5 Topology Tips That Will Get You HIRED

let's see if you can relate to this story you browse online through your favorite 3d portfolio art websites after seeing some amazing 3d models by some talented artists you feel a powerful sense of inspiration if they can make these awesome detailed 3d models so can you you got this today's the day you create that next level 3d model you snag some references and you open up your favorite 3d modeling application look at that complex model it's apologies for suckers man i could do this all day after hours of pushing and pulling verts you look at your model and instead of seeing mainly these [Music] you see mainly these let's turn on the wireframe see how this is looking uh doesn't look that great your model is not off to a great start but you have one last hope entering subdivision mode but i'm sure if i select it and go into sub-d mode it'll smooth out fine [Music] [Applause] okay maybe you don't got this you eventually realize that creating that detailed 3d model will require proper topology and learning it might be a little harder than you initially thought so why is this so hard to learn and is there any way to fast track learning this mystical skill set if this sounds anything like you you came to the right video this is your host jl musey and today we're going to be taking a deep dive at 3d modeling topology and some great actionable steps that you could implement today to start creating better 3d models with awesome topology before we deep dive into the video make sure to snag your copy of the hard surface modeling cheat sheets this is a free resource that i created to help kick start your 3d modeling and you can download that resource using the link right here the truth of the matter is that many beginner 3d artists struggle with topology i know this frustration firsthand because when i first started out i struggled dearly you're able to see some of my first attempts at 3d modeling before i actually really mastered the craft of proper topology you see i came from a traditional art background i first learned drawing and each discipline that i learned later on felt like i was actually building off my drawing skills so for example i moved from drawing to painting painting felt like an extension or a layering effect of knowing how to draw properly even things like graphic design felt like they actually benefited from me learning how to draw so when it came to learning 3d modeling i thought i'd be able to apply those artistic skill sets into a very technical skill set which is 3d modeling which is heavy reliant on proper topology and this is where i got stopped because this was a very technical skill set that i had to develop and it really didn't have much to do with all the traditional art background that i learned earlier on in my career and i think this is the reason that most 3d artists starting out struggle with topology is that they do come from a artistic background and learning proper topology is a technical skill set that you have to master and making that pivot from being very artistic to very technical minded can be very very challenging adding to this is the fact that 3d modeling is usually one of the first disciplines that beginner 3d artists actually learn you're not only learning topology in its entirety when you first start 3d modeling but you're actually learning the world of 3d on its own before we move to the how let's look at the why why is learning 3d modeling topology very important if you want to become a professional 3d modeler the very first reason is that proper topology makes you a lot more employable this is not uncommon to look at job postings especially for 3d modelers and they require you to have a solid understanding of creating proper topology the second reason is having a model with proper topology will allow you to have a optimized mesh what does this mean if you've ever worked with cad data or maybe data that's coming from zbrush and then export it into blender or maya you know that this mesh is usually very very dense it's not optimized that's apology that edge flow is not really where it should be it's just a very dense mesh or a mush of clay a mesh that doesn't have proper topology a lot of times can be hard to create certain modeling operations and a lot of the modeling tools in most 3d packages do prefer a clean quality mesh which relies on clean topology another reason to have great topology is that it makes uving a lot quicker if you've ever tried to uv a mesh that's too dense or it's very sloppy in the layout of this topology selecting those edges or those edge loops that you essentially want to add cut lines to can make your life very very difficult if you're new around here i create tutorials that are aimed to simplify the process of learning how to create beautiful 3d art if you're enjoying the video so far make sure to smash the like button and subscribe to the channel to let me know that you're interested in me creating more content like this what is topology a 3d mesh is composed of three main components vertices edges and faces each single vert is connected by an edge the way that these edges flow through your mesh is what's known as topology or it's also known as edge flow and essentially it's the way that these edges support the details throughout your mesh depending on the arrangement of verts and edges on that polygonal face you're going to have different type of polygons a polygon with four verts is known as a quad this is pretty much the holy grail of topology and what many 3d artists consider very clean modeling moving on we'll have a polygon with three verts and three edges and essentially this is known with a try depending on your ultimate rendering application so if this is going to be rendered real time tries are not an issue but most of the time 3d artists will model