Purpose of Retopology

[bryansailer]

I have watched different courses and tutorials on character design. Some artists retopo their characters and some artists did not. What is the main purpose to retopo a character?

[Marc_Carlyon]

Depends on use,
Mostly retopology is if you want to put it into a game engine as you dont want a high poly character there but want to make a high poly one to bake the maps off and place them to the low poly one.
If its staying in blender or the person does not want to teach retopology which is usually the case because its hard then its not done

Hope this answers your question

[FedPete]

You can do retopo by hand or let Blender do it. By hand, you have more control over edge loops, needed (for example) in facial expressions.