HUGE SALE! You can save 50% on all my courses until the end of Christmas with the code XMAS - The Essential Topology Guide - decoded.gumroad.com/l/ESSENTIALTOPO Also available on Blender Market - blendermarket.com/products/essentialtopo The Interior Masterclass - decoded.gumroad.com/l/interiormasterclass Also available on Blender Market - blendermarket.com/products/the-interior-masterclass The Exterior Masterclass - decoded.gumroad.com/l/exteriormasterclass Also available on Blender Market - blendermarket.com/products/the-exterior-masterclass
Gonna be hilarious if in 10 years from now you're running a restaurant and you're interviewed by local news, you will have to say "Well it all began when I saw a tutorial on fixing topology in Blender"
Been a CG generalist for 20+ years and had many of these individual methods vaguely in recesses of my brain somewhere, but this makes it all make sense finally! I´m a 100% sure that this video will end up on every CG teacher's must-view playlist for decades to come!
thats like only learning to play guitar with a pick and never use your fingers..... beginners should go to blender guru and follow the damn doughnut tutorial... then we avoid this conversation
Tip: Use the "J" key to automatically connect two selected vertices by cutting through the surface with a new edge instead of using the knife tool (which can sometimes be inaccurate and create extra vertices).
@@mm-hl7gh That is not true, F does what you described. J cuts through the mesh surface and integrates the edge into the topology. It acts just like the knife tool between the two selected points, except it's safer because the knife tool sometimes gets subtly misaligned and creates two vertices where there should be one. Use J instead of the knife tool wherever you're doing simple cuts. Knife is good for cutting more complex shapes.
@@mm-hl7gh you are mistaken, sir. Using J does create the necessary vertices in the intermediate faces between the selected points. It is the F key the one that creates the disconnected edge.
@@Keavon If the knife tool is inaccurate, adjust your view clip start and end. Clip start must not be too small. Clip end must not be too large. It's weird behavior but you can verify that it works with a simple plane.
wow I wish someone has explained this to me like 10 years ago, I still do it kinda randomly nowadays (and avoid topology work as much as possible haha). I never properly learnt this technique because well, that knowledge was hard to find. But I talk too much lol thanks for that video it's great
The ideas described in this video are good tools to have in your toolset, but it’s far from a one-size-fits-all solution to all topology problems. You need to be careful about introducing poles, as those affect shading and create convergence points or “pinches” in topology when subdivided.
@@odeca8121 Not the same result. Triangles and n-gons aren't smooth-shaded the same as quads, also not animated the same and they mostly can't form loops. Quads and loops are the thing to use in all modeling.
DONT even think about deleting it. There are lot of people like me who started learning 3d less than a month ago. For me, its a life saver. Yesterday I was trying to put a round hole in a sphere, using similar method, but failed and then failed and failed again. Do make similar videos, specially putting a round hole in a sphere. I will appriciate similar videos, as they will save me later when I am stuck.
This is extremely helpful I've looked up topology and this the best it's been explained. The only thing that would make it better is actually cleaning up a mesh with booleans and showing how you apply this.
You know what, crap videos make for the best discussion grounds. If you ever feel like that again, take this into account, when you publish it, you might learn something you never bargained for.
@@syedrizvi6408 Not sure if it's still an issue, but I recommend enabling the built-in LoopTools addon to make things simpler in that particular task you mention. You can select the quads on a UV sphere, use LoopTools to spherify it and you'll have converted the square quads into a circular set of faces. Perhaps not the most elegant solution but it gets the work done in 90% of cases.
Heya there DECODED. it's a good thing you didn't delete it. Just in case you didn't know, Andrew Price put a link to this video as a "great explanation of redirecting topology" in his notification email about his new "chair" tutorial. I've just got it a couple of hours ago, and there I found the link to this video. I'd like to think it's a very good thing. As for the video itself, I checked it out when you first uploaded it, and I think it's really great.
Thanks Alex. Andrew commented on the video the other day, so I already knew that he'd seen it. But I only just found out that he'd included it in the newsletter.
Thanks, i really struggled with this and had a million loop cuts going everywhere, i knew there was a better way but i couldn't get it look nice in shade smooth or subdiv
@@DECODEDVFX I was studying geography back in highschool and then you got the word topology. Also, the thumbnail are kinda unusual from tech ,gaming, and music channel I usually watch.
OMG this just blew my mind.... topologizing a character for a game for the first time and of course i've already run into all these problems. Wow, thank you
INCREDIBLE. I have been watching and reading so much, and they keep showing pictures and pre-cut planes etc... your 7 min demonstration changed my life. Thanks for being someone that doesn't keep fundamental industry concepts secret
It's amazing how many tutorial makers shamelessly skip over these important details when it comes to topology, they're all about showing you the fastest solution possible thanks to the youtube algorithm and don't go enough into basic topology and I've found this to be the most useful video overall for explaining topology properly even if it is a basic concept I particularly like that you went into the hand example which most people don't bother with. As an extra tip for noobs, if you guys are following along and doing a full human model like I am, separate your extruded hand in edit mode to prevent any weirdness with loop cuts and not let anything interfere with your main human model, you then should be able to reconnect your hand to the arm and it will be fine. Assuming of course you don't overdo it with the initial polygon count and make things too hard for yourself. Also at 2:33 he accidentally skips over an important point, the tool he uses is "New Face From Edges" to make the new face and the shortcut is F I believe that's what he did as I got the same result.
