Hey there Kent,
I've been enjoying the course so far. I've retopologized some simpler shapes before, but never something this complex that consists entirely out of a single mesh. I think I've spent about 6 hours now trying to retopologize and it basically consisted out of me repeatedly trying to make a proper arm mesh and restarting dozens of times. Do you have any tips or suggestions on what I should do because I feel like I'm just wasting time at this point to be honest.
Thanks!
I'm sorry to hear about the speedbumps you've run into. A creature like this is certainly in the advanced realm of retopology. So it may help to practice a bit more on less-complex meshes.
I recommend these courses in this order:
Eh, some speedbumps are to be expected :). Since posting this question I've actually done the intro to retopology course. I've actually already done the second course but not the third one. I'll take a look at the Piero course next. I've also attached an image of issues that I ran into. The further I get from my starting point, the more issues I run into. I find it difficult to match the number of loops when dealing with so many compound shapes. I've also already simplified the deltoid since planning those out with holding edges before hand yielded a (too) high polycount making the retopology kind of unwieldy.
When I come back to this one I think I'll actually physically separate all the limbs from the model to stop parts of the model getting in the way constantly. Maybe working on the entire model at once just makes it seem like a more daunting task mentally.
Speaking of that deltoid area, where would you draw the line between actually modeling in the geometry as opposed to, I don't know, baking that detail down into a normal map later?
Thanks for the advice!