Probably too late to say but a good workflow to use is to sculpt those small details on a separate layer so you can turn them on and off at will. Hindsight it 20/20 I suppose
You are right "no limit for ideal"! But 3d is my hobby over 15 years. First 5 years - without internet, tutorials or something helpful. I know something, but can't do really nice human model, afraid Zbrush interface and have problems with anatomy. You got really good & fast result as for me ) That's why I love this Braum ... & Poro!
Nice work here Krhonos! I don't know if someone answered you about working faster in zbrush with all your subtools active, personally I use the "Dynamic" of the Solo mode....if you're not epileptic this could do the trick
Your shield looks good so far, I just think the edge of the nose's hole is too thin, it looks easily breakable
This is looking great man. I think the skull on the shield could be pushed to be more stylized...possibly with more asymmetry. This guy's stuff has good examples of skulls since he also worked on LOL at some point:
That...is really hi poly man o.O
I mean, it'll look good, but damn.
Personally I found that I had to let go of the armor rims and just imply them in the texture. Modeling to create a canvas rather then modeling for detail (e.g the slash in the gauntlet)
I don't think your topology is wrong (though that shoulder connection seems iffy to me, i've never tried to rig a model with that topology before though), it just should be reduced.
Judging by the characters shape, 25k is insane man. Normally, I would say who cares since its a contest but with the silhouette of your guy, that's just wasting polys. Again, your call but that guy shouldn't require more than 10k polys.
Well its still draw cally > poly counts but anyway, you could use more bump mapping and so be able to get some polys less. Looking at his beltbuckle or the protectors on his knees, you could easily erase some polys there and then put a bump map there instead
you can clean it up more. you dont need any of that front topology on the belt shield. also might want to add a few to the joints in general specially the wrists.
I would mirror A LOT of stuff. I did Annie, Tibbers, and her little bear all on one sheet. It's doable. You could pretty much mirror the entire shield if you wanted to but maybe just leave the skull assymetrical. On the dude, you can mirror him entirely except for the extra bits on his shoulder and arms.
Nice work on optimizing your polycount from the first retopo Khronos! That's a lot of polys saved from your initial 25K! If it's not too late, I would try to remove the tiny extrude loops from the two armor plates he has on each sides of his thighs. If you have something similar to the thrid plates (on the side of his waist) that should be enough and you can fake this extrude in your texture. The main shapes of your shield frame are super low poly, that's great! But behind the skull, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary polys for this semi-circle. Once again the extrude is so thin, that you wouldn't notice the difference if you just paint it.
A 2K map is really big when it comes to handpainted textures so I too think you will be fine with putting everything in one sheet. Like Slosh suggested, keep the skull assymetrical but split an edge in the center of its frame to mirror the rest. On the character, you usually keep things close to the Y axis assymetrical (chest & head) and mirror all rest (limbs, hands etc). After that, armor pieces and their occlusion are always party poopers, but they can help you to hide uv seams.
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Your shield looks good so far, I just think the edge of the nose's hole is too thin, it looks easily breakable
http://leroystrauss.com/
I mean, it'll look good, but damn.
Personally I found that I had to let go of the armor rims and just imply them in the texture. Modeling to create a canvas rather then modeling for detail (e.g the slash in the gauntlet)
I don't think your topology is wrong (though that shoulder connection seems iffy to me, i've never tried to rig a model with that topology before though), it just should be reduced.
I did wonder how you'd go with low poly. I had to sacrifice some detail on Syndras clothing.
I wish you luck... retoping is a pain in the ass.
@VoidValkon You can only use diffuse with a baked in AO map.. nothing fancy.
Doesn't look like you lost much detail from the 25k to the 10k at all.
A 2K map is really big when it comes to handpainted textures so I too think you will be fine with putting everything in one sheet. Like Slosh suggested, keep the skull assymetrical but split an edge in the center of its frame to mirror the rest. On the character, you usually keep things close to the Y axis assymetrical (chest & head) and mirror all rest (limbs, hands etc). After that, armor pieces and their occlusion are always party poopers, but they can help you to hide uv seams.
Keep it up "Bro"m, almost there!