Not quite sure how I stumbled across this one but even as a programmer I found this incredibly clear and understandable. Thanks for helping me understand when my artists talk about retopologising and n-gons
Things to keep in mind. Long and thin polygons will trip up Gouraud shader. It's not usually relevant today, but it was super relevant when you were targeting Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube era hardware and may still be relevant when targetting low-end mobile platforms. More relevantly for today, Catmull-Clark subdivision trips up on triangles, so you're good on avoiding them. However it also trips up on odd-valence vertices. Normally in a pure quad mesh, every vertex has 4 edges connected to it, so the valence of the vertex is 4. You have built a bunch of 3- and 5-valence vertices in here, which are usually not as bad as tris outright, but will still cause waviness in the subdivided mesh output. Since pure 4-valence quad topologies are generally impractical, there's often no substitute for just winging it and taking the waviness and letting it be the model feature where necessary, building the topology adjustment around there. I'm also not convinced that the industry should stick to Catmull-Clark subdivision invented in the 70s. I my experiments, i had the impression (but no mathematical proof) that the behaviour of the subdivision could be improved by introducing normal-based displacements that would depend on local topology and would also help the subdivision be somewhat volume preserving, since Catmull-Clark tends to deflate a lot. It's not like research ended there, there was Stam/Loop 2002 "Quad/Triangle Subdivision ".
Does anybody bother with Gouraud shading any more, when Phong shading is superior and doesn’t cost much on modern hardware? Easy enough to add extra loop cuts next to the EVs to constrain their effect. Also, your idea about normal-based displacements reminds me of Blender’s “weighted-normal” modifier. Worth giving that a try.
Lawrence D’Oliveiro Phong is an old term not really used anymore. It’s just vertex based shading or fragment shading whatever that shading is doing. That said. Normal light linear fragment shaded today is not more expensive than vertex shading.
This was 4 years ago but the methods you've shown in this video are very helpful! This is going to save me a lot of time down the road. I've been searching for something like this for a while and here it is. Thanks!
I paused at 0:08 and tried to recreate this. I had a hand with like 15 vertices loop trying to connect it to 6 vertices loop of the arm. I somehow managed to reduce 15~ vertices to 8 vertices and 6 vertices I increased to 8. Such satisfaction when I connected them! Although somehow the topology doesn't feel to look very good, but the overall result satisfies me. Thank you very much!
I am glad i found this it was very helpful Iam using blender from a month And after reading comments i think iam lucky that i did not found it after server year of experience Its just a month and i was searching for retopology techniques and i found this most helpful video THANKS A LOT
This is the best 3D modeling video I've ever seen. Straight, to the point, delivering one message = you don't have to have those damn edge loops going all around your model
I've been doing this for a while now and I must say that it is extremely useful, BUT sometimes it completely destroys the flow and also sometimes there is a problem with the subdivision. You should use this on relatively flat or empty surfaces. For instance, an ear is more detailed, than the head, but at the same time there is a flat space before the ear begins, but a tear duct might be actually better with triangles, since there is detail all around the tear duct too, which'd be destroyed in the process.
Finally, a comment from someone who has real experience in SubD modelling.) All these methods to end loop cuts with a quad has been used for years but they are still rarely used as they usually produce bad shading.
Thank you. It’s not nearly as simple as this video makes it out to be. For one, you’re altering the number of edge loops on either side of the topology group in question. You’re also introducing poles, which isn’t something to be cavalier about, as they’re going to change shading and create “pinch” in your topology, which isn’t always desirable. So no, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to any topology problem.
Exactly. The only topology you'll ever need! To solve simple joining problems on planes and flat shaded meshes, maybe.... If that was all topology was, we'd have had awesome, fully automated retopo tools a decade ago.
Lmao, yeah, towards the end of the video I've been saying out loud at my screen: "yeah cool and now subdivide it, go ahead and subdivide, like you showed at the beginning". Who really does hardsurface today and not use subdivision tools?
@@vladimirlavrentyev9206 I'm a blender noob. What would actually happen if we never used the video's method and jsut had loop cuts going around the full model?
Thank you so much for making this short video, I really hate it when i have to sit through 30 minutes just for someone to get to the point, you really wasted no time! Appreciate it brother 🙏
I got this in my recommendations and I was like "Nah, I'm too tired to watch tutorials" but then I saw a 6 minutes in the title and decided to go for it and I'm glad I did. I would have missed a really amazing lesson. Thank you!
I remember coming to this video from a question I asked in reddit, someone helped me to this, and then i also shared this video a ton to whoever has asked me help about topology, people only do this when videos are NOT crap, this video is precious. ❤
This is probably the single most important video I've seen with regards to mesh modelling, I just wish I saw it earlier. Now I need to go and practice it over and over until it becomes second nature. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for explaining it in such a simple way! It seems so obvious now and I feel stupid for not being able to figure it out myself.
Jaw dropped at 2:50 and stayed there through 5:05. I feel like you just taught me how to do the Rubix cube in 10 seconds. An excellent illustration of the principles, thank you!
I didn't realize how much I needed this explanation. There's no doubt that simplicity is the maximum sophistication. Thank you very much, I'm saving the thumbnail so I can always go back to remember exactly how to deal with topology.
I am a total beginner at 3D art but I just know this is one of those art videos that I would watch as an expert and go "Wow I wish I had this tutorial when I was starting out"
I've had problems with multiple edge loops going around my models since I started and couldn't figure out how you actually should do it. This really helped me thank you.
VerticalWit when he starts making cuts on the “ribbon” (the plane on the left) he shows a short process for increasing or decreasing the number of faces in different parts of a model. Off the top of my head, this kind of topology management is important for several reasons. 1. Keeping poly counts down. This is not as important these days, but still a concern for low-resource gaming. 2. For avoiding having unnecessary faces generated far away from the place you actually need them, and keeping the model “clean” of excess faces. This helps a lot when animating and weight painting, since having more or less faces densely packed in an area affects the way a mesh deforms under an armature, or has particles emitted from it in some particle systems. 3. Note how every face he drew with his method is a quad. Using his method specifically, you can still use loop cuts that will go all the way around a model, and other modifiers/transforms like subsurface will continue to work well, since you’re not including random triangles or n-gons in the mesh. This property, of maintaining the path of loops of connected faces, is what is being shown in the thumbnail of this video.
