This obviously depends on context, but taking someone else's 3d model from partial to finished is often slower than starting over from scratch, because of topol

This obviously depends on context, but taking someone else's 3d model from partial to finished is often slower than starting over from scratch, because of topological considerations. For a random piece of environment, it's probably a good workflow, but for hero objects, where topology is downstream from the art direction, I'm not sure you get much time savings from a partially-complete model. Of course, there may be workarounds to topological speedbumps with respect to deformation/animation, texture, detail, etc, that would make the 80% right 3d model very useful.