Retopology Cartoon Head in Maya (Quad Draw Tool)

Retopology cartoon head in Maya with quad draw tool is making the process of retopology easy and intuitive.

Retopology is the process of recreating by simplifying a high poly mesh into a lowpoly mesh. With more manageable topology and with better and proper edge flow. Basicaly, the end result is to create a model that retains the original forms, but is optimized for animations or games.

Maya has a lot of retopology tools, one of them is quad draw tool. Feel free to visit the officia Autodek site for that matter.

The quad draw tool, is under the Modeling Toolkit. Windows – Modeling Editors – Modeling Toolkit.

It provides a user-friendly interface for retopologizing models. Alowing artists to draw new points, quads, edge flow, loops, directly onto an existing surface.

Retopology head in Maya:

A few simple simple steps and tips for your next retopology process in Maya.

Steps:

1. select your high-poly model
2. make the selected object live
3. start drawing with quad draw tool

When you retopology in Maya, best practise is to start with a specific area like lips, going to the next area eyes, noise, ear, etc. And later on you trying to connect all those areas with each other.

Some tips you may need, for your retopology process:

You can start simple and adds details (more quads and loops) as you carry on. In that way you can complete the retopology process more easily.

Smooth things up by pressing shift + left-click. You can also use soft selection (B, for shortcut) when smoothing. Just make sure your soft selection brush is proper at the right radius each time.

Also use the mirror tool as much as possible for symetric 3D characters.

Additonaly, try to have all quads polygons if possible in your new topology.

In the spirit of tips in Maya, you may want to check out 10 General Tips and Tricks in Autodesk Maya.

In the following timelapse video you can watch the whole process of retopology a cartoon head in Maya. Mainly using the quad draw tool.