but I feel like that's for people who are absolutely anal about polygon count
Nah, automated tools are great at hitting polycounts. They're just terrible at providing adequate density and correct edge flows in light of intended deformation leading to poor results on animated/deforming meshes. Looking at part 4 where the retopo starts, that looks like fairly straightforward manual retopo. Admittedly, I skipped through it owing to its long playtime and relatively low quality.
In terms of tools, I use a couple to speed up the process. ZRemesher with guide curves can get pretty close for unimportant meshes where turnaround time is paramount. For hero characters, where I want complete control over flow and density, Topogun 3 makes it less of a chore.
For unconventional characters (creatures, weird proportions), I work freehand without thought of topology in Zbrush. Once the form is pretty close to final, I'll retopo and unwrap before projecting and finalising the sculpt. In the end, your lowest sub-d level is essentially your LP. You'll often want to make some minor adjustments before bake, but they are that, minor.
Generally though, you should be looking to avoid as much topology and UV work as is humanly possible. It's a time sink, a formality required to have nice, consistent characters.
Reshaping the closest candidate from a set of base-meshes I've made, and using projection workflows is something I do wherever I can. Best case scenario? Tweaking some verts in a couple of tricky places and relaxing a couple of interior UVs after sculpting. Minutes. It also makes for relatively consistent UVs, which you can use to accelerate skinning across similar meshes.
Polycount is a small part of the motivation for good topology in regards to characters.
The flow of edges determines how the surface will change and shade in response to deformation. Bad topology can absolutely ruin the best looking character when animated, while making skinning/rigging a pain in the ass and unnecessarily time consuming. If you're working in a team environment, this becomes more important. Any rework incurs latency and wastes team time, and you'll invariably piss off your colleagues.
That said, your artistic requirements will determine how important this is - you're unlikely to notice issues on a RTS units face. A realistic character viewed up close in first person? Definitely a problem. Basically, as little concern as your project allows for, but no less.
That in mind, since I tend to do more detailed characters, the best approach I've found is the one that allows me to avoid any real retopology or unwrapping for the majority of my characters (clothing excluded, but a lot of that can be automated) giving me the time to either push quality elsewhere in the pipeline, or spend it on characters that don't allow for such an approach.
Also, extrusion is really slow. Blender got PolyBuild not too long ago. It's similar to Maya's QuadDraw, both of which are inferior to Topogun. Seriously, check it out. Really quick.
Right? Take a look at ZRemesher as well - it's still the fastest consistent workflow I'm aware of, though there are cases where you'll want to do it by hand, and that's where Topogun comes in. You'll want to do some clean-up around loop intersections for animated meshes, but considering game models can exceed 100k polygons these days, getting 98% of the way there in a couple of minutes by drawing guides is pretty great.
I really like sculpting and I feel that's ideal for making detailed characters compared to block modelling
Absolutely. ZBrush was revolutionary when it came out, and a large part of why CG took a huge leap forward in the early 2000's. Polymodelling has it's places, but organic detail is not one of them. Doesn't matter whether it's detailing chipped concrete or warped metal, producing gnarled trees or characters, if you want your art to look good outside of "lowpoly" art styles, I'd say a decent grasp of sculpting is absolutely mandatory. It relies more on traditional art skills than conventional modelling, but as you get better you'll find yourself able to sculpt complex characters without references in a couple of hours. Really rewarding being able to make anything you can think of, quickly.
I'd honestly suggest trying Zbrush. It's unfortunately moved to a subscription model, which I'll have to decide on when it gets an update I actually care about (my permanent license no longer receives updates), but nothing comes close in terms of sculpting. It's also pretty great for hard surface modelling where the resulting topology isn't especially important (almost all of it).
Nah, automated tools are great at hitting polycounts. They're just terrible at providing adequate density and correct edge flows in light of intended deformation leading to poor results on animated/deforming meshes. Looking at part 4 where the retopo starts, that looks like fairly straightforward manual retopo. Admittedly, I skipped through it owing to its long playtime and relatively low quality.
In terms of tools, I use a couple to speed up the process. ZRemesher with guide curves can get pretty close for unimportant meshes where turnaround time is paramount. For hero characters, where I want complete control over flow and density, Topogun 3 makes it less of a chore.
For unconventional characters (creatures, weird proportions), I work freehand without thought of topology in Zbrush. Once the form is pretty close to final, I'll retopo and unwrap before projecting and finalising the sculpt. In the end, your lowest sub-d level is essentially your LP. You'll often want to make some minor adjustments before bake, but they are that, minor.
Generally though, you should be looking to avoid as much topology and UV work as is humanly possible. It's a time sink, a formality required to have nice, consistent characters.
Reshaping the closest candidate from a set of base-meshes I've made, and using projection workflows is something I do wherever I can. Best case scenario? Tweaking some verts in a couple of tricky places and relaxing a couple of interior UVs after sculpting. Minutes. It also makes for relatively consistent UVs, which you can use to accelerate skinning across similar meshes.
Polycount is a small part of the motivation for good topology in regards to characters.
The flow of edges determines how the surface will change and shade in response to deformation. Bad topology can absolutely ruin the best looking character when animated, while making skinning/rigging a pain in the ass and unnecessarily time consuming. If you're working in a team environment, this becomes more important. Any rework incurs latency and wastes team time, and you'll invariably piss off your colleagues.
That said, your artistic requirements will determine how important this is - you're unlikely to notice issues on a RTS units face. A realistic character viewed up close in first person? Definitely a problem. Basically, as little concern as your project allows for, but no less.
That in mind, since I tend to do more detailed characters, the best approach I've found is the one that allows me to avoid any real retopology or unwrapping for the majority of my characters (clothing excluded, but a lot of that can be automated) giving me the time to either push quality elsewhere in the pipeline, or spend it on characters that don't allow for such an approach.
Also, extrusion is really slow. Blender got PolyBuild not too long ago. It's similar to Maya's QuadDraw, both of which are inferior to Topogun. Seriously, check it out. Really quick.
Right? Take a look at ZRemesher as well - it's still the fastest consistent workflow I'm aware of, though there are cases where you'll want to do it by hand, and that's where Topogun comes in. You'll want to do some clean-up around loop intersections for animated meshes, but considering game models can exceed 100k polygons these days, getting 98% of the way there in a couple of minutes by drawing guides is pretty great.
Absolutely. ZBrush was revolutionary when it came out, and a large part of why CG took a huge leap forward in the early 2000's. Polymodelling has it's places, but organic detail is not one of them. Doesn't matter whether it's detailing chipped concrete or warped metal, producing gnarled trees or characters, if you want your art to look good outside of "lowpoly" art styles, I'd say a decent grasp of sculpting is absolutely mandatory. It relies more on traditional art skills than conventional modelling, but as you get better you'll find yourself able to sculpt complex characters without references in a couple of hours. Really rewarding being able to make anything you can think of, quickly.
I'd honestly suggest trying Zbrush. It's unfortunately moved to a subscription model, which I'll have to decide on when it gets an update I actually care about (my permanent license no longer receives updates), but nothing comes close in terms of sculpting. It's also pretty great for hard surface modelling where the resulting topology isn't especially important (almost all of it).