How to Retopologize a Head like a Boss

First create a loop around the eye. Keep the loop symmetrical both horizontally and vertically. The
horizontal dividing line should pass through the points at which the eye pinches.

Eventually we will have poles at the vertices marked pink. Sometimes it can also be useful to add a
pole at the vert marked blue.
Now create a loop around the muzzle. Once again, keep the loop symmetrical top to bottom with
the centre line lining up with the centre of the mouth. If you haven’t already, turn on symmetry in
your retopology software of choice.

We have establishes our first 2 poles.

Note that you always want to keep an edge running down the centre line. Try to avoid this:

The next loop is the lips, once again following the rules of symmetry and matching the number of
polygons/edges that are already laid down. Hopefully by now you have noticed that the loops are
generally following the flow of anatomy.

Don’t worry about the space in the mouth just now. Eventually we will create what’s called a mouth
bag, which is the geometry for the walls of the mouth.
Now create a loop for the ear. This runs around the perimeter of the base of the ear. Poles will
emerge in the four corners

Now create the perimeter of the face. Take note of how the polygons a laid out for the corner of the
jaw. It is setup to create a special 3 edge vertex later.
Also note that the edges again line up with those already laid down, and we now have three new
poles.

Now that the main loops are in place we can start to fill in these gaps.

Don’t worry if your retopo mesh is sinking into the reference mesh. This is because we don’t have
enough resolution yet. However, it is much faster to retopo the whole head at the lowest resolution
possible with strategic edge flow that allows for cuts than it is to try retopo the head at full
resolution right off the bat.
With this in mind, add 4 new polygons running above the ear loop and round towards the centre of
the head. Our second ear-loop pole emerges.

Repeat this process for the polyloop above. Consider the polygons above the ear loop the side of the
head, and the other polygons the back of the head.
From a top view we just want to fill in the gaps, adding just 2 new vertices. Notice this leaves us with
another 3 edge vertex.

The lack of resolution is really showing here, but we’re going to sort it out very soon.
Continue these polyloops down the back of the head, creating our final ear-loop pole.

Round the side, route the left polygons round the underside of the jaw, and the right polygons down
the neck. Once again we have a new pole.
Continue the underside of the jaw polygons to the centre

Underneath the jaw, route the polygons towards the centre as illustrated. With this arrangement,
the edge coming from the pole on the chin will connect to the new pole which is about to emerge.

Zremesher just isn’t capable of this level of precision 

Fill in the gaps.

I will need to make a new cut in the neck to complete this section.
Now is a good time to add resolution to the face. Let’s add a couple of loops into the neck so that
the retopo mesh better follows the reference mesh

Now make a cut into each face of the eye loop like this
Add 4 more cuts on either side of the vertical midline. Don’t worry that the polygons look
narrow/stretched - we will fix this soon

Cut on either side of the midline of the mouth

And down by the centre of the face

And across the forehead

Now cut on either side on the centre lines of the ear loop. Don’t worry about the left side, this was
already cut when we cut into the mouth.

I will add 3 more cuts into the loop of the eye and mouth, and running underneath the mouth
Finally, add one more cut into the loop of the ear.

Before making the cuts our mesh had 212 faces. After adding a few very quick cuts out mesh now
has 804 faces! This is why it’s important to get your (very) low res mesh correct first. Everything is
super fast from there. However, there is still work to do!
We need to tidy up the polygons in order to reduce stretching and make sure the edges are
following the anatomy how we want them to. Now would be a good time to pull out the reference
images that came in this pack 

Before

After
Create 5 faces on both the up and down planes of the nose

Connect the middle 2 faces to the bridge of the nose and cut them in half
Now bring the loop from the mouth up towards the nose. Don’t connect to the bridge of the nose
though. Change direction and route into the nostril as illustrated. This will create a new pole.

We’re now at what I think is the trickiest part so take it slow. In my experience, the next part is
easier to wrap your head around if you arrange the vertices to create this triangle shape illustrated
below. Then we can easily fill in the gaps.
Similarly, I pull the vertex (marked orange below) back to better visualise where the next polygons
will go

We have a new pole that sits in the crease of the nose

Are we all good? That’s the tricky part taken care of 

The first thing I will do here is delete this polygon. This is so I can place a pole in the correct spot.
We now want to run these 3 rows underneath the nose

I will do the same for the next row except I will turn up into the nose before I reach the centre
And fill in the space, creating a new pole

Inside the nostril, simply disregard the flow of edges leading in and create a new loop
Fill in the final 2 polygons and pack them in real tight

Cut in edge loops as required

Now we need to fill in the eye. We want the edges from the top run into the edges at the bottom
but it can sometimes be tricky to eyeball which edge should run into which.

A simple way to get this right is to remember that the horizontal line of symmetry runs through the
area at which the eye pinches.
I add 3 cuts – 2 to add resolution for the eyelids, and one down the centre so we can make the eyelid
into a loop

Finally, we have come to the ear. As I mention in the tutorial video, I am less concerned with
following such a rigid formula when it comes to the ear. Generally, the ear doesn’t deform too much
anyway. The key things I try to do are make sure the edges follow the flow of anatomy, and make
sure poles are placed where the anatomy naturally collapses.
First I create some polygons along the spine of the ear, matching the number of polygons that run
into the head.

This also flows into the inside of the ear

I then attach this to the head

And make a cut

I’m not afraid to make new cuts if I need to, but I try to avoid making cuts towards the face. I am not
concerned with keeping the ear loop symmetrical anymore

Then I lay in some geometry for the antihelix. I am slowly creeping up on the shape of the ear.
Then connect to the spine

There isn’t much geometry for the tragus, but making a cut here will cut geometry into the face.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I want to show you a way to avoid it.
If we momentarily reroute this polyloop towards the tragus…

…we can use 4 polygons to describe its shape, rather than just 1
We can even cut this to avoid the polygons from the antihelix running into the face too.

I fill in most of the ear now. Again I’m just thinking about the flow of anatomy, I’m not being overly
specific with the placement of polygons. The only plan I have at this point is to leave a space for the
ear hole
Remember how we did the nostrils? We’re going to do the same right now. Create a loop within the
space, disregarding the direction of surrounding polygons

Doing this always creates poles, however this has created a 6 sided pole. Generally 6 sided poles are
best avoided, but this pole is so well hidden I will let it slide this time.
Another trap we can fall into here is the hole can’t be filled in as neatly as we would like, leaving
behind a triangle

As with the 6 sided pole, this triangle is very well hidden and so we can get away with it.

[note: while my ocd would usually cause me to remove these anomalies, I wanted to demonstrate that we don’t always
have to. As a general rule, if you need to leave them just make sure they’re out of view]
As with the nostril I will now pack in the centre and add in cuts for resolution

Now clean up the polygons and that’s it for retopology! Remember each mesh is different so if you
feel like you need to make more cuts to better define the shape – go for it! There isn’t really a one
size fits all, but you will find this method to be very diverse and very good for understanding
topology. We just have one final thing to do before we can move onto the next stage – model a
mouth bag!
In your 3D modeller of choice, grab the edges around the hole of the mouth and extrude them back

View from inside the head

Now extrude the mouth bag downwards (see illustration) so that the end can’t be seen when the
mouth is opened.
Add cuts as required. Make sure you add extra cuts around the lips area for resolution.

Now close the gap and that’s basically it!

[normals are flipped for illustration only]

You can get a lot more technical with the mouth bag but that’s going beyond the remit of this
tutorial. The next stage of this tutorial is to project the sculpted details onto the new mesh (see
YouTube video – coming soon)