Fixing Kit's Topology

Today I am using Mudbox to see where the issues are in Kit's topology and then going to fix them one by one.

All the problems are along the vertical mid-line; this is from when I halved Kit and mirrored the other half across to make her symmetrical. Where the mid vertexes and faces meet, some of them have been merged together and some faces have become not quads.

Unfortunately I seem to of had continuous issues like this all through the creation of my character. I am getting better at rectifying these issues each time but it is time-consuming and stops me from moving forward to the next step in the character creation process.

Every time I fix something, more problems appear.

All the faces here are quads and there are no stray vertexes. All the edge loops continue all the way round the model. I am struggling to find the issue in the topology.

This is the view of those faces from inside the model. I thought maybe that the model might have double-faced or that there might be extra edges on the inside. So far I can't see anything out of place or anything that should be causing an issue.

I've now fixed all the other topology issues apart from the neck.

To fix the other problems, I deleted any stray vertices, used the target weld to merge some of the vertices, and used the multi-cut tool to create new edges where needed.

After looking very closely at the problem area, I saw that two of the edges were not completely connected. This must have been where an edge loop ran through here vertically before, but the edgeloop and vertices have been deleted - leaving these: separate edges that need to be deleted and new edges put in. I missed what the problem was before from further away it just looks like one edge; it's only when zoomed in close to these edges can you see that they are uneven.

After deleting the edges in the problem area and re-drawing them in with multi-cut, I exported my model to Mudbox again to check for issues. Finally, it looks like I have no more topology issues on my model.

Now I can move on to separating the fingers to make painting and animation easier, making a mouth bag so that Kit's mouth can be animated, then checking again for topology issues - fix them if there are any and move on to re-UVing her.

The unit is coming to an end and I am finding it frustrating that I haven't been able to get further on with my character. Considering that this Unit was my first time properly learning Maya, I am happy with how much I have learnt and the skills I have gained, but it is still disappointing that I haven't been able to get either of my characters fully finished. Even the things I have listed above I am unlikely to be able to get them all done before the end of the unit.

Over the summer I am going to watch tutorials and practice maya to improve my skills. This year I haven't had a computer at home so I have found it difficult to practice or get work done but I have just bought a desktop so over the summer I will be able to practive and next year I will find the workload easier as I can do work at home.

#unit2