if you have no plans of changing or removing a guys shirt, i dont see why you would need to model the skin underneath. Its actually probably a tad faster to just sculpt the clothing on the base mesh instead of making new geometry for it.
When its just as fast and will look the same.
Or when it will be hard to get the right shapes by sculpting.
Modeling in layers can cause a lot of problems, especially if that is how you do the final low ploy mesh is going to come out. Sometimes modelers get so caught up in modeling that they just retopo the pieces instead of stopping and thinking that maybe it would be better to retopo over several pieces to make one contiguous mesh that is actually easier to work with later on down the pipe.
For example:
The collars had a lot of layers and where going to penetrate once things started moving so it had to be redone. It was done this way because it was easy to model.
This had to be remodeled so the collar geometry looked more like stairs, the extra geometry was trimmed and all welded together instead of separate floating pieces it was one contiguous mesh. I think it shaved off 300-400 polys which we put back into the hair.
It would have been fine if the modeler had used separate pieces for the base mesh and in sculpting but for the final retop they should have gone with one contiguous mesh. Which is a pretty common mistake when you spend weeks working on separate pieces then you forget that it needs to be handled a different way.
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Or when it will be hard to get the right shapes by sculpting.
Modeling in layers can cause a lot of problems, especially if that is how you do the final low ploy mesh is going to come out. Sometimes modelers get so caught up in modeling that they just retopo the pieces instead of stopping and thinking that maybe it would be better to retopo over several pieces to make one contiguous mesh that is actually easier to work with later on down the pipe.
For example:
The collars had a lot of layers and where going to penetrate once things started moving so it had to be redone. It was done this way because it was easy to model.
This had to be remodeled so the collar geometry looked more like stairs, the extra geometry was trimmed and all welded together instead of separate floating pieces it was one contiguous mesh. I think it shaved off 300-400 polys which we put back into the hair.
It would have been fine if the modeler had used separate pieces for the base mesh and in sculpting but for the final retop they should have gone with one contiguous mesh. Which is a pretty common mistake when you spend weeks working on separate pieces then you forget that it needs to be handled a different way.