I'm just at that moment when I'm getting into hard surface modeling and becoming aware of problems like this. Your tutorial will surely be useful in the future.
Thank you so much for posting this video. I'm in my 40s, have ADHD and am attempting 3D modeling for the second time in my life. The first time was prior to medication, with poor tech that would crash and with software that was spline-based so dealing with the topology was EVERYTHING. As I have picked up Blender, I have had this distracting, anxiety in the back of my head that has been a roadblock. TOPOLOGY. I am someone that needs to know a little more about the machinery before I can feel comfortable using it and unfortunately, no-one titles youtube videos, HEY, the thing with the shapes and creasing and the part-mathy, part-real world stuff, I CAN HELP WITH THAT. After watching your video and with a rudimentary knowledge of anatomy it makes sense. You don't go from your fingers to your forearm with five bones. It's inefficiency use of energy and probably shitty mechanics. You build down with multiple bones decreasing and increasing based on the needs for flexibility until you get to the structure where all you need is rigid support. We of the neurodivergent thank you.
Great tutorial, ive spent literally hours making sure my edge loops did make it round my models so they all connected up. Now I can just cut them off at source. Cheers bud.
@@DECODEDVFX Oh man, you have no idea... So many times I've stared at my pristine model for ten minutes before giving up and hitting ctrl R knowing that the topology will never be perfect again but consoling myself that this huge compromise is needed keep ngons off my mesh. I owe you a pint.
@@DECODEDVFX Tell me one thing. I've thought a lot about this. What is your take on starting from a primative and dicing vs starting from a plane and extruding? When I first look at an object this is the first decision I take (I have a bias to primative because you can control symmetry more precisely) but - say if I'm making a car - I'll choose planes because I know I'll need to get the edge flow of the topology to match the fundamental geometry of the object. Although, I'm thinking that what you've taught me here may change that. What's your approach?
I generally start with whichever default shape most closely resembles the object I'm modeling - usually a cube or cylinder. I hardly ever model from a plane.
While applying this method isn't going to be simple 100% of the time, the principle is what matters. Don't think about deleting this video... regardless of its quality, you are implanting an important understanding of quads and polys and a smart way of thinking about the topology itself. Thank you!
I've been looking for this exact knowledge for years. I kind of found the 1 to 3 method once, but 1 to 2 was always nightmare for me. I'm so glad YT recommended me this.
Im gonna have to watch this like a billion more times because i dont even know what topology is but hopefully this will help fix some problems i find in my models.
A true master of toplogy, respect and salute. Thank you so much for solving the most difficult mystery for the NOOBIES, trully appreciated and will forever remember the NAME, of the master. Thank you.
Just recently I started trying out blender and did a really wonderful donut. Just last night I went full on solo mode and tried to model my own phone. And oh boy! How badly I need this video as the loop cuts are everywhere! THANK YOU!
My Lord, I can't thumbsup this enough. I wish this was shown to me back in 1.9 when I started playing with Blender and all my models had topology running all over the model because I couldn't make enough geometry for the mouth, the ears, the fingers, feet... I spent so much time inquiring around the forums back in them and nobody told me anything to solve my problem. Damn, so uber duper useful! More THUMBS 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍THANK YOU SIR!
I think the easiest way to think about it is this: Each quad has 2 edges perpendicular to the direction of the topology which i call "front egdes" and the other edges I call "side egdes". Whenever you change the amount of faces, you turn one edge to be diagonal making up a front edge for one and a side edge for another quad. So if you want one more face, make one side edge to a front edge and you have one more front edge, hence one more quad, or reverse etc.
Dude this video right here helps so much nobody explains how they come to their conclusions and make it really hard to understand the process to be able to come up with these solutions for yourself they never explain what logic they are following thanks a bunch
Newbie to 3D modelling. I had no idea why this was supposed to be helpful until, literally, the last thirty seconds when the lightbulb went off. Great video.
@@Mayeru just do the donut tutorial, trust me it'll save your life if you're actually ever expecting to use blender. Patience and that tutorial will help a lot. It taught me a lot of the basics.
@@Mayeru blender guru’s world famous donut tutorial, that’s the holy grail of starting points for many blender users. Blender guru is truly one of the best, takes the time to explain why he does what and assumed you knew nothing about blender before doing that particular tutorial. So if you’re ever going to use blender in life, be it this day, month, or some other year, just do yourself the major favor of starting there. Blender guru commented on this video too, so you can see that up there if you want.
I think this is more on the beginner level not really the intermediate level. As you get more advanced, it's important to understand how to use poles to create pinch points and direct edge flow. I think an intermediate exercise would be how to use the minimal amount of faces to achieve the same effect.
as a beginner with no concept of this, I gotta say, this is a game changer. I've never modeled anything too complex and one of the main reasons for that is because once I started getting detailed and adding loop cuts and seeing all these loop cuts cutting around my whole model with no real purpose in most places I knew I was doing something wrong but I didn't know what, now I know. Thank you for this quick guide, totally ups my game.
At first I didn't quite get the point of what you were saying. I was like "at 1:27 just dissolve all those loop cuts." It wasn't until I got to the end (and tried it myself) that I realized that doing it your way results in all quads!
