Retopologizing the world one quad at a time.

As I flipped through the 3D magazines at Barnes & Noble years ago and saw all the incredible sculpts being done on zBrush I was amazed by the level of detail and always wondered how it would look animated and why Pixar wasn't using this high frequency detail in all their work. I decided to look into it and as I pulled back the layers I found that most, if not all of the sculpts were completely un animatable, and I was kinda bummed when I learned the reasons.

High resolution sculpted mesh until very recently had major problems it was fine to sculpt but the topology was usually just boxy with no edge flow defining shape. This problem is magnified by the fact that you needed to use the lowest possible level to animate because less geometry in a mesh the easier to setup, rig, and animate. This problem is that when you reduce a non properly apologized mesh you almost immediately lose the ability to deform the mesh while still keeping the shapes and mass. Soon enough I was looking at these amazing sculptures, yes they are just sculptures if they cannot move, in these pieces of software and saying to myself.

"This is great but it will do nothing more than just sit there lifeless in a render and look pretty."

UNTIL NOW!

Thats right folks! Now when you want to use your high resolution sculpted mesh for animation purposes look no further than,
 "THE RETOPOLOGIZING WORKFLOW!"
Thats right now mudbox and maya come built in with re top tools, I'm starting a new catch phrase, thats right re top tools.

This is actually the answer to the dreams of a lot of people including me. Now I know that zBrush has been working on this for a while but ignore that for now.

The ability to retopologize is an amazing step in allowing the art to take forefront and the topology be worried about after you finish. A great example: You have multiple sculpts for your boss and each uses a different set of scull spikes or ears that would if modeled involve 3 different sets of topology. Instead of re modeling then re sculpting you can sculpt layer each change from a base mesh then re top the mesh after your boss has chosen the final look. He chooses the one he likes then you allow the re top tools to do the rest, kinda.

So to all of you sculptors out there.

START SCULPTING IN A RIGGABLE POSE THEN IF YOU WANT POSE AND RE SCULPT!
Do not make the riggers cry as we cannot rig pre posed models easily.
You don't want to make the riggers cry... bad things happen, like your model gets his head shoved up his sphincter.

Catcha on the flipside of the normal.