Hight Res to Low Res help please!

Ok iam really mind blown about this process right now and I would be SO SO SO happy if someone can shed some light on this as my deadlines for university are lurking... Before you say search the web i have... Thats why iam here.

Heres the problem Basically i have a highres(20mil) hardsurface mesh in zbrush. I have to bring it down to a low res games character

My questions are from most important to least

1. I dont have any polypaint on my model because i was planning on using 3dsmax materials to give a robot shine, can i still export maps without poly paint? If yes then how?

2. If yes above which maps do i need to capture the detail from high poly to low

3. Am i exporting a retopologised low poly mesh then baking a high poly version on top for detail? If yes what are the maps for?

4. Why cant i just decimate it to a low poly mesh it is still animatable ive tried? Whats the reason to retopologise?

5. Shall i retop each subtool seperately or merge all then retop?

6. If zbrush shows 20,000 polys how much triangles is that?

I just cant get my head around the maps business if someone could shed some light ide be so so so grateful!Please!

These two ZClassroom videos have some good tips
http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/hom...esson/topology/

1. Bump/displacement maps or normal maps are covered in other Zclassroom videos I believe...

2. See previous point

3. You decide. Depends on what you want to use the model for. If you need a truly low poly model then you need it to be low-poly. Optionally if the game engine or whatever supports normal maps, then it can be a good idea to export these to get all the micro-detail from your 20mill poly model.

4. Usually retopology is done to make the poly-flow better for animating mouth, eyes, any joints. I.e. provide more natural movement when the animator uses it - while at the same time having the minimum of polys (important for real time graphics, responsiveness when animating etc)

5. Split and conquer is often a good idea, but depends on intended use of the object and subtools

6. Polys are polys - 3, 4 or n-gon's are one poly each... If you convert a quad-only object to triangles (or that happens when you import an .obj to some other software) I suppose the number of poly's will double.

With Zbrush watch all the classroom videos - you'll get your head around it then

i have not look at the hole video yet
http://videogameartist.wordpress.co...deling-tutorial

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