how does this differ from ever other game using pixels and polygons to make an imaginary 3d world! on a more serious note,, game looks fantastic,, not a fan of the stiff animations,, but i can see what they were trying for,
I think you could get rid of quite a few polygons... but it looks very good. My biggest complaint is that the shirt doesn't really fit him well.. heh.. in fact it confused me on what kind of character he was.
Did a quick sketch using Stefan Morrels method of using mask by alpha in Zbrush to get a good base start on creating high polygon work. Baked out an AO and Normal Map in xNormal and then played a bit in Marmoset.
dejawolf- i don't have a super machine either, this was done in zb3, around 1.4 million polygons, on a pentium mobile 2Ghz laptp, 2Gb ram and a Geforce go 6800. I am seriously considering getting a new rig. -_-
file->summary info, or use the polygon counter under the utilities tab (the hammer). I think they both count quads as a single poly if you're working in edit poly, if you're using edit mesh then they both show tri count.
you don't really need that many zspheres to create that base mesh anyway... you could do it with 3 and subdivide/move/shape the actual mesh it forms... then re-top the whole thing to get the polygon distribution you want.
If I get what you mean, this is already a built-in. In the texture editor you can go to polygons->straighten UV border in your case the defaults will probably be fine except you'll wanna change Preserve Length ratio to 0
You can lose a lot of polies on the cardboard box, remember if a polygon isnt changing the silhouette noteably you dont need it. Kidding aside, its looking pimp, should be cool to see him all dressed up in a texture.
It could be possible the normals/tangents are influencing shading. How's the strip look without any material applied to it? Should be flat with no shading If there is, try putting a hard edge/smoothing group at each polygon, and/or breaking off the uv strip at every angle change.
Looks like you are working on a very high polygon count, I suggest that you start new from Zspheres and first block out the proportions before you jump into the details. And keep it lowpoly as long as possible ;) that will save you a lot of pain