Blender Master Class

Topology

Topology describes the way that the edges and faces of a mesh connect and flow across its surface. We covered the basics of topology when creating the base meshes for sculpting the Bat Creature and Spider Bot—namely, creating even loops of vertices around the arms and legs and avoiding triangular faces. Now let’s talk about why we do things this way.

There are many ways to create meshes that have the same basic shapes but use very different configurations of faces in their construction, as you can see in Figure 5-1.

While the shapes in Figure 5-1 are roughly the same, the middle mesh is the most useful because its geometry flows with the form of the face, creating loops around the eyes and the mouth and running neatly down the neck and ...