in quads and then convert that acid into tries at the time of export now let's take a look at the villains of the faces within the world of topology the first one is poles this is essentially a junction of a vert that contains more than four edges so anything more than four five six seven eight is considered to be a pole depending on where you place this can be more problematic or less problematic poles typically on flat areas are not an issue even in subd models however on curved surfaces you really have to be careful with poles as they could often lead to undesirable results end guns n-gons are usually faces that contain more than four verts so anything that has five six seven eight nine ten is a n-gon and again this can also cause issues on curved surfaces and a lot of times it's in your best interest to subdivide those end guns and create quads for the best result when it comes to topology topology tip number five is localized density this is where you essentially route more topology to areas of detail and these are the areas that usually need that extra topology to properly support those details while you don't route all that extra topology to simpler areas that would eventually just bog down your poly count and not really help describe your shape i primarily achieve this via two methods one is with topology patterns and the second is by separating my parts let's look at topology patterns first and the first topology pattern that i want to go ahead and break down is the reroute pattern i'm going to demonstrate these two patterns on a simple plane that way they're very easy to see and then we'll go ahead and jump through some of my different models that i created over the years and see how they're actually applied and what the reroute pattern does is pretty much exactly how it sounds like it basically reroutes your topology in this case if i take my multi-cut tool here and i'm going to go ahead and control middle mouse click it's going to go ahead and add a edge loop right here in the middle i don't want to route this all the way through right and this is the first step in localizing your topology is figuring out the areas of detail that you basically want to encompass and then leave the simpler areas or simpler parts of your model that don't need that detail basically without that flow of edges going into it so what i'm going to do is first basically decide where i want to cut off that loop and i'm going to take these three edges here ctrl delete now this is going to be deleted now what we could do from this point is actually start routing this the way that we want and if we wanted to route this this way is basically just come from the different direction here i'm going to do control middle mouse click then i'm going to connect this with the multi-cut tool extra tip there is that anytime that you go from a five-sided to a tri you're going to go ahead and get pretty much all quads one functionality of the multi-cut tool is that if you do control shift you're going to be able to snap to basically uh 45 degree increments which is kind of nice so i'm going to hit enter and that's pretty much the pattern there another cool thing that i can do is if i want to push this on a 45 degree angle to be very very precise this would be kind of a guessing game i can hit d on my keyboard hold down control and then basically orient my pivot to that edge so now if i go back to the move tool and just slide that out you see that this is giving me a really precise corner here and we can push it here if we want like this and if we wanted to be super super precise we could actually take this whole edge here bring up my move tool since i'm editing the pivot what i can do is hit d and that's going to enter me into edit pivot mode anywhere outside of that pivot you can quickly reset this i can hold down v snap that to this vert and i can scale this flat and i could actually do the same here as well so i can scoop up this and it's already oriented to this vert and i can square this out as well that was a very small change so if i jack this up so it's a little bit more visible and i go back and reselect those edges you see the effect there a little bit better so that is essentially um the first instance of the reroute pattern so now you have a clean loop and if you wanted to create a panel line you would just essentially bevel this and then now you could select this and extruded you see now that that topology is essentially turning that corner another a very clear example of this is uh when you actually start creating radials so this is a prime example of a reroute as well what we're going to do is just essentially reset this pivot again i'm going to hold down shift so anytime that you hold down shift in maya with combination of any transform you could actually extrude as well so you're extruding topology and scaling which is essentially what an extrude is doing but this way you can just hold down shift with the scale tool and you'll be able to basically uh extrude that topology in you see that this is properly routed and i can hold down shift right click and we can do a circularized components a lot of times if if you have these radial insets it's nice to do that initial extrusion that way you essentially end up with this five star pattern because essentially any time that you do a reroute pattern it is going to consist of a five star see so you have the five star here and all that means is you have essentially five edges here and really that edge that's breaking up that uh perfect um quad there right that's the change in direction so you see it here and we can verify this if we had an edge loop you see how it's breaking that way and same way here right so this edge here is rerouting your topology over and preventing it from going straight right so if we were to go here it's going straight