Urgent - help a newbie out!

AkiranYu

Hello! I have some questions about pipelines and processes when it comes to 3D characters. I'm fairly new to this, just started studying with online tutorials - if anyone could give me a hand with this I'd be incredibly grateful!

I made a basemesh inside 3dsmax, then exported to zbrush, and made a high poly with several subtools- now this is what isn't too clear for me... now you have to make the low poly, you gotta reduce the polygon count...but once you've done that to all subtools you have to group them for the uvs right? How do you know what to group? Perhaps the whole process of low poly isn't too clear for me...could anyone give a hand? I really Need it so I can move on. 

Thank you so much for taking the time to read. Have a great day! 

FourtyNights

For the low poly, you'll need to retopology the new animation friendly low poly mesh on top of the high poly. Google the term "retopology 3ds max", and you'll get started.

Croftyness

So your single mesh can reference more that one UV/Texture set. For example, "Army guy" (humanoid with soldiers gear) can be split up into a texture set for skin and a set for gear, or everything can go onto one texture set. if you're targeting a lower spec system you may want to put everything onto one texture for reduced draw calls. If your character is more complex, requiring more texture space, different shaders or interchangeable gear etc, you may want to split it up. For example, I tend to separate my character's head into separate UVs as they require more pixels compared to the body. 

Deciding what goes where is really up to you, but will take into account the factors above. If you share more info about the character we can probably help you break it up as an example.