Blender Underground

Trying to study and practice topology. I'm not sure what I'm doing, exactly, though. I don't know what's good and what's bad when it comes to topology. All I know is that triangles are no-no's. xD

Here is a wolf model I did yesterday...will someone take a look at it? I'm sure it's a mess...How can I improve it? Where are the problem areas and how can I fix them? What are some modeling practices or techniques I can use that will help to develop correct topology?







Also--if anyone has some good study references related to topology, please share! :3

First off, nice model you got there!

Now, few basics about topology:
- triangles are bad because they cause artifacts with smoothing, subsurf or multires. They break edgeloops and behave weird in animation
- poles (=vertex with 5 or more edges) must be used carefully. They can create smoothing artifacts, too. And they also break/redirect edgeloops. If you know how to use poles correctly, you can improve your edgeflow in some points

What's "edgeflow"? It defines where you can add edgeloops or slide edges. A good edgeflow allows you to add edgeloops in a way that follows the natural shape of a model.
It's a bit hard to describe but I'm sure this happened to you before: You want to add an edgeloop and can't slide the loop after adding it. So you have to do it by hand => bad edgeflow!
You want to sharpen an edge by adding an edgeloop but the loop curves away from the edge halfway => bad edgeflow!

For real good information on edgeflow/topology, look here.
Another quite huge resource can be found here.

I can't tell you by looks if your model has a good topology or not. You can test that by adding subsurf or by adding in edgeloops.

Sorry, I got now topology tuts on wolves but humans/characters:
youtube edgeflow tut1, youtube edgeflow tut2
There are some pretty good topology tuts at Blendercookie, too:
male and female torso, foot, shoulder, hand, head, controlling the edgeflow.

And, last but not least, there's always Gollum:


Hope this helps to some extent.

Wow, thanks for the great resources! These will be very helpful.

I added a level of subdivision to my model.

I can already see there are some strange things going on around its nose...I'm not sure that some of the face loops are going the right ways, especially on the face. Not sure about its ear, either.

By adding subsurf and smoothing, I didn't mean "subdivide it". I meant add a subsurf modifier at level 1 or 2 and press "smooth". I don't know how much you know about blender, if you need further explanation, just ask

Prometheus did a great job but I'd like to fix and add to some things about the Poles.

Poles are anywhere where edges come together to create a vertices. Weather its 2, 3, 4, 5, or 50 edges when they come together it is called a pole. With that said however when a person talks about poles in their mesh (even professionals do this) it is automatically assumed that the artists is not talking about the four edged poles.

3 edged poles are just as bad as 5 edged poles. 3 edged poles are cleaner looking then 5 edged poles but will distort subdivision and animation all the same.

Poles are rarely something you use, rather they are something you deal with. In any complicated mesh Poles are unavoidable. This is because poles are created by two different edge-loops coming together. With fancy mesh work you can place poles in locations were they deal little to no noticeable effect. Note here that a well placed pole can sometimes be used to create a desired effect after a subdivision.

If you plan to subdivision it is extermly rare that you should create a 6 or more edged pole. It is almost always better to create more edge-loops and more smaller poles then it is to deal with a 6+ edged pole.

Sorry--I meant to type subsurf...not subdivide. My bad. xD

@XChosen
Thank you for that explanation of poles. I'll have to go through and fix some of the problem areas on my mesh. I can already see a six edged pole at the corner of the wolf's ear. Dun dunn. D: There's an edge loop there that I want to redirect as well.

So if I am understanding correctly--I want to put poles in places that won't be animated/bent as much? Like--I'd want the pole to be on its face somewhere instead of at the corner of his ear/etc where the ear would bend?

Generally poles should be placed in places that will help to route the topology where you want it to go, though keeping them out of animated areas is important to.

It can help with meshes that are going to be animated if you start their edge flow early. Basically what I mean by this is instead of just having the ear pop straight out of the head you start the ear as being a part of the head. How I tend to do this is once I'm at where you are is I take the knife tool and cut a circle around the base of the ear, then tweak the mesh so that the poles come off the sharp turn of the ear and end up slightly on the head where the only real animation would be is a slight movement of skin. his also helps with the subsurf because there are no major places for the effects to show up.

It's a bit difficult to explain, if you e-mail me the .blend file I can tweak it and post screen shots of what I am talking about so that you can then follow what I am talking about. My e-mail is Craft4D@live.com. I do understand that you may not want to share your model and that is understandable. If that is the case I will attempt to just Photoshop the image in question but for some questions like how to redirect edgeflow it may be impossible for me to figure out if I can't see the mesh in 3d.

Also I am currently using Maya and hopefully going to learn 3Ds Max this summer, both programs don't distinguish the difference between subdivision and subsurf. They are both subdivision. One being with smoothing and one without. If you hear me say subdivision I almost always mean what blender calls subsurf.

I'll mail you my .blend file--I learn by example, so if you get the time to make some changes to illustrate good topology, it would be helpful to me. ^.^

alright I figured out what needs to be done but it will take me some time to create the images and explain what I am doing. It may be until late tomorrow till I can post it. Be prepared for a long read.

I e-mailed you a word document that will cover how to retopolgize the Head. If you don't have a program that can open Microsoft word documents with pictures then let me know and I will man up and get all the images on my Photobucket account so I can post them on this forum.

Sorry it took me so long to get to this--finals ended up being about ten times more chaotic than I had expected. xD

Okay...here's the work I've done. I tried to follow the tutorial you sent me. I must have done some work on my mesh after I sent it to you--because mine looked different than yours...and my older save wasn't the same either. xD I tried to get my loops looking similar to yours. Got rid of a lot of the six sided poles--and I think all of the other problem areas. It's not perfect, but it definitely looks much better than it did before. Thank you, XChosen! <3





Let me know if you see anything I missed, or anything that needs reworking. I'll work on the front leg tomorrow and post some images.

~~I just noticed I forgot to redirect a loop around its mouth and under its jaw. Whoops. D: Guess I'll do that tomorrow, too. XD

wow, that looks great, the topology is great, very even.