Sith Lord bust [fan fiction] (First time posting)

DirtyBlueFL

Hello everyone. I have been browsing here for a few months, in preparation for the final leg of my game design degree. I recently taught myself Zbrush and Quixel 2.0, and I would really enjoy some feedback. I took a concept piece that I made in Alchemy, sculpted it in Zbrush, and rendered in 3Do. All maps are baked in Zbrush at 4k. I would like some tips and general help though... My model is sitting around 20k quads after being remeshed with Zremesher. Why is the fine detail of my polygonal mesh so apparent? Every poly seems to be well defined, even though I have normals, AO, and displacement plugged in. I see low poly models around the web with incredible detail, and I want to know how to get that result. This head should be something like 5k polys or less idealy. Thank you for your replies and feedback.

pmiller001

I'm happy you starting to do some art, that\s fantastic.
on to critiquing. 
- IT doesn't look finished.
 -Most importantly make sure you got the big shapes out the way before you move on to any detail. 
- You're not matching your concept art. 
- Where it is right now, it doesn't need to be 20k. That seems  high. Give us some more details. in your mesh (after you've finalized those big shapes, Planes of the head, etc etc etc). 
-We need to see the front, and side views of this model.   A straight on front view isn't telling us much, other than you're probably not confident with the rest of the model. 


So things we need to see to help you,
-more shots of the model
-your maps

In regards to the incredible detail you mentioned, that's usually accomplished with very well done textures. But I wouldn't suggest worrying about that if you're trying to model. (At least not yet. ) Figure out how to make this look good on its own before you start making those leaps into color and such. 
I hope this helps . 

skyline5gtr

Try using smaller images not 2mb pngs

DirtyBlueFL

Edit: The guys over at quixel informed me about smoothing groups and smoothing angles! The only 3D work i've done in the past is architectural, with nothing but cubes, so I had no idea. This should start looking better soon.  

Thank you. I added a closer shot of the mask to show how faceted the topology is rendering, and a profile shot. I have loaded some tutorial models into 3Do and they don't show as faceted surfaces, so It's got to be something with how I'm creating my OBJs, or maybe even my normals?

OctoKube

maybe the edges on your low poly are set as hard edges, thats one reason why you would see all the squares. Also make sure you didnt bake a normal map with the hard edges on.