Thin surface retopo

[Hasuman]

I'm pretty new at the retopo business, so I was wondering how do people retopo thin surfaces like collars and other thin pieces of clothing. What would be the best way to achieve 2-sided but still very thin polygon geometry? To my experience this has been very hard to do manually in 3D Coat. I had to make the surface one sided and extrude it in 3DS Max, something that I'd rather not do again since I lose the normal mapping and colors from the other side doing it like that.

[Javis]

Actually what you do is more less what I do, that is, exporting and extruding.

You can re-import the mesh and use it as a Retopo mesh after you extruded in another tool, it is generally no trouble, since you can still bake your normal maps and anything else as you would normally.

Though what do you mean by colors from the other side?

[Hasuman]

Oh, I didn't really think about that. Maybe I'll try exporting the mesh into 3DS Max for tweaking. And by that color thing I meant that if I make a one-sided surface on the collar (because giving it depth and making it two-sided would be a pain), 3D Coat would of course only bake one side of the collar into texture. Eh, whatever

[Javis]

Ah cool, I follow you now. Thanks.

 

Yeah, you know, unless the shot calls for something like that, I've been just retopologizing the entirety of my meshes, or if I want to get anal about it, then I'll do both sides. Otherwise I just do any thickening in another tool and re-import as a retopo mesh. Seems to work pretty well, I consider it easier than trying to retopo those bits manually.

 

Cheers!

[alvordr]

You can also simply draw in a plane over "thick" areas of a model.  If you have a model with a shirt and collar, you don't have to give it "thick" retopo work.  I have done this with capes, where I simply draw in a plane, adding spans where I need to and then projecting.  It works well enough.