Reply To: Would you need to do retopology before painting textures on the sculpture?

Forum Archive Would you need to do retopology before painting textures on the sculpture? Reply To: Would you need to do retopology before painting textures on the sculpture?

#62587
silentheart00
Participant

    You could, but the problem with trying to unwrap a sculpt, especially if it’s a high density triangulated mesh, is that it’s going to be very time consuming to try and get the seams placed where you would like them.  Then you have to figure out how to get the jagged edges to fit in the texture space and, well, it’s just really messy.  I would not suggest unwrapping the sculpt for texturing personally.

    You could perhaps get away with it if it’s static.  If it’s static, you don’t have to worry about making sure the mesh is good for deformations.  I would suggest decimating it, though, so it’s easier to unwrap, but even then, you’re depending on the software to give you good enough results to work from when unwrapping.

    This is my opinion, but my focus is more on characters, where retopology is more important for my pipeline.  It’s good practice, though, to retopologize something.  It may work for your pipeline, but depending where you’re going with this, if you’re working with someone, how would they try to understand your model?  Or heck, yourself when you look at this project a month later?  Will you understand what you did?  A retopologized mesh is a lot easier to read, especially with UVs.

    Bottom line, if you want to experiment with how would this work, do it.  Experimenting is a great way to learn the limits of something.