I can't figure out how best to retopologise a character for a game engine when the character consists of multiple parts.

Correct me if I wrong but I believe for a game engine such as unity my character needs to be one seamless mesh?

My character is in 2 parts...the body and the hair. I have not yet attached the hair using a boolean modifier because if I retopologise the character as a single mesh there are too many parts of the hair that hang down around the front, back and sides of the head which I cannot reach.

The only thing I can think of is to make a separate mesh of the body+hair combined (my high poly) and then retopologise the body and hair separately so I can actually reach the inside parts of the hair.

But the hair is very contoured inside and it wont sit flush against the surface of the skull.

This sounds like it will cause a very messy geometry. Maybe that is ok but it seems like I will also have lots of internal geometry that I don't need.

What is the best practice for this kind of problem? There must be a way to do It cleanly whilst not leaving messy and/or unseen geometry?

Is there a way I can retopologise the single high-poly mesh when the underside of the hair is so difficult to reach?

Also what are the implications for baking normals if I merge two separate meshes and it leaves geometry where the meshes don't touch under the hair?

I have retopologised a character before but it had fairly flat surfaces and no multiple meshes or overhanging areas that I couldn't reach.

Of the many tutorials I have watched on retopologising game characters thay never show anything more than how the retopo a simple head or something where there is only a single mesh with no hard to reach parts.

I have pasted a picture of the hair I am trying to retopologise around.

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Id be greatful if anyone could help me to figure this out. Thanks!

  • $\begingroup$ Unity doesn't need one seamless mesh. This should work witout any modification. $\endgroup$ – FFeller Oct 17 at 15:49
  • $\begingroup$ Oh ok I was convinced I had read that it needed a single uninterupted mesh per game object - thanks for reeducating me :) So as long as the the 2 retopologised meshes are joined as a single object then it should be fine? Also what about baking normals - if I join 2 meshes to form a single object then am I able to make a single normal map? $\endgroup$ – gezinspace Oct 17 at 15:55

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