Der Rüchenbrecher Retopology

After decimating the various objects in ZBrush for efficient use in Maya, I merged all of the objects and exported them for manual retopology. Merging the objects proved to cause issues as it was difficult to create a new low poly mesh for baking. There were instances of bad poly flow and too high of a poly count at the early stage. Another thing that came to mind is that if I was creating a low poly mesh for baking as one mesh, then that constructed look of the asset could be lost as the high poly details created separately, would bake out maps that wouldn't support the constructed look that I was going for. This needed to be addressed so each high poly ZBrush object was exported individually and retopologised separately in Maya.

Initial retopology pass. Edges and polygons don't flow neatly and too many polygons for the wood base.

Continued on the initial pass with the plan to clean up later, however this approach proved to be over complicated and provided bad topology.

Retopologising the high poly objects separatelt proved to be less complicated and much cleaner. Although there are some areas where more polygons are needed to construct the individual meshes, the constructed look that I was going for is supported by this approach and less polygons were used overall. Around 1000 less than in the block out stage.

Approaching retopology like this proved to be cleaner, easier and with polygons only where needed. This also provides the option to select separate, whole meshes for texturing in the next stage of workflow.