Retopology of the ear

Figure 5.48 shows us the ear we will be working on:

Figure 5.48 – Close-up of the ear

As we did for the face, we are going to map out the peaks and valleys, as shown in Figure 5.49:

Figure 5.49 – Peaks and valleys defined with vertices on the ear

Then comes the agonizing task of joining the faces in a way that does not break topology rules. Unfortunately, there are not too many tricks here other than trial and error. Many 3D artists tend to use the ear to hide their messy topology. This is acceptable because the ear usually does not deform much, and is very easy to UV unwrap, even with bad topology. The level of detail in an ear, and its shape, can also radically change the topology required. For this reason, it is usually not worth potentially sinking hours into perfect ear topology. This ear ended up looking like Figure 5.50.

Figure 5.50 – Ear covered...