Why Manual Retopology in Blender Is So Frustrating
And How to Make It Easier
If you’ve ever sculpted something you’re proud of in Blender—some gnarly creature or heroic character—you’ve probably had this sinking moment of realisation: now I have to retopologize it.
And that’s when the fun stops.
Retopology is one of those necessary evils in character creation. The main goal is to reduce face count but you also need it for animation as you its needed for clean deformation. Also you need it for texturing as you cant unwrap a high poly sculpt. With regards to texturing good topology can mean the difference between a good and bad bake of your texture maps such as the normals or the cavity (the shading in the crevasses).
Let’s talk about why it’s so frustrating—and more importantly, how to make it better.
The Problem: Sculpting is Creative, Retopology is... Not
When you're sculpting, you're in the flow. You’re pushing and pulling digital clay, making artistic decisions every few seconds. Retopology, on the other hand, feels like assembling furniture with no instructions.
The mental switch from creative mode to technical mode is hard. And if you're doing it manually with tools like the default Shrinkwrap modifier, Snap to Face, or maybe an addon like BSurfaces, it can get be tedious.
The Interface Doesn’t Help
Blender has what you need to do manual retopology, but it’s not the most intuitive process. You’ll be switching between snapping options, tweaking modifiers like Shrinkwrap, and making heavy use of the knife tool or poly builds. It’s a bit of a puzzle, especially when working around complex areas like faces or joints.
Automated tools like RetopoFlow are good but they dont produce good edge flow which is important for clean animation without pinching especially around complex areas like the eyes or mouth.
Why You Still Need to Do It
So good manual retopology and therefore good topology lets you bake textures properly, deform smoothly when rigging, and keep your polycount under control.
In short, if you want quality results, especially for characters that move, manual retopo is still the best option.
How to Make It Easier
You don’t have to suffer through manual retopology entirely on your own. Here are a few tips to make it more bearable:
Break the model into parts – Focus on the torso, then limbs, then the head. It’s easier to manage than tackling everything at once.
Start with key loops – Get clean edge loops around the eyes, mouth, and shoulders first. Once they’re in and you have you key edge flow, you can just fill the rest in.
Use symmetry and modifiers – its often best to keep you models symmetrical as far as you are able and the use the Mirror modifier to save a great deal of time. The shrinkwrap modifier is essential for sticking the new topology to the original shape. the bsurface addon can speed things up once you do get used to it but it does take time getting used to.
Adjust snapping settings to start – Set Snap to Face, enable Project Individual Elements, and get comfortable with Blender’s snapping quirks. Its important to have both snapping and Shrinkwrap enabled because they compliment each other and its pretty much impossible to do it without them.
Don’t chase perfection – Get the flow right first. You can tweak spacing and shape later. Don’t worry too much about ngons and triangles especially as a beginner just try and fill in the whole shape. As long as you have the main edge flow as mentioned in the earlier tip then you should be ok with tidying up later .
One More Thing
Manual retopology isn’t exciting, but it’s an important part of character modelling. especially if you want to create high end characters. Learning to do it properly gives you control over your models and makes everything that comes after—texturing, rigging, animation a lot easier.
If you want to learn more about character creation and retopology, check out my character course here.
Thank you.