Sometimes I do make the proportion changes on the lowpoly only, but there are times the changes are drastic enough the normal map breaks and will have to be baked again from a highpoly that's been shaped that way. Aren't blendshapes in maya similar to shapekeys in blender? I don't think I could do this with shapekeys, are…
in maya a blendshape just copies transform for each vertex ID, i dont think there is more to it than that recently there was a thread about retopology tools, and one i think called Wrap IIRC is shown, that conforms an existing base mesh to another model and you can designate matching vertices manually. Might check for that…
not sure about blender but in maya you can use a blendshape to match vertex by ID for problems like changing proportions of a model to make variations. what sounds a little odd about what you've described is that you make a high poly for the proportion changes and then want to conform a game res model to that? Seems much…