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Heya,

I don't think there's a right way or a wrong way, and attempting to fully model this part in subdiv is certainly an interesting exercise in and of itself. I am sure you've learned a few things by doing so already, and it is a also a good test to see what is enjoyable (and practical) and what isn't. And I am sure the more experienced highpoly modelers around here will chime in with suggestions and solutions.

FWIW I personally always find it frustrating (and borderline absurd) when modeling a part ends up taking so much longer that designing it. Having to spend too much time and energy on redirecting loops or solving flowing quads is a bit nonsensical when compared to the much more straightforward sequence of actions one would perform when modeling the same part in CAD from a drawing for instance.

Now this is not a suggestion to use CAD for this of course. What I am trying to get at is that if there's just too much friction being introduced by this or that process, then perhaps the more tangential approaches become viable even if they may feel a bit hacky.

Also I think it's always good to remember that at the end of the day it's the lowpoly that really counts because that's what goes into the actual game. Hence building a clean lowpoly with hard edges first (when possible/appropriate) is IMHO never a bad idea. It's never wasted work, and it can be leveraged later to either build a "good-ish enough" pseudo-high (using bevels or a round edge shader), or be used as a base for a proper subdiv model after removing a few edges. Win-win. Whereas worrying too much about building a high first can mean spending too much time on superfluous things.



Now of course this doesn't really solve the actual exercise of finding a working subdiv-only solution for this part, and some projects would certainly require a high to be built first and foremost in order to be art-reviewed. Just sharing a slightly more tangential approach that I personally find more flexible and most of the time faster (but with some compromises).

5rettski said:

With the ear thing, I just didn't know if the traditional way to go at that is by modeling the ear separate and then merging it on, or building it directly off of your already made mesh.

Maybe this fine gif from Kris Costa (falling into the 2000s) gives clarity for you.

Sempoo said:

One thing worth mentioning: Texel density directly depends on a given camera and its resolution in a final render.

Required/desired texel density depends on that

Texel density itself is static and directly related to object dimensions and texture dimensions.  It does not change unless you modify UVs or scale the object 

In this case.  The UVs are probably the root cause of any problems like pior said - it's certainly nothing to do with the available texture space

Finally found an image that I was looking for earlier and that I wanted to share here : a very cool character design and render by Pascal Blanché.



This is from 2002, and was done with much less resources than what we have access to today especially in terms of rendering speed and power. Yet the artist managed to make it work : the scene is not overly detailed but it is still fully textured and has convincing lighting, and above all the composition and pose are well thought out and tell a story. Very cool stuff.