I wouldn't be too concerned with the materials one, as the shaders have changed to be pbr friendly in 3.6. The intro one is quite good, it does cover a couple of tools that have since been removed (the voxel tool for example).
Quick way to expand the edge pixels in Photoshop... use the Solidify filter from Flaming Pear. It's in the Free Plugins zip: http://www.flamingpear.com/download.html For example http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1785248&postcount=5
Personally I'd mirror more of the parts if they'd look that similar in the end. I can only tell that there's some decals that differs from the arms for example. Perhaps you could have put that on with an alpha plane instead?
also does anyone know where i can find professional head model images that are in games for example marcus fenix in gears of war or that uncharted guy i wanna guess his name is sam fisher?
Remember what I said about being a noob? :D Well this is a pretty good example, I thought I could go low on the cylinder because it would be subdivided. Gonna add more geo now :)
Would it be possible to build a displacement shader in unreal engine that will deform the mesh depending on the damage that is inflicted? like the example before. A bullet hits a aircraft wing from above and the shader will deform the wing. And cause a hole in the wing.
Vertex color is always faster. Always. But, there are some limitations that you already pointed. What can be a little more expensive, is how you use the vertex color data, for example, alphas. But still faster than textures.
@Brian "Panda" Choi , actually i started to make very small diorama, it has 10 props more or less. I also wonder can you give me example for “general interests” you said.
Is this a prototype for an eventual game? Or is it for a pre-created non-interactive animation? If it's not ever meant to be interactive, then I'd suggest getting into After Effects. For example, searching for "after effects cross hatch": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsCuC6Qytm8
Wouldn't it be sweet if Zbrush 5 would allow you to group subtools similar to Photoshop's layer groups, for example a belt 'group' consisting of Belt subtool, buckle subtool, pouch subtool, etc. allowing for easier organisation.