@@TroglodyJeej you can loop cut through them easier. With a square or a quad, going through the "middle of it" is easy because a line can just go in one edge and out the opposite. If you go in one edge of a triangle or pentagon, there are two possible edges it can come out of. This means Blender gets confused if you try to loop cut (CTRL-R) it. Also I think quads and squares deform much easier to it makes animation better. (Ofc when it's rendered it's turned into triangles anyway, but at that point you're done working with it so it doesn't matter)
I remember watching a video of someone modeling the Sanic. He made a lopp cut just above the eyee for the eyeball to fit and this loop cut had gone all the way down through neck, around the body and then back to the neck and ended above the other eye. It was hilarious.
As a visual person, this literally solves the topology problem that had prohibited me from fully understanding what I'm doing when making 3D models and stuff starts getting weird. This is a godsend; the thumbnail graphic alone says so much! Thank you for this video so much!
I am a beginner. While your video wasn't easy for me, but it definately got me one step closer to understanding topology. I kind of get the concept of disconnecting the side that doesn't need too much toplogy from the one that needs it with quads. I think it's a big lesson for me, so thank you!
I'm just a beginner and now I know how much I'm a beginner, since I did not even understand what was the problem, let alone all the further explanation. Lots of like so it is probably useful for people that are experts. Good luck to everyone. I clicked on the video because I wanted to learn more about topology...
Do the changes in direction have an impact on smooth shading? I saw a tutorial once, where they talked about engons and they teached and showed that there is more of a problem with topology direction changes. Anyone got experience with that?
This is the type of solution that was so freaking obvious that, for some reason, I never thought about doing it. Blessed Post this helps a lot of juggling unnecessary topology lol
Thank you! I have begun modelling since 2 months and people kept telling me "the topology here and here is bad" but they never told me *why* it's bad. At least thanks to this video now I have half idea how to split faces correctly.
HUGE SALE! You can save 50% on all my courses until the end of Christmas with the code XMAS -
The Essential Topology Guide -
decoded.gumroad.com/l/ESSENTIALTOPO
Also available on Blender Market - blendermarket.com/products/essentialtopo
The Interior Masterclass -
decoded.gumroad.com/l/interiormasterclass
Also available on Blender Market - blendermarket.com/products/the-interior-masterclass
The Exterior Masterclass -
decoded.gumroad.com/l/exteriormasterclass
Also available on Blender Market - blendermarket.com/products/the-exterior-masterclass
Brilliant demonstration! Thanks
Cheers Andrew.
@@justjacob9606 bruh
@@icedchqi yes
@@justjacob9606 bruh
The god himself...
Decoded: "Once you can do that, you can do anything."
Me: "Hold my beer, gonna start a restaurant now."
Gonna be hilarious if in 10 years from now you're running a restaurant and you're interviewed by local news, you will have to say "Well it all began when I saw a tutorial on fixing topology in Blender"
@@DanWandin If this happens, I hope I will remember :)
@@buxtehude578 good luck on that restaurant :D
@@dannymo4390 ...he will use blender every day in the restaurant...
@@RPserge hahaha
Been a CG generalist for 20+ years and had many of these individual methods vaguely in recesses of my brain somewhere, but this makes it all make sense finally! I´m a 100% sure that this video will end up on every CG teacher's must-view playlist for decades to come!
Wow, thanks.
Imagine modelling for several years now and find out about this :D
Boi, I don't have to imagine.
@@Rune3D you never learnt to model till now then...
@@TheFlyJunky He could simply sculpt for years and keep being beginner in hardsurface bro
thats like only learning to play guitar with a pick and never use your fingers..... beginners should go to blender guru and follow the damn doughnut tutorial... then we avoid this conversation
SgtChilli I may forever stick to sculpting without learning how to properly give my model a hard surface...
It could crack in the kiln if I mess up.
Tip: Use the "J" key to automatically connect two selected vertices by cutting through the surface with a new edge instead of using the knife tool (which can sometimes be inaccurate and create extra vertices).
J does not cut through faces.. it only lays a disconnected edge on top and gives you very bad geometry
@@mm-hl7gh That is not true, F does what you described. J cuts through the mesh surface and integrates the edge into the topology. It acts just like the knife tool between the two selected points, except it's safer because the knife tool sometimes gets subtly misaligned and creates two vertices where there should be one. Use J instead of the knife tool wherever you're doing simple cuts. Knife is good for cutting more complex shapes.
@@mm-hl7gh you are mistaken, sir. Using J does create the necessary vertices in the intermediate faces between the selected points. It is the F key the one that creates the disconnected edge.
Thanks! It's funny how often I randomly come across a comment like this that makes something I do all the time much easier.
@@Keavon If the knife tool is inaccurate, adjust your view clip start and end. Clip start must not be too small. Clip end must not be too large. It's weird behavior but you can verify that it works with a simple plane.
This vídeo made me love retopology
My tricks
-Keep edges x4, x8, x12, x16 ...
-Make main loops first
-use the 3 to 1 edges
-patience, is like a game
what does this mean, I don't understand
wow I wish someone has explained this to me like 10 years ago, I still do it kinda randomly nowadays (and avoid topology work as much as possible haha). I never properly learnt this technique because well, that knowledge was hard to find. But I talk too much lol thanks for that video it's great
The ideas described in this video are good tools to have in your toolset, but it’s far from a one-size-fits-all solution to all topology problems. You need to be careful about introducing poles, as those affect shading and create convergence points or “pinches” in topology when subdivided.
I’ve been looking for something like that since 2007...
I never knew understanding topology can be THAT MUCH of a game changer
With how complicated it can get, you can say that topology IS the game
Just learn how to use ngons , what he did can be done with same result and less headache.
