Week 7-8: creating the low poly for Uncle Sam

Now that I was happy with the state of the high poly I needed to create a low poly version of them. I was unsure about how to do this at first but a lecturer came and showed me one method on how it can be created, by using the Maya Modelling Toolkit I am able to create faces which can form to create a mesh. I found this a very satisfying tool to use as I had control on the face layout when doing the topology.  

So I would start by exporting the high poly into Maya, I had to do this one at a time as it would make the computer struggle trying to handle the millions of polys, I was only able to do this at University as my computer at home could not handle it. I would then select the high poly mesh and click on the magnet at the top of the screen, this would make the mesh live which allowed me to model around it when making the faces.
I then began to create one face starting off on the low poly mesh. I then built around this untill I had rows of polys, if they started to become uneven I was able to use a smooth tool which would even out all the edges and make them straight, this tool was very useful.

Here is the final result, The trousers on the left are the low poly, and the ones on the right are high poly. Although I havnt modelled in all the creases I know this can be added in when doing the bake. I am happy with result and was able to bring the poly count down from around 1 to 2 million, down to around 2000, which is a bring improvement.

I did the same process with the shoes.

With the head I created one big low poly mesh which combined the head,hair and the beard 

When doing this I was unsure how it should be layed out as a face's topology is different, so I looked on the internet and found that faces would curve around the eyes and the mouth

http://www.secondpicture.com/tutorials/3d/3d_modeling_a_human_head_with_polygons_in_3ds_max.jpg

This is my final result, I am fairly happy with this and feel the topology works well .

A comparison between the two meshes. 

I then did the same process with the hand

Here is the final result, I was able to take a high poly mesh which was quite a few million polys and reduce it down to under ten thousand, while still keeping the shape.