and just because of this five star it's pulling it off to the side let's go ahead and look at some practical examples of the rewrap pattern this is a character that i modeled named the mechanic this is actually using another artist concept and i'll go ahead and link his art station down there some examples of the reroute pattern are very evident here so you see that i basically rerouted this to provide essentially more topology to this corner while not throwing um all those edge loops here uh towards the rest of the body and if i actually go in here and just isolate the body you see that this is done quite a bit here to define parts of the anatomy of this character so here i started hinting at the abdomen area by using a reroute pattern they're very evident here too uh isolating all these muscle groups so you'll see here that it's uh basically forming out the triceps the lats the traps the shoulders so i use these reroute patterns quite a bit and you'll also see these patterns quite a bit in the mouth to create that radial topology that is very very important for deformations and here's the reroute pattern used in hard surface elements so you see that i usually use it like i showed you earlier to contain a lot of radial shapes on the outskirts of those radial shapes you'll usually see that reroute pattern pretty much containing all those radio details and not spreading them throughout the mesh and here's another example of a more complex shape where you see again routing all those radio patterns and containing them using those five star points or those reroute patterns the second pattern that i want to show off is the diamond pattern this pattern usually has a separate purpose than the reroute usually the reroute is to change the direction the diamond pattern is more specifically used when i want to solely reduce density from one area going into the other let's just say that we had edge flow going this way that we wanted to basically mitigate only to one section what i'm going to do is take my multi-cut tool here drop an edge loop here and an edge loop here so let's just say that this area of our model is an area that we needed more density and this area here had less details and we didn't want all this topology flowing through so this is where the diamond pattern would actually come into place grab both of these ranges here i'm going to go ahead and delete this topology and now what i could essentially do is with the multi-cut tool basically connect both of these so now we essentially have this triangle here which is not quoted so we can select that edge that's right in the middle ctrl delete and by default when you do this especially working on a plane it actually looks like a try but if we do a small offset here now looks like a diamond hence this is the name again we're going to go back to the mechanic and i actually use this diamond pattern in a slightly higher position than the hand so here i actually wanted some of this topology flowing but you see that right here i have this diamond pattern so i didn't really want to rout all that topology here throughout the forearm flowing into the rest of the upper arm so i essentially use that same exact pattern to cut off some of that topology and prevent it from moving upwards on the model again here i use a diamond pattern on the lower back usually around the hip area especially where characters deform uh you tend to have a need for more topology but i didn't want to route all that extra topology towards this area here thus i use another diamond pattern here moving on to the second leg of creating localized density is creating your model in separate parts this is something that has to be used in a case by case scenario not all models are beneficial to break up however separating your model in the right stage of your workflow into separate parts could definitely allow for some areas to be denser and not essentially passing down that density to other parts that don't really need that amount of detail or edge flow so this model is a volkswagen beetle and there's a very distinct part that is a perfect example of this localized topology by creating separate parts so i'm going to go towards the back of this very iconic vehicle here and we'll see that this area here has these grates that are very very dense we really wouldn't want to pass down all this density over to the uh back here this trunk of the vehicle so essentially what we could do is separate this and this is exactly what i did so just by having these two meshes separated we no longer have the need to pass all this topology uh down and you see if i take off wireframe on shaded still actually um looks pretty good we really don't have much noticeable pinching here just because everything's relatively clean one very important tip about breaking up your model into separate pieces is do this at the very end of the modeling stage or towards the end of the modeling stage if you jump the gun start doing this too early what tends to happen is that your verts actually don't line up so if we take a closer look here even though these are separate parts you see that these edges here match up exactly if you separate this a little bit too early what tends to happen through the natural process of just moving verts around is that these can start to shift a little bit and even with a little shift those panel lines especially around the curve parts of the model are not going to be as precise and pristine so leave this towards the end of the modeling phase if not you might cause yourself some headaches with parts especially with panel lines not lining up and you see by this trunk being separate it does lend itself well if these parts need to be animated in the future topology tip number four is to capitalize on symmetry this essentially means that you're going to exploit symmetry every