Week 6. Building the in-game mesh.

Now that the detailing was nearly complete, it was time to build (or rebuild) my low poly mesh. Using my hi-res sculpt, I began building my low-poly mesh, one vert at a time. There wasn't much artistically involved here. Just a lot of tedious point placing. The key was to retain the overall silhouette while maintaining even edge flow and clean topology.

The method for doing this within Z-Brush became quite cumbersome as the mesh became increasingly more dense. There are other software packages out there for retopologizing, and I would probably go a different route on future projects. As it stands, Z-Brush's tools for retopologizing are limited and not as intuitive as they should be.

The rebuilt upper torso. The wrist guards (once separate pieces) were now part of the overall mesh.

The completed low-poly in-game mesh. I purposely kept the cloak and vest separate for animation purposes. The belt and trinkets were also done separately.