Question about retopo

[edoardo]

Hello guys,
I have a question about retopologizing,
Often times in zbrush I make sketches of heads starting from spheres or cubes,
since the lips are modeled shut and they are a single surface with the rest of the head I run into troubles whenever I try retopologize them in order to get an animatable mesh.
I see many base meshes that still don't have any hole for eyes or mouth so I suppose there's a way to work around that problem in the retopo stage...
The reason I ask this is that personally I prefer to sculpt using that kind of basemesh but whenever I tried to get normal maps for a gameres I usually don't know how to get rid of all the artifacts I get in the mouth area.
Thanx in advance

[Mark Dygert]

Well, there are several things you can do.

1) The artifacts might not be coming from the way you sculpt but the way you unwrap the head. Maybe posting pictures of the artifacts and the unwrap would help us advise you where to make changes?

2) you can sculpt with the mouth shut most of the way, if that's easy for you and then open it

3) sculpting on a mesh that has holes creates a lot of problems and normally you want to create sockets for the eyes. You should probably create the inner mouth separately. There are just too many problems trying to sculpt on the inside of a mesh.

4) Your base mesh for sculpting doesn't need to be your low poly. You're free to create any kind of head out of any kind of polys you want as long as they are roughly the same shape. Most people I know create the high poly then create the low around it.