@@odeca8121 Not the same result. Triangles and n-gons aren't smooth-shaded the same as quads, also not animated the same and they mostly can't form loops. Quads and loops are the thing to use in all modeling.
@@odeca8121 never use ngons
@@odeca8121 Ngons are bad topology and should only be used very sparingly in isolated cases. They are not the solution.
Wow. I almost deleted this video before uploading because I thought it was crap 🤣
Thanks for sharing the knowledge man.
DONT even think about deleting it.
There are lot of people like me who started learning 3d less than a month ago. For me, its a life saver.
Yesterday I was trying to put a round hole in a sphere, using similar method, but failed and then failed and failed again.
Do make similar videos, specially putting a round hole in a sphere.
I will appriciate similar videos, as they will save me later when I am stuck.
This is extremely helpful I've looked up topology and this the best it's been explained. The only thing that would make it better is actually cleaning up a mesh with booleans and showing how you apply this.
You know what, crap videos make for the best discussion grounds. If you ever feel like that again, take this into account, when you publish it, you might learn something you never bargained for.
@@syedrizvi6408 Not sure if it's still an issue, but I recommend enabling the built-in LoopTools addon to make things simpler in that particular task you mention. You can select the quads on a UV sphere, use LoopTools to spherify it and you'll have converted the square quads into a circular set of faces. Perhaps not the most elegant solution but it gets the work done in 90% of cases.
Heya there DECODED. it's a good thing you didn't delete it. Just in case you didn't know, Andrew Price put a link to this video as a "great explanation of redirecting topology" in his notification email about his new "chair" tutorial. I've just got it a couple of hours ago, and there I found the link to this video. I'd like to think it's a very good thing. As for the video itself, I checked it out when you first uploaded it, and I think it's really great.
Thanks Alex. Andrew commented on the video the other day, so I already knew that he'd seen it. But I only just found out that he'd included it in the newsletter.
Thanks, i really struggled with this and had a million loop cuts going everywhere, i knew there was a better way but i couldn't get it look nice in shade smooth or subdiv
It's happened to all of us at one point!
And i was wondering why my pc was on fire
It's 3 AM, i don't use blender, I'm not a 3D artist.
Why is this in my recommendation RUclips?
The real question is, what compelled you to click it?
@@DECODEDVFX I was studying geography back in highschool and then you got the word topology.
Also, the thumbnail are kinda unusual from tech ,gaming, and music channel I usually watch.
@@kristianutomotobing9719... and there's your answer, you watch tech and gaming videos, hence this recommendation.
@@kristianutomotobing9719 blender aint geography tools ? 😅😅😅🖕
@@Hinstea I's a tool that uses geography =]
Finally someone shows the proper way, with and actual example, Jeez!
OMG this just blew my mind.... topologizing a character for a game for the first time and of course i've already run into all these problems. Wow, thank you
Ditto; once it clicked in my head.
I've struggling to get clean topology for a long while and you just solved that with a very simple explaination.
Seriously, thank you.
This is amazing! Your knowledge and explanation was just perfect👍
My favourite animator, but the comment got no attention :(
We need a rescue signal
INCREDIBLE. I have been watching and reading so much, and they keep showing pictures and pre-cut planes etc... your 7 min demonstration changed my life. Thanks for being someone that doesn't keep fundamental industry concepts secret
It's amazing how many tutorial makers shamelessly skip over these important details when it comes to topology, they're all about showing you the fastest solution possible thanks to the youtube algorithm and don't go enough into basic topology and I've found this to be the most useful video overall for explaining topology properly even if it is a basic concept I particularly like that you went into the hand example which most people don't bother with.
As an extra tip for noobs, if you guys are following along and doing a full human model like I am, separate your extruded hand in edit mode to prevent any weirdness with loop cuts and not let anything interfere with your main human model, you then should be able to reconnect your hand to the arm and it will be fine. Assuming of course you don't overdo it with the initial polygon count and make things too hard for yourself.
Also at 2:33 he accidentally skips over an important point, the tool he uses is "New Face From Edges" to make the new face and the shortcut is F I believe that's what he did as I got the same result.
Not quite sure how I stumbled across this one but even as a programmer I found this incredibly clear and understandable. Thanks for helping me understand when my artists talk about retopologising and n-gons
Thanks!
Things to keep in mind. Long and thin polygons will trip up Gouraud shader. It's not usually relevant today, but it was super relevant when you were targeting Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube era hardware and may still be relevant when targetting low-end mobile platforms.
More relevantly for today, Catmull-Clark subdivision trips up on triangles, so you're good on avoiding them. However it also trips up on odd-valence vertices. Normally in a pure quad mesh, every vertex has 4 edges connected to it, so the valence of the vertex is 4. You have built a bunch of 3- and 5-valence vertices in here, which are usually not as bad as tris outright, but will still cause waviness in the subdivided mesh output. Since pure 4-valence quad topologies are generally impractical, there's often no substitute for just winging it and taking the waviness and letting it be the model feature where necessary, building the topology adjustment around there.
I'm also not convinced that the industry should stick to Catmull-Clark subdivision invented in the 70s. I my experiments, i had the impression (but no mathematical proof) that the behaviour of the subdivision could be improved by introducing normal-based displacements that would depend on local topology and would also help the subdivision be somewhat volume preserving, since Catmull-Clark tends to deflate a lot. It's not like research ended there, there was Stam/Loop 2002 "Quad/Triangle Subdivision
".
Well hurry up and develop a subdiv plugin for us all to use then dammit lol. XD
Does anybody bother with Gouraud shading any more, when Phong shading is superior and doesn’t cost much on modern hardware?
Easy enough to add extra loop cuts next to the EVs to constrain their effect.
