Game Dev update - main character.

Been a while since an update but i have been busy on the main character for our game. Using various new software and techniques i have gone through sculpting, texturing, rigging, skinning and next up is animation.

Here is progress report of various components that make up our main character. 

Here is the UV map that i unwrapped in Autodesk Maya, i feel more comfortable in unwrapping now as i got to grips with the various tools within maya. I am happy with the layout of the shells taking up as much empty space as possible. At the moment all maps are 2048x2048 this is to allow a bit of room to de-scale if needed but as this is the main character i believe it is important to have him as detailed as possible.

2048x2048 Ambient occulusion map, baked from maya. I have layered this map onto of the diffuse to help myself find the shadows and instantly give the diffuse more shape.

After the main model was finished, i took the mesh into zbrush to sculpt in the main details, i didn't want to go too overboard as i just wanted it as quite subtle detail. I believe i could make it come out a little better but this helped me get the idea of zbrush workflow. 

In Photoshop CS6 i painted the diffuse map at 2048x2048, we are aiming for a hand painted texture look and i am overal happy with the final look. I will like to go back to this for a final polish, the bag isn't quite done. I am still learning these techniques and need to become more comfortable in painting, i felt the only way for me to achieve this look was with a soft air brush but ideally i would of preferred a more hard edged hand painted look similar to games like team fortress 2.

Here is the low poly model, this is before i smoothed over the mesh. I did this after as i believe we have room to use a higher poly count as this is the main character. Overall high poly count is around 8k polys, this isn't too high for the fact we are aiming for pc platform release. I am happy with the overall topology and silhouette and learned a lot of different skills.

After struggling to get a decent look the hair, i decided to take it into zbrush to sculpt in some details. I wanted a over emphasize cartoon look and think i've achieved that quite well. Using this i baked off the normal map using zbrush, this is a very happy workflow that i will be using in the future.

same again but this time just the folds and creases in the clothes as i was struggling to get the desired result using a diffuse map alone.

Here ths is the almost finished model at the moment, he has the AO map baked into the diffuse and also normal map applied in maya. Hes looking great so far and have learned a lot on the character creation workflow and this will help alot in the future.