Regarding character creation pipeline

Jowens

I just have a few specific questions about the general practice of character creation.

Should all of the accessories be attached directly to the mesh, things like guns, belts, clothing, holsters, etc? Or can those "float".

Does floating geometry effect the process of baking maps like occlusion, and particularly normals?

Should my base mesh be particularly detailed before I sculpt out things like folds in cloth, belts, boot laces, etc, then retopo the low poly to match the highpoly model, or create a highpoly for sculpting and a low poly to bake normals to?

Does anyone have any specific tutorials which outline this process?

Thanks for any help!

Ikosan

It depends on the game. A lot of games use 'avatar' systems for there generic characters, for example if you had random enemy soldiers you might do a few different helmets/torsos/legs and the system would chose random ones to create different enemies. For bespoke characters (ie main characters) there generally one model, however individual elements don't have to be welded together, they can just sit next to each other. As for the basemesh its up to you how you want to work, i've seen people do it both ways so its just personal preference i guess

Vectroid

Does floating geometry effect the process of baking maps like occlusion, and particularly normals?

It might just be easier to bake the floating accessories separately then put them back on your character. If you want the AO from the floating objects to affect your character then you'll probably have to bake it all in one piece. (Of course, it's probably not a good idea if those objects will at a later point be swapped with an accessories of a different shape) Or use a combination or both. But for normals I usually just bake the floating objects separately because it's easier to tweak the baking cage.

Jowens

Okay thats exaclty what I needed to know, thanks fellas