Also, your idea about normal-based displacements reminds me of Blender’s “weighted-normal” modifier. Worth giving that a try.
Lawrence D’Oliveiro Phong is an old term not really used anymore. It’s just vertex based shading or fragment shading whatever that shading is doing.
That said. Normal light linear fragment shaded today is not more expensive than vertex shading.
You got to be kidding me, right? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phong_shading
This just revolutionized my game of cutting shapes into spheres. A life saver. Thank you.
This was 4 years ago but the methods you've shown in this video are very helpful! This is going to save me a lot of time down the road. I've been searching for something like this for a while and here it is. Thanks!
Absolutely blew my mind. Doing fingers is always a pain in the butt
I paused at 0:08 and tried to recreate this. I had a hand with like 15 vertices loop trying to connect it to 6 vertices loop of the arm. I somehow managed to reduce 15~ vertices to 8 vertices and 6 vertices I increased to 8. Such satisfaction when I connected them! Although somehow the topology doesn't feel to look very good, but the overall result satisfies me. Thank you very much!
I am glad i found this
it was very helpful
Iam using blender from a month
And after reading comments i think iam lucky that i did not found it after server year of experience
Its just a month and i was searching for retopology techniques and i found this most helpful video
THANKS A LOT
This is the best 3D modeling video I've ever seen. Straight, to the point, delivering one message = you don't have to have those damn edge loops going all around your model
I've been doing this for a while now and I must say that it is extremely useful, BUT sometimes it completely destroys the flow and also sometimes there is a problem with the subdivision. You should use this on relatively flat or empty surfaces. For instance, an ear is more detailed, than the head, but at the same time there is a flat space before the ear begins, but a tear duct might be actually better with triangles, since there is detail all around the tear duct too, which'd be destroyed in the process.
Finally, a comment from someone who has real experience in SubD modelling.) All these methods to end loop cuts with a quad has been used for years but they are still rarely used as they usually produce bad shading.
Thank you. It’s not nearly as simple as this video makes it out to be. For one, you’re altering the number of edge loops on either side of the topology group in question. You’re also introducing poles, which isn’t something to be cavalier about, as they’re going to change shading and create “pinch” in your topology, which isn’t always desirable. So no, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to any topology problem.
Exactly. The only topology you'll ever need! To solve simple joining problems on planes and flat shaded meshes, maybe.... If that was all topology was, we'd have had awesome, fully automated retopo tools a decade ago.
Lmao, yeah, towards the end of the video I've been saying out loud at my screen: "yeah cool and now subdivide it, go ahead and subdivide, like you showed at the beginning". Who really does hardsurface today and not use subdivision tools?
@@vladimirlavrentyev9206 I'm a blender noob. What would actually happen if we never used the video's method and jsut had loop cuts going around the full model?
Thank you so much for making this short video, I really hate it when i have to sit through 30 minutes just for someone to get to the point, you really wasted no time! Appreciate it brother 🙏
I got this in my recommendations and I was like "Nah, I'm too tired to watch tutorials" but then I saw a 6 minutes in the title and decided to go for it and I'm glad I did. I would have missed a really amazing lesson. Thank you!
You could have just added it to your "Watch Later" list
@@Kyrelel In theory, yes, i could, but in reality my "watch later" list is the black box of youtube. Anything that goes in is never to be seen again
I remember coming to this video from a question I asked in reddit, someone helped me to this, and then i also shared this video a ton to whoever has asked me help about topology, people only do this when videos are NOT crap, this video is precious. ❤
This is probably the single most important video I've seen with regards to mesh modelling, I just wish I saw it earlier. Now I need to go and practice it over and over until it becomes second nature. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for explaining it in such a simple way! It seems so obvious now and I feel stupid for not being able to figure it out myself.
Wow I have been modeling for 19 years and this is best and fastest video on this topic I have seen! Very nice.
Jaw dropped at 2:50 and stayed there through 5:05. I feel like you just taught me how to do the Rubix cube in 10 seconds. An excellent illustration of the principles, thank you!
this video literally opened the door for 3D modelling for me, i just wanted to let you know how great of a video this is
Thank you!
I didn't realize how much I needed this explanation. There's no doubt that simplicity is the maximum sophistication.
Thank you very much, I'm saving the thumbnail so I can always go back to remember exactly how to deal with topology.
I am a total beginner at 3D art but I just know this is one of those art videos that I would watch as an expert and go "Wow I wish I had this tutorial when I was starting out"
the thumbnail worth millions❤
I've had problems with multiple edge loops going around my models since I started and couldn't figure out how you actually should do it. This really helped me thank you.
It's the best and simplest explanation about topology I ever found in internet. Thank you!
Been having trouble with my first model alone (with no tutorials) and you pretty much answered my problem after hours of trouble. Thank you sir!
Why am I here? I don't even do how to model.
I can't understand but it seems very interesting.
same here, was wondering why it is a problem if there are these loop cut thingies
@@RagbagMcShag it's because it adds loops in places unneeded and just clutters your model up plus when you want to smooth the model it can deform it
@@Ossie_Gaming Oh interesting, thanks for the info
Could some topology dude explain to us plebs here why this in the video is so awesome?
VerticalWit when he starts making cuts on the “ribbon” (the plane on the left) he shows a short process for increasing or decreasing the number of faces in different parts of a model. Off the top of my head, this kind of topology management is important for several reasons.
1. Keeping poly counts down. This is not as important these days, but still a concern for low-resource gaming.
2. For avoiding having unnecessary faces generated far away from the place you actually need them, and keeping the model “clean” of excess faces. This helps a lot when animating and weight painting, since having more or less faces densely packed in an area affects the way a mesh deforms under an armature, or has particles emitted from it in some particle systems.
