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As sculpting programs become the standard go-to tool to begin creating a model, developing new topology has become a necessary stage of many pipelines.
The process of retopology is similar to a style of polygon modelling known as edge modelling, where a mesh is built by creating strips of polygons to create rings and loops to produce the final mesh. The main difference is that when retopologising we use a version of our high-resolution model as a ‘live’ model that we can snap our new geometry to.
The Quad Draw function in Maya is excellent and has a flexible set of tools that allow users to complete the task at hand. It reminds me a lot of Topogun, my go-to software for retopology before Quad Draw was introduced several versions ago.
If you find that working with Quad Draw greatly slows down the viewport, there may be a number of different reasons for this. Viewport lag can be difficult to diagnose, however we must remember that a key stage of retopology is the use of a high-res ‘reference’ mesh, and how heavy that data set is will determine how fast the Maya viewport can update.
This can be also compounded by other factors, one of them being the spec of the system you are running. Maya will run on a fairly modest system, but you certainly won’t get the best performance, particularly when working on heavy scenes.
Finally, the process of retopology can actually slow down your workflow, and this is what we are going to focus on changing for a smoother working experience. Bear in mind that for every point and face you
create, Maya will be creating a history state. This history builds up, and if you are working with a large data set and continuing to retopologise as a single continuous mesh, then your viewport will start to slow down.
First, ensure that you keep clearing your history, as this will alleviate some of the performance dips and reduce the risk of Maya crashing, particularly on systems with less RAM.
The next step will be to break up our retopology into logical parts as we create it. This will be less tasking for the viewport to deal with, as it will be producing less history states and working with smaller polygon counts at one time. Make sure to keep track of your edge numbers so that when you come to combine the separate parts together, it all lines up.