Retoping for mobile

RLe

Hi,

I don't know if this is the right forum for this question, but there is probably no specific forum for my problem. Its like this: I am just retoping a mobile game avatar I have made with Sculptris.  You know, the Unity Documentary recommends for a mobile game avatar something between 300 to 1500 polys per mesh, and I would like to have something between 400-450 together with the hair for my avatar. But have the problem that I like to lose myself in detail and I'm never sure how much detail will be needed to get a good normal map even after I saw some videos about retoping and baking normals.
I did a another retopo for the same model before, but when I baked a normal map and tested it in Photoshop it looked similar to a ball.
I didn't find much info about this question in the net, so I am asking here. Here are two images of my avatar and the retopo  from the front and from left side (the hair is hidden). I think that the amount of detail was okay before came to the ears It would be nice if you could give me any advices.

thanks very much
yours RLe
 

oglu

In this case i would stop the retopo. Its a goid starting point but now its better to model by hand. If objects are that low its better to not follow the surface 100%. Make it look good! 

Eric Chadwick

400 is pretty low for a full body, so you would need to make the head pretty much a blob. But if that's the budget for the head alone, you could add more detail in eyes, mouth, ears.

Some lowpoly examples here
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/FaceTopology
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/BaseMesh

RLe

oglu said:

In this case i would stop the retopo. Its a goid starting point but now its better to model by hand. If objects are that low its better to not follow the surface 100%. Make it look good! 

I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what you mean. Could you give me farther explanations?

RLe

oglu said:

In this case i would stop the retopo. Its a goid starting point but now its better to model by hand. If objects are that low its better to not follow the surface 100%. Make it look good! 

its for a mobile game which has about ten similar avatars in one scene.

oglu

If you just follow the surface with retopo tools your asset is to flat. You have to model in bigger more exaggerated shapes by hand. For example make the nose and ears bigger. 

RLe

oglu said:

If you just follow the surface with retopo tools your asset is to flat. You have to model in bigger more exaggerated shapes by hand. For example make the nose and ears bigger. 

Thank you very much!!

RLe

Edit: I still don't know how to do it. How is that actually with the polycount of the modern mobile game avatars? I mean if you have about ten human moving in one scene on Android/IOS or web-based games? How many polygons would each humanoid avatar have? If there are other meshes like bikes, etc., too?

Eric Chadwick

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Polygon_Count#Typical_Triangle_Counts

It's a complicated subject. Are you working with a programmer? Ask them what the triangle budget is. 

RLe

Eric Chadwick said:

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Polygon_Count#Typical_Triangle_Counts

It's a complicated subject. Are you working with a programmer? Ask them what the triangle budget is. 

Thanks for the link. I saw in one of the links that a game which is compatible with mobile has 1000 triangles per character which would be 500 polys: 
How do you do that normally?

Eric Chadwick

When most developers say "polys" they actually mean triangles.

Also 1 poly is not 2 triangles. Read the top of the page in that link to see why.

Alex_J

Safe assumption is you won't be reaching near to level of sophistication as creative assembly. 

It's a balance of ten million pieces. Pplycount is a single grain of sand. 

To test on your own device, build protype using various free content from epic store. This can help you ballpark requirements before dropping time on production.