chance you get to do the least amount of unique modeling and this will lead to dramatically more even topology through uh your model and this obviously applies more towards hard surface models however there are some case scenarios where this can be used within organic models as well before we begin diving deeper into each subset of symmetry i want to go ahead and take a look at this example of this crank set if you're a beginner 3d modeler this type of asset might be a little bit intimidating but if we actually look and break this down into the different types of symmetry you see that this asset looks a lot more manageable and you could really see the power of these four subsets of symmetry that i'm about to cover as you really only have to focus your attention into modeling very small parts of a overall larger complex model let's take a look at standard symmetry this is symmetry down one axis this is what most beginners think about when they think about symmetry where basically you're taking a model you work on half of it maybe on the x maybe on the z or maybe on the y and they go ahead and duplicate that over and that is all fine and dandy but there are different levels to this where you could really maximize your symmetry the next subset of this is radial symmetry and i've done entire videos dedicated to this so i will go ahead and link them in the description down below the overall gist of this is when you look at a object that has radial symmetry something that has radial details spread out in a cylindrical fashion what a lot of times you can do is think about the symmetry planes of that object in this example here i'm going through the process of setting up radial symmetry for a five spoke rim a lot of hard surface objects can be broken down into symmetrical planes even if it is a radial object and for this example i have five planes of symmetry since it's a five-spoked rim so really what you could think about this is a slice of a pizza in this case it would be a pizza with five slices and we actually only have to model half of that fifth by modeling half of that fifth for this particular example we're able to focus our attention entirely on a small part of the model and then using the power of a radial symmetry setup we can go ahead and spread all that even topology updated in real time and see the finalized result and in that video i break down the math exactly what you need to do to be able to do this with any other symmetrical object that has symmetry because once you know the math you could just adjust the numbers and derive at your proper settings to create this setup for any radial object the next subset of this is the order of symmetry this brake lever is another model that i created for my my hard surface modeling course and again i really thought about the order of symmetry there were parts that were perfectly symmetrical like the actual brake lever part and there were parts that had split symmetry meaning some parts were symmetrical and some parts were asymmetrical and what i essentially ended up doing is the parts that were asymmetrical i would actually detach them and then create the symmetry and reattach them towards the end of the modeling workflow to really just capitalize on that symmetry the last subset of symmetry that i want to cover is creating repeatable patterns and this is a little bit different than just straight up symmetry as it's not technically mirrored but it still revolves around the same principle of just duplicating that geometry and using it as effectively as possible in this youtube tutorial that i'll go ahead and link down below you'll see me going through the process of creating any repeatable pattern and by mainly using very basic modeling tools like symmetry and the duplicate special you'll be able to create very clean geometry patterns and only have to focus your attempts at clean topology on very small parts and you're essentially letting the 3d modeling package do the rest of the work topology tip number three is what i call booleans and clean bullies throughout 3d modeling history have gotten somewhat of a bad rap i think the reason for this is because a lot of beginner 3d modelers overuse them without really having a good sense of overall topology and more importantly a good sense of how to get a clean result on a basic level what booleans allow you to do is take very basic shapes and use addition subtraction or union methods to create more complex shapes now what i want to show you here is a video that i did on my youtube channel i actually use it to create a more complex pipe in this video you can clearly see that i do a little bit of pre-planning and make sure that everything lines up properly before i actually do the bullings operation that should be a main takeaway of this tip is that you definitely want to do a little bit of pre-planning before each piece is actually boiling together so while these pieces are separated you want to go ahead and pre-plan at any edge loop any supporting edges and make sure that both surfaces once they're combined will actually leave you with the minimal amount of cleanup possible i go through the whole process in detail in the video so i strongly recommend if you want to follow up on this check that out here's a more advanced example of this and this is again using that bmx bike you see this under seat support here is a very complex shape i would have had a hard time basically starting out with part of the shape and then extruding and trying to modify that so what i essentially did is model the underside first and then i created each support separately i did quite a bit of pre-planning and then i joined this together once these pieces were joined because i did all that pre-planning i was able to quickly go through and merge all these shapes together and you see that this actually has two