The re-topology of a mesh, as the name itself explains, is simply the reconstruction of that mesh with a different topology; usually, the re-topology is used to obtain a low resolution mesh from a high resolution one.

In our case, this is obviously needed because we are later going to rig and animate our Gidiosaurus, and these tasks would be almost impossible with a mesh as dense as the high resolution sculpted one; we not only need to reconstruct the shape of the mesh with a lower number of vertices, but also with the edge-loops properly placed and flowing for the best render and deformation of the character's features.

In Blender, we have several tools to accomplish this task, both hardcoded into the software or as add-ons to be enabled, and in this chapter, we are going to see them.