Zellator’s post got me wondering about retopologizing.
I’ve had some trouble modeling the ear. And no matter how many
times the mesh was subdivided I could not get good results
until I retopologized the mesh. In fact I had to retopologize
it several times to get the result and predictable “mud” behaviour.
(I probably did it 2-3 times due to my inexperience with retopologizing but still ... )
How often do you do it and more importantly when do you do it.
Do you do it at an early stage ONLY or it’s something you do at
several stages of your modeling (even if it’s just small tweaks).
I just want to know what is your general approach to the whole
modeling/topology issue.
It would be nice if you could provide some links to helpful
resource on this topic (if you know of any).

V

my workflow is mostly....

quik basemesh in maya…
rough sculpt in mud… (volume, silhouette, pose, proportions)
retopo in maya or 3dcoat…
use this new mesh as new base (level0) for detail sculpting in mud…
uvs in uvlayout and maya…
bake, paint in mud…

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christoph-schaedl/6/558/73b