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Retopology Techniques in Maya LT

With the advent of the high-resolution sculpting workflow, the modeled assets we create can sometimes be difficult to work with in their native state. Software required: Maya LT 2015.

Justin Marshall - Pluralsight course - Retopology Techniques in Maya LT
by Justin Marshall

What you'll learn

With the advent of the high-resolution sculpting workflow, the modeled assets we create can sometimes be difficult to work with in their native state. For this reason, various tools are typically used to create a new, pipeline-friendly topology for the model. There are different methods for creating this geometry and it's important that the method we use be quick, efficient and gives us the control we require. Maya LT is built specifically for game workflows so it has some tools focused on creating new topology. We'll cover setting up our reference model so the new topology we create will snap to the surface. We'll talk about using Quad Draw to interactively place points and polygons across our model's surface. We'll also cover the Shrink Wrap functionality and talk about edge flow concerns as we create a new mesh for a bird creature. We'll also cover some of the ways we can customize how Quad Draw functions and look at methods for speeding up the retopology process on unusual shapes. In the end of this training, you'll be able to create optimized meshes out of your own high-resolution sculpts. Software required: Maya LT 2015.

Table of contents

About the author

Justin Marshall - Pluralsight course - Retopology Techniques in Maya LT
Justin Marshall

Justin thrives as a lead modeling author at Pluralsight. Growing up, Justin found a deep interest for the computer graphics industry after watching movies like Jurassic Park, Toy Story and The Abyss. His ambition would lead him to work at Sony Imageworks in Los Angeles on movies like Monster House and Surf's Up. Justin has also had numerous articles, tutorials and images published in 3D World and 3D Artist.

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