Topology Correction, Step 3 (Re-writing)

This is the most dreadful part not because its hard, its because its really tedious, long, and mind numbing.

There is no way I can describe you this process with only words and pictures, but I will try.

There are also few tricks I use while rewriting the topology that you might find useful, but for now lets get started with the basics;

When re-writing the topology what you are doing is filling out the gaps we left when we deleted those parts of the mesh and shaping them in such a way that they follow the RIG we assigned earlier.

There are few things you need to get use to, this is a messy process and its easy to make mistakes, Do try to avoid triangles, they don't affect the mesh in ZBrush on such a scale as they do in Maya, but since we have to rig and animate this guy, you need to keep in mind, this is going to Maya.

Your best friend in this process is ADAPTIVE SKIN and PREVIEW ... or just pressing ''A'' on your keyboard,

what this will allow you to do is preview how your topology is working, 

Back to the basics, your goal is to connect dots, and sometimes those dots are not as friendly as they might seam, so for that I developed my personal way of connecting them, 

If you remember from previous parts of this tutorial when I was talking about the Q W E R keys,

You should know that ''W'' controls the DRAW MODE, and that ''E'' controls the MOVE MODE.

Now, depending on what you can get the most precision out of, mouse or your tablet, in any case, always hold your hand over the ''W'' and ''E'' key and then move around with your mouse/tablet...

So first of press ''E'' to get into the MOVE MODE once there, you cant by mistake draw lines that you don't want, after you select a Point on your topology you wish to connect with another point, press the ''W'' key and then click on that point, 

what this does is giving you more control over the points and and less chance to screw up, it looks somewhat like this; 

Good Job, you connected the first two points out of several hundred!

(please keep in mind that the lines you make while connecting those points should follow the shape of the mesh we made into the rig)

And don't forget to always press ''A'' to view your mesh because errors can always sneak up on you, 

One more Advice, the lines you make while connecting those points are the base on which ZBrush builds your mesh, so if you have a part of the mesh you are planing on going heavy on the details, add more points and connections, and if there is a part you know you are not going to sculpt as much, you can always add less connections to it (this saves up on time too).

Here are few examples;
Example1_Wireframe;

Example1_AdaptiveSkin;

Example2_Wireframe;

Example2_AdaptiveSkin;

One of the most common errors you are going to encounter while building your topology is points that seem to be connected, but when you press ''A'' you see there is a hole at that place.

Here is a example;

In this picture everything looks alright and connected; 

(this pictures were taken before I started the tutorial, and I took them just so i dont forget about this, so some naming might be a bit different, its nothing important)

But when you press ''A'' you see something like this; 

what happened here is as following, if you zoom in you'll still see that everything is connected;

What you need to do then is press ''E'' on your keyboard to enter into MOVE mode and move around the points until you find the one that isn't connected properly, once you find it, just ALT+Click on the point that's out of place to delete it and just reconnect them;

Unfortunately this is all I can do to make you understand this process with just pictures and words, I strongly recommend going on YouTube or any other source of information to gain better understanding of this via Clips