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

Retopology of the main body of the blaster

Finally, we can start working on the main body of the blaster. You can get a closer look at it, with all of the other bits hidden, in Figure 7.50.

Figure 7.50 – The main body of the blaster

Figure 7.50 – The main body of the blaster

Figure 7.51 has all of our guiding lines drawn out for the large middle piece.

Figure 7.51 – The guiding lines on the large middle piece

Figure 7.51 – The guiding lines on the large middle piece

Figure 7.52 shows the edges filled in with faces.

Figure 7.52 – The large middle piece filled in with faces

Figure 7.52 – The large middle piece filled in with faces

Now, we just repeat the same steps for the last two parts of the blaster and we are finished. Figure 7.53 shows the final middle piece.

Figure 7.53 – The finished body

Figure 7.53 – The finished body

With that, our blaster is complete. Figure 5.54 shows the finished blaster.

Figure 7.54 – The finished blaster

Figure 7.54 – The finished blaster