My first game ready character ( i hope )

Mehdi_Fr

Just finished the high poly stage and decided to just stop tweaking and trying to make it perfect because this project is about learning the full pipeline of character creation for games , tomorow ill do the Retopology Stage for the first time , any advices/tips/things i need to know before i start ? 

lyte

Hi Mehdi, looking good! For the retopo, you should first decide the polygon budget your aiming to. This depends on what you want to practice on. So for example a big console game can go as high as 300k per "hero" character (with hair cards and high definition faces) while a mobile/esport will be much more conservative (10k or even less based on platform). From this information, you should approach retopo differently. Will you keep every clothing part separated? (Will they have physics enabled wile the character is moviing ecc..) Is the clothing set static or can you remove some parts (e.g. can you remove the gauntlet)? For something like this, which recalls an Overwatch type of game, I'd try to keep it very optimized (10k) while doing things like merging the clothing layers (belts, boots and such) as much as possible, placing the loops where there are surface changes and letting the normal do it's job. Make sure the head and arms don't merge with the clothing though, since you might want to use a different shader. Just make sure the silhouette reads good from different angles (no obvious polygon edges or missing thickness) and from a good distance (like a closup for the face, and from a full figure fullscreen for the rest of the body). Also start thinking about where you want the UV islands to cut, but don't worry you can go back in case you need it while unwrapping.

 as an example here, the belt will be baked on a single low poly piece, wile the tank can be separated. Look up Overwatch/ Fortnite wireframes to see a good reference
 
PS
if you still want to spend a minute on the model, I think the head is too small (I measure 8 1/2 heads in her total height, it should be closer to 7) and maybe the legs could be more sleek? I let you decide if you want to apply this fb, you can do it on the LP way later anyway

GOOD LUCK!

lyte

Hello Mehdi, looking good!
I recommend setting a relatively low polygon budget (10-15k max) and trying to keep the clothig layers combined in the low poly.  

Make sure the silhouette reads well from different angles and up to closeups, especially the face. Look up nice topology from similar styles of games (Overwatch, Fortnite..) and try to stick to those densities. For the face retopo, look up how to create correct loops in case you don't know how to do it yet. This piece should be well optimized and trust me, you can go very low in definition without loosing quality once the normals are applied.
Good luck!

Mehdi_Fr

lyte said:

Hi Mehdi, looking good! For the retopo, you should first decide the polygon budget your aiming to. This depends on what you want to practice on. So for example a big console game can go as high as 300k per "hero" character (with hair cards and high definition faces) while a mobile/esport will be much more conservative (10k or even less based on platform). From this information, you should approach retopo differently. Will you keep every clothing part separated? (Will they have physics enabled wile the character is moviing ecc..) Is the clothing set static or can you remove some parts (e.g. can you remove the gauntlet)? For something like this, which recalls an Overwatch type of game, I'd try to keep it very optimized (10k) while doing things like merging the clothing layers (belts, boots and such) as much as possible, placing the loops where there are surface changes and letting the normal do it's job. Make sure the head and arms don't merge with the clothing though, since you might want to use a different shader. Just make sure the silhouette reads good from different angles (no obvious polygon edges or missing thickness) and from a good distance (like a closup for the face, and from a full figure fullscreen for the rest of the body). Also start thinking about where you want the UV islands to cut, but don't worry you can go back in case you need it while unwrapping.

 as an example here, the belt will be baked on a single low poly piece, wile the tank can be separated. Look up Overwatch/ Fortnite wireframes to see a good reference
 
PS
if you still want to spend a minute on the model, I think the head is too small (I measure 8 1/2 heads in her total height, it should be closer to 7) and maybe the legs could be more sleek? I let you decide if you want to apply this fb, you can do it on the LP way later anyway

GOOD LUCK!

Thank you so much for all these informations ! i really need it .

i think im going for 15k polygon budget like you said and for the sake of learning im gonna try both options that you mention ( the first version is where every part is separated and the second one is where they all merged except the head and hands because of the shader thing ) . For things like UV , baking  im still confusing about them i think i need to google it more and to understand what you saying x))

Mehdi_Fr

i have 2 newbie questions if you don't mind ) 
the eyeborws and the eyelashes should be merged with the head and retopoligize together or not ?
also these empty space betwenn the face and eyebrows can they cause a problem ? 

lyte

for eyebrows and eyelashes it's really up to you, one is higher quality (separated) the other more optimized (merged). I think that keeping them separated can be a nice effect to give voume to it, so I'd leave them with the space in between and bake on matching low poly. Even a subdivided plane (with a bit of curvature) can be enough for those, try and see what gives the best result good luck!