SO Character - Low poly

Tuesday, second week of the project, I started doing the low poly model. Firstly, I grouped some subtools in Zbrush which would make sense to be a single mesh, so I could retop them easily (merged the sides, back, shoulder pads and collar of the coat, the belts on each side, leg wraps, mask parts). 

For a part of the objects I made the low poly directly in Zbrush by going back to my lowest subdivision which had clean topology and eventually using Zremesh to go even lower, I made the belts, weapons and mask this way. The other objects I retpologised in 3D Coat and then made the final adjustments in 3dsMax. For the pieces of clothing, like the coat, t-shirt, pants, cloth, I focused at first on getting the edge loops flow right so they would deform well, and after that I went back and worked on the areas with the strongest folds, adding triangles and cuts which would follow the shape of the folds, but still keeping the edge loop. This is a method I've seen used by many senior artists when making clothes and I really wanted to give it a try and get accustomed to it, because I think that it gives nicer baking results while still keeping a clean topology. I've still got a lot to learn about making topology by I am trying to implement small changes in every project that I make and slowly get better. Also, I tried to align the loops on different objects which overlap so they would deform uniformly.

Probably the most difficult object to retop was the coat and I had to make a lot of changes until I got the result that I wanted. Initially, I wanted to keep the shoulder pads and coat as one objects but after trying that I realised that it isn't actually a very good idea and wouldn't look great so I split them up. To add thickness to the coat I used the shell modifier in 3dsMax, I then edited the result and deleted all the hidden polygons. 

Also, I made some proper eyeballs which follow the human anatomy, I made a mesh for the inner part of the eye with the iris and pupil and another one, like a lens on top for the cornea. 

Changed the low poly model for the katanas as well, I made 2 versions, one which is sheathed and one with the actual blade, as I wanted the character to hold that in his hand, like in the concept.

After I finished all the pieces, I got around 18.5k tris and I am quite pleased with this tris count as it would allow me to spent the rest on the hair, but it might change depending on how the bakes are turning out. Also, managed to get everything unwrapped but I still have to pack it properly. 

Everything took roughly 4 days. 

The next thing I am focusing on is making the hair and hair cards which I find quite challenging to get right, I am looking up different tutorials and methods on doing it but I've still got to do more research before getting it done.