Retopologize high poly areas

[tobles]

Hello,

right now I’m doing some quilted stuff and I’m wondering how would I do the retopo of this:

Will I have to make a flat surface and bake a map or will I have to retopo these quilted this with it’s creases and stuff?

Some time ago I asked how to archiev a quilted look and I was told to use a “displacement map”. Am I alright with sculpting this or should I use I map instead?
Maybe you guys (@theluthier @jlampel ) can help me with this one?

Greetings,
tobles

[Jonathan Lampel]

If it doesn’t meaningfully change the silhouette, it would make sense to retopologize it as a flat surface and bake the high poly to it as a normal map. I’d recommend going that route here. 

[Kent Trammell]

I agree with Lampel.

The only reason I would retopo a patern like this would be for a larger scale area. To me this looks like a quilted piece of a jacket or something, for which I would go the flattened geo + normal map approach. However if it’s a quilted panel in a sci-fi interior then that scale might be large enough to warrant retopo according to the pattern.

What is the context of this quilted pattern? I.e. size of it / prominence in camera?

[tobles]

Hi,

thanks for the fast replys. So if I got everything correct your statments are:

1. If it’s a small piece it’s not neccesary to do a retopo for a render image. If it’s a big part of an object/scene I should do a retopo.
2. When doing a retopology it’s better to do it with a flat piece of geometry and bake a normal map on it if it’s not messing the silhouette.

The context of this is some layerd clothing, like some padded undergarment for armor pieces. Here is a little image of me fiddeling around trying things (it’s no final layout, but maybe helps ounderstand my goal).

In my understanding the quilted stuff gives a lot of vertieces of which a lot aren’t visible in the render and maybe later on as a game asset, so it would be better to do a retopo, I guess. From what Jonathan said, I think a retopo could work pretty well in regard of the silhouette since it hasn’t very deep creases.

Regards,
tobles

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