Need help for character retopology for game

elfronza

Hello there, this is my first post here

I am currently creating a character for my portfolio, I want to use this opportunity to learn a few skills on creating character for games, however, I am facing some problems with my workflow.

Basically, this is my character.

And this is some of the elements I want to scatter around him, on his necklace and bracelets:

I am planning to make a few accesories for him, bracelets, necklaces and pendants. However, I am very confused about how to make it nice with the least amount of polys. If I try to make everything with geometry, I will be using thousands of polygons just for that, and it might not look so nice. I though about creating the chest accessories backed on a plane with normal map to simulate depth and an alpha, but I fear the result might look a bit dull. I dont want to make the accessories and the body to be the same geometry model.

This are my references:

I wonder how they created the low poly versions of the accessories from the high poly versions for these characters from the game From Dust. Even the feathers and the hair in the back, I dont understand how they were able to make such a detailed low poly version without compromising polycount



I will be greatfull for any advice

thank you

Haftoof

Maybe they made low poly planes and combined it with maps and texturing?

Lord Waffles

^
Usually with things like fur and hair you would overlap alpha planes to give it a denser feel. In Zbrush you could also use fibermesh and set it to lower poly planes so exporting it wouldn't break your computer.

Cint128

Yer I agree, alot of the props are probably baked into the low polygon mesh. As an example you can see in the top untexture image you provided the toes are all separate. In the bottom textured images the toes are baked into the normal map instead of being done with polygons. I imagine other bits for example the chest piece are done the same way.