3. Note how every face he drew with his method is a quad. Using his method specifically, you can still use loop cuts that will go all the way around a model, and other modifiers/transforms like subsurface will continue to work well, since you’re not including random triangles or n-gons in the mesh. This property, of maintaining the path of loops of connected faces, is what is being shown in the thumbnail of this video.
I started learn blender a few month ago. I just need to say this video is life saver for me. Thanks a lot.
I'm just at that moment when I'm getting into hard surface modeling and becoming aware of problems like this. Your tutorial will surely be useful in the future.
Thank God RUclips didn't suggest me this video 5 years later, I really needed such explanation. Great video!
Thank you so much for posting this video. I'm in my 40s, have ADHD and am attempting 3D modeling for the second time in my life. The first time was prior to medication, with poor tech that would crash and with software that was spline-based so dealing with the topology was EVERYTHING. As I have picked up Blender, I have had this distracting, anxiety in the back of my head that has been a roadblock. TOPOLOGY. I am someone that needs to know a little more about the machinery before I can feel comfortable using it and unfortunately, no-one titles youtube videos, HEY, the thing with the shapes and creasing and the part-mathy, part-real world stuff, I CAN HELP WITH THAT. After watching your video and with a rudimentary knowledge of anatomy it makes sense. You don't go from your fingers to your forearm with five bones. It's inefficiency use of energy and probably shitty mechanics. You build down with multiple bones decreasing and increasing based on the needs for flexibility until you get to the structure where all you need is rigid support. We of the neurodivergent thank you.
I second that
37, starting on round three myself. Keep on it mate, we'll get this eventually!
good for you! :)
This series might be the very best topo guidance I've seen anywhere. Thanks so much for sharing.
Great tutorial, ive spent literally hours making sure my edge loops did make it round my models so they all connected up. Now I can just cut them off at source. Cheers bud.
i've been using blender for years and i didn't believe the title but wow, i really needed this.
Oh my god, this is life changing. I've watched it three times now.
Thank you so much man.
Thank you. Glad you found it helpful.
@@DECODEDVFX Oh man, you have no idea... So many times I've stared at my pristine model for ten minutes before giving up and hitting ctrl R knowing that the topology will never be perfect again but consoling myself that this huge compromise is needed keep ngons off my mesh.
I owe you a pint.
@@davidmurphy563 A lot of people struggle with good topology, including myself - so you're not the only one.
@@DECODEDVFX Tell me one thing. I've thought a lot about this. What is your take on starting from a primative and dicing vs starting from a plane and extruding?
When I first look at an object this is the first decision I take (I have a bias to primative because you can control symmetry more precisely) but - say if I'm making a car - I'll choose planes because I know I'll need to get the edge flow of the topology to match the fundamental geometry of the object. Although, I'm thinking that what you've taught me here may change that.
What's your approach?
I generally start with whichever default shape most closely resembles the object I'm modeling - usually a cube or cylinder. I hardly ever model from a plane.
While applying this method isn't going to be simple 100% of the time, the principle is what matters. Don't think about deleting this video... regardless of its quality, you are implanting an important understanding of quads and polys and a smart way of thinking about the topology itself. Thank you!
This is a great tutorial from you, that was straight to the point.
I've watched this video at least 7 to 10 times and it finally clicked today when I saw the pattern. Excellent video and thank you!
Dude, I randomly clicked on this. I have no regrets. This will come in handy. Thank you.
This is the BEST topology video I've seen before! Short and understandable
this is one of the most valuable tutorials for topology. it helped me alot in my workflow. thanks!
I've been looking for this exact knowledge for years. I kind of found the 1 to 3 method once, but 1 to 2 was always nightmare for me. I'm so glad YT recommended me this.
Im gonna have to watch this like a billion more times because i dont even know what topology is but hopefully this will help fix some problems i find in my models.
i watched 40 minutes vidoes and this might be the only video that actually taught me how to do it.
Very underrated channel amazing videos, 1 minor thing to improve the videos on i would say is improving the background audio
Thank you. I now have a proper studio mic so the audio issues have been sorted.
I barely do any modelling, but thanks to RUclips now I know the solution to the problem I didn't knew I had.
A true master of toplogy, respect and salute. Thank you so much for solving the most difficult mystery for the NOOBIES, trully appreciated and will forever remember the NAME, of the master. Thank you.
Just recently I started trying out blender and did a really wonderful donut.
Just last night I went full on solo mode and tried to model my own phone. And oh boy! How badly I need this video as the loop cuts are everywhere! THANK YOU!
This has baffled me for so long!. Thank you for explaining it so clearly :-)
Thanks :)
Me with modeling minecraft block models voxel by voxel by hand.
My Lord, I can't thumbsup this enough. I wish this was shown to me back in 1.9 when I started playing with Blender and all my models had topology running all over the model because I couldn't make enough geometry for the mouth, the ears, the fingers, feet... I spent so much time inquiring around the forums back in them and nobody told me anything to solve my problem.
Damn, so uber duper useful! More THUMBS 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍THANK YOU SIR!
I think the easiest way to think about it is this: Each quad has 2 edges perpendicular to the direction of the topology which i call "front egdes" and the other edges I call "side egdes". Whenever you change the amount of faces, you turn one edge to be diagonal making up a front edge for one and a side edge for another quad. So if you want one more face, make one side edge to a front edge and you have one more front edge, hence one more quad, or reverse etc.
All I hear is: edge edge face edge quad quad lol (beginner here)
This comment made me understand not only the video itself, but why people use quads in the first place!
this was the thing that was missing in my life... after 10 years, somebody finally explained this like a normal person!
