Character art pipeline?

Laptrijarch

I try to make this Char Game ready, but I'm not sure how to continue. The Char has a poly count of a round 48 mio. so I can't just export it and make a lowpoly of it so I can bake the normals.

The question is, how would I proceed with such a high detail sculpt?

Kyetja

First of you'll have to do some re topology to take down that polygon count, you can find useful information here: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/ReTopologyModeling
And this is sorta useful too:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/3DTutorials/Modeling_High-Low_Poly_Models_for_Next_Gen_Games

After creating your low polygon mesh and UV mapping that one you'd have to bake your textures from your high polygon to you low polygon mesh using your preferred baking software, generally you'd at least bake your Normal and Occlusion map, but some other maps can be very useful too!
After you have your bakes you can get into your preferred texture program and uses your bakes to create your colour maps etc.

I'd suggest you just google high to low poly workflows for characters, there is a sea of information on it on the web.

AtticusMars

Laptrijarch said:

The Char has a poly count of a round 48 mio. so I can't just export it and make a lowpoly of it so I can bake the normals.

The question is, how would I proceed with such a high detail sculpt?

Decimate it then export. Your retopology can be done over a heavily decimated mesh, then you can use the full res mesh if you like to bake in xNormal or your baking program of choice. I typically decimate my characters down to about 100k triangles then retopo it, then I do a bake from a high res decimated to 5-10m~ depending on the detail.

Edit: You could also retopo it within ZBrush though I wouldn't usually recommend that because ZBrush's retopo tools aren't great.

Laptrijarch

Thank you very much, I try to use the decimation master. The only thing left is the texturesize for a current Gen char. Has somebody a recommendation? The must sources Contradict themselves a bit. But again Thank you very much. 

kanga

I'd bake all the textures at 4096 px for editing, and for general in engine use use half that size. That depends on what your character has to do, and how close it will get to the cam.