​Regina Xia

Character Retopology & Animation

In the ImmerX project, we designed an interactive AR/VR character—a mine-themed female character who can respond to the player’s actions. Due to Quest 3’s performance limitations, we needed a low-poly character without compromising the visual quality.

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To optimize performance, I used a retopology workflow:

1. Sculpting the high-poly character in ZBrush.

2. Retopologizing in Maya using the Quad Draw tool, carefully planning edge loops for animation-friendly topology and clean silhouette flow.

3. UV Unwrapping the low-poly model with efficient space usage and minimal stretching.

4. Baking normal, curvature, AO, and height maps in Substance Painter using the high-poly version.

5. Texturing the model with a stylized yet optimized material approach.

6. Rigging and Animating the character for real-time interaction.

7. Testing in Quest 3, ensuring real-time performance and visual fidelity were balanced.

 

This process successfully reduced the model’s complexity while maintaining its personality and animation quality, allowing smooth real-time performance on mobile AR/VR devices.