I just used this to make my first fork. Damn it's a sexy fork. Dat topology.
Dude this video right here helps so much nobody explains how they come to their conclusions and make it really hard to understand the process to be able to come up with these solutions for yourself they never explain what logic they are following thanks a bunch
...and it's actually a sub from me as well. I like where this is going and I'm pretty tired of donut gurus. Keep the great work!
Thank you!
Donut Guru... Ahahah ! Nice one.
g u r u s . nice
Newbie to 3D modelling. I had no idea why this was supposed to be helpful until, literally, the last thirty seconds when the lightbulb went off. Great video.
i didn 't understand anything but i'm still going to save this for whenever i start using blender.
Have you started Blender yet?
@@jaydenstorace3218 this is me from the future, i have not : ) i suck
@@Mayeru just do the donut tutorial, trust me it'll save your life if you're actually ever expecting to use blender. Patience and that tutorial will help a lot. It taught me a lot of the basics.
@@fadethecreator the donut tutorial? is it one of the quickstarts from Blender documentation?
@@Mayeru blender guru’s world famous donut tutorial, that’s the holy grail of starting points for many blender users. Blender guru is truly one of the best, takes the time to explain why he does what and assumed you knew nothing about blender before doing that particular tutorial. So if you’re ever going to use blender in life, be it this day, month, or some other year, just do yourself the major favor of starting there. Blender guru commented on this video too, so you can see that up there if you want.
Not one single dislike (as of this posting). This is so amazing, you sir just blew my mind. :)
RUclips recently started hiding dislikes. It's had 302.
But thanks anyway!
I think this is more on the beginner level not really the intermediate level. As you get more advanced, it's important to understand how to use poles to create pinch points and direct edge flow. I think an intermediate exercise would be how to use the minimal amount of faces to achieve the same effect.
u cant head to intermediate level without this 😅😅
as a beginner with no concept of this, I gotta say, this is a game changer. I've never modeled anything too complex and one of the main reasons for that is because once I started getting detailed and adding loop cuts and seeing all these loop cuts cutting around my whole model with no real purpose in most places I knew I was doing something wrong but I didn't know what, now I know. Thank you for this quick guide, totally ups my game.
At first I didn't quite get the point of what you were saying. I was like "at 1:27 just dissolve all those loop cuts."
It wasn't until I got to the end (and tried it myself) that I realized that doing it your way results in all quads!
Hi ! I'm still stuck on the same initial thought, what is so great about quads?
Is there cases where we're forced to reduce the number of faces manually like this?
@@TroglodyJeej you can loop cut through them easier.
With a square or a quad, going through the "middle of it" is easy because a line can just go in one edge and out the opposite.
If you go in one edge of a triangle or pentagon, there are two possible edges it can come out of. This means Blender gets confused if you try to loop cut (CTRL-R) it.
Also I think quads and squares deform much easier to it makes animation better.
(Ofc when it's rendered it's turned into triangles anyway, but at that point you're done working with it so it doesn't matter)
Even that single image in the intro has helped me a ton. Thanks so much for this.
I've been avoiding learning this skill. Thanks for posting it!
Same here pal
I've been doing 3D for about 5 years now and I've never seen something like this. Thank you!
I remember watching a video of someone modeling the Sanic. He made a lopp cut just above the eyee for the eyeball to fit and this loop cut had gone all the way down through neck, around the body and then back to the neck and ended above the other eye. It was hilarious.
As a visual person, this literally solves the topology problem that had prohibited me from fully understanding what I'm doing when making 3D models and stuff starts getting weird. This is a godsend; the thumbnail graphic alone says so much! Thank you for this video so much!
Glad it helped!
This is genius! You're a genius!
Hardly a genius, but thank you!
Best and most practical video on topology I've seen yet.
Well he didn't lie, my life has been changed and I am now illuminated with forbidden knowledge
You have totally made topology so much easier than anyone else. Thanks for this
i feel like a goldfish watching this because you explained everything beautifully but i'm still too ape brain to understand topology
This is hands down the best video on topology IMO.
this amazing honestly. an eye opener for me. Thanks very much for this tip.
I am a beginner. While your video wasn't easy for me, but it definately got me one step closer to understanding topology. I kind of get the concept of disconnecting the side that doesn't need too much toplogy from the one that needs it with quads. I think it's a big lesson for me, so thank you!
Well done with a great practical example, thank you! Subbed.
Thanks!
This might be the most important video I've watched since starting to learn Blender.
Glad to help
Besr video i saw in a while, thank you i sub, liked and share! Keep making those short videos of topology fixing.
Thanks man.
I'm just a beginner and now I know how much I'm a beginner, since I did not even understand what was the problem, let alone all the further explanation. Lots of like so it is probably useful for people that are experts. Good luck to everyone.
I clicked on the video because I wanted to learn more about topology...
never delete this video
The thumbnail says everything already. Thank you for sharing.
Do the changes in direction have an impact on smooth shading?
I saw a tutorial once, where they talked about engons and they teached and showed that there is more of a problem with topology direction changes.
Anyone got experience with that?
it does, and there is no escape from it sadly
This is the type of solution that was so freaking obvious that, for some reason, I never thought about doing it. Blessed Post this helps a lot of juggling unnecessary topology lol
I don't even know what topology is, how was I recommended this?
Blender has chosen you
i downloaded blender today since I heard filmic got integrated, now it shows me this, yeah okay i'll start blending
seems like Google is trying to manipulate people into certain topics/jobs..
Thank you! I have begun modelling since 2 months and people kept telling me "the topology here and here is bad" but they never told me *why* it's bad. At least thanks to this video now I have half idea how to split faces correctly.
that was very useful indeed, thank you