different types of shape one is a curved shape and then one is very hard surface or very rectangular shapes by taking these simpler shapes doing a little bit of pre-planning combining them and then cleaning them up i was able to get a very complex shape with very clean topology that started from a bullings and clean approach topology tip number two is what i call destroy and rebuild throughout the process of creating hard surface modeling shapes especially ones with curved surfaces you go through and you start adding more and more topology you start adding holding edges and sometimes when we exit wireframe mode apply something with a little bit more specularity and this is something i strongly recommend when you're modeling in whatever package it is don't go with the default lambert or whatever that version of the lambert is in your package give your object something that has a little bit more reflectiveness to it this will expose any imperfections in your mesh that otherwise might go unnoticed and with this shiny material especially on a curved surface if you started adding too many points and not really controlled where those points those vertices were then you might end up with a very lumpy surface at this point most beginner 3d modelers me included back in the days i used to go ahead and just keep on pushing keep finagling that mesh hours would go by and i just keep adding more topology and that mesh or that curved surface would still be lumpy and this is where destroy and rebuild comes in in the video which i have linked down below a student actually sent me a very lumpy hard surface model with a curved surface and i actually use this very technique to clean this up rather quickly what the process entails is mainly two steps one is actually to remove all the bevels or holding edges first and then you go through and you pick out the main edges that are describing your shape and you basically select every other edge or every two edges and skip one depending on how dense your mesh is and you actually delete them once you have deleted this you can go back really perfect that form and then introduce very minimal topology to actually leave that curved surface relatively clean and the last but most important topology tip that i want to give you is learn how to uv and texture and at this point you might be like hold up i thought this was a 3d modeling slash topology video well if you're disappointed i can go ahead and let you know that i have a hundred percent money back guarantee on this youtube tutorial but all jokes aside there is a close relationship between 3d modeling uv and texturing and all these three different disciplines actually tying together to produce a finalized rendered model and i'm happy to announce that this summer i'll be releasing an extensive training that's going to cover all three of these disciplines and i'll have a lot more details on that coming soon so let me go ahead and give you a scenario and maybe you can go ahead and relay but this is what exactly happened to me uh after a lot of trials and tribulations i eventually got good at topology and 3d modeling as a whole so what happened is i fell into a 3d modeling comfort zone i could essentially model every detail on a asset and that led me to actually avoid learning uvs and texturing and this was not a healthy relationship that i had with 3d modeling because just like you wouldn't go ahead and 3d model the pores on a character sometimes it's not beneficial to model every little bit detail on a hard surface asset and this is where a package like substance painter comes in where you can use height and normal information to quickly apply these texture details that actually look like you modeled them in and give you a lot more flexibility if you look at the video here that i have a link down below this is a substance painter tutorial where i go through the whole process of learning substance painter throughout that tutorial i show you how to apply height information on that model that mimics 3d modeled detail on the textures here's a more complex example of these bike pedals where i actually use height information within substance painter to apply this grid pattern in a procedural manner and i had so much control over this height information and doing it with substance painter in its very flexible layer stack versus had i just modeled this tertiary detail into the mesh within mile and anytime that you model details into your mesh that is a big level of commitment and all that topology there is not easily modified or removed you really don't have that same flexibility that you do with a texturing workflow like within substance painter and not only with this grid pattern but throughout this whole model you'll actually see that it was able to stamp in a lot of this fine tertiary detail in the form of these text stamping that actually looks like the mesh is pushed in and that this was actually 3d modeled but this was created with proper uvs and proper texturing thank you so much for tuning in to this video dedicated on improving your 3d modeling topology i really want to hear in the comments down below which is the one thing that really helped you create better topology on your 3d models until we meet again folks i will catch you next time

Channel: JL Mussi

Views: 781,106

Keywords: maya 3d modeling, maya hard surface modeling, maya instances, game development, autodesk maya, maya modeling, maya modeling tutorial for beginners, hard surface modeling maya, stylized 3d art, maya game asset tutorial, game art tutorial, jl mussi, hard surface modeling, 3d modeling tutorial, 3d modeling for beginners, maya modeling for beginners, blender 3d modeling, blender 3d topology, topology, 3d modeling topology

Id: zV3mhvWpppM

Length: 34min 2sec (2042 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 18 2022