Head Retopology - Blender Character Sculpt Tutorial part 4

Tutorial Summary

The tutorial demonstrates a practical workflow for retopologizing a sculpted Blender head into a lighter, quad-based mesh. The instructor plans the edge flow, builds topology over the sculpt, cleans it up, and uses modifiers and crease weights to preserve important facial forms.

1. Plan the topology

• Hide the reference images and use Blender’s sculpt paintbrush to mark important edge loops on the sculpt.
• Map out the main areas separately:
  • Loops around the eyes, including one near the eyelid crease.
  • Facial flow from the eye and nose toward the chin and jaw.
  • Loops around the lips and nostrils.
  • The hairline, ear, neck boundary, and back of the head.
• Reduce the guide marks’ brightness with the Color Filter so they remain visible without obscuring the sculpt.
• Hide the body and ear when they are not needed, making the face easier to work on.

2. Build the facial mesh

• Add a plane, merge its vertices at the center to create a single starting vertex, and enable snapping.
• Set snapping to Face Project and enable projection onto individual elements so vertices can be placed on the sculpt.
• Turn on In Front for the retopology object to make it easier to see through the sculpt.
• Extrude vertices along the painted guides, filling faces as the mesh develops. Use Ctrl+R to add edge loops where more geometry is needed.
• Add a Mirror modifier and enable clipping so the two halves meet at the center. Keep center vertices aligned to the mirror plane.
• Build the nose and nostril topology carefully, following the nose ridge and nostril contours.
• Create matching loop structures above and below the eyes, and use Grid Fill where appropriate to fill larger patches.
• For the mouth, bring the mesh to the outer edge of the lips, then extrude and position loops around the mouth opening. Use GG (Edge Slide) to place a loop along the sharper part of the lip.
• Continue the topology over the forehead, top, back, and underside of the head, keeping the neck opening clear. Add or merge vertices as needed to make the patches fit.

3. Retopologize the ear

• Apply the Mirror modifier before working on the ear.
• Select the loop where the face mesh will connect to the ear, then use Shift+H to hide everything else temporarily.
• Turn snapping off while extruding around the ear rim, then turn it back on when placing vertices on the ear surface.
• Add edge loops to help the mesh follow the ear’s shape and inner ridge.
• Fill the ear’s surfaces with quads where possible. If a triangle remains, route an edge loop through it to turn it into a quad.

4. Clean up and refine

Blender’s Smooth tool can help even out a selected patch, but use it carefully near open boundaries—such as the eye or mouth openings—and near the mirror center, where vertices can split or distort.

The instructor prefers the Slide Relax brush in Sculpt Mode for many cleanup adjustments:

• Enable wireframe display so the edges are visible.
• The brush moves vertices while trying to preserve the mesh’s overall shape.
• Hold Shift to relax the spacing between edges.
• Avoid the center seam and open facial boundaries.

Add and apply modifiers in a careful order. The demonstrated workflow is to add a Subdivision Surface modifier, apply the Mirror modifier, apply subdivision at level one, delete one half of the mesh without selecting center vertices, and add a new Mirror modifier.

Shade the mesh smooth and add a level-two subdivision modifier to inspect the result. Because the extra smoothing may make the head look too soft, sharpen key forms with Mean Crease values on selected vertices. Use crease weights around the brow, nose, nostrils, lips, jaw, and ear to keep those features from being overly smoothed.

The resulting topology is basic but suitable for the project and useful as a base mesh for future sculpting. The next tutorial covers body retopology.

Speakers and sources

• Bran Sculpts — The tutorial’s narrator and demonstrator; no other speaking participants are identifiable.
• Background music — Credited in the video metadata to Henry Keate / TheRelaxedMovement.