I think I’ve asked a question like this before, but I’m always seeking further clarity on this.
The game-ready topology videos CG Cookie have done are on a rock, level assets and a robot, which is all good stuff, but they’re all hard surface and don’t deform with animation. I’m still curious as to how liberal you’re allowed to be with triangles on say, a human character for a video game, or how you’re meant to integrate properly triangles for armature deformation. From what I understand, triangles are actually encouraged in certain deforming areas, provided they’re set up correctly. I even found a 2015 tutorial by @jlampel on his youtube channel talking about exactly this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON3gsB5AxII
So to sum up: if I sculpt a game character, upon reaching the retopology stage, should I still be modeling mostly with all quads? Where would triangles typically be acceptable on a biped model?
Extending further from that, this is kind of unrelated to my initial question, but where do normal maps come in for characters? Obviously the beveling method for the gun course wouldn’t apply here because it’s an organic model, so you’d use a sculpt. I thought dyntopo-sculpted models weren’t fit for normal maps because of the messy geometry, but I’m watching the Wrangler sculpt course, and @theluthier said the sculpt would be used for a normal map. I always thought the idea was to retopologize a high poly retopo, then maybe apply a multires or 4 for some high-frequency non-dyntopo sculpting then bake that onto the game-ready retopo?
Could these things be covered in future courses?
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