 2 – Using Topology to Create Appropriate Models

With a foundation in topology rules established in the first part, this section is dedicated to putting the rules into practice. We will apply our rules to the two types of models that you may approach when using topology, organic and hard surface models.

We will start with a humanoid character to practice our topology on an organic shape. The character will be broken down into segments to be approached individually. Once we have been through the topology process on the organic models, we will repeat the process on a blaster acting as our hard surface model. Then, we will finish with how to optimize the finished models.

By the end of these chapters, you will know how to separate models into sections that you can focus on individually. We will have gone through examples of both hard surface and organic models. Then, we will learn when, and how, we can bend topology rules to optimize our models.

This part of the book...