Retopoing can be fun. And by fun, I mean a lot of work, but rewarding work when it turns out well!

Have you retopo'd before? I've not used Maya to retopo yet, but have been meaning to try. I've mostly used a program at my school called TopoGun2. It isn't bad.

What type of texture maps do you plan on baking? Hopefully you can get a good AO map with Maya. Sometimes Maya is kind'a crappy about AO,s but it will make that big guy look nice. There's an addon called TURTLE which I can't remember if it comes with or if you have to DL it, but it does AOs, Normals, Spec, and all sorts of other bakes pretty good and I think it's free. It's an addon though, so beware possible stability issues. I've not had issues with it, but I know some people who have.

Can't wait to see the final! Love PP's models. Warjacks are some of my favorite mini figs out there today, and this looks stunning so far!

Wow Someone who knows this stuff! So I have a litany of information that I've built over my short time and here's the rundown.

For Retopology I'm using a plugin for maya called FroRetopo, it's free and made by a french student so check it out. Looks like an easy way to build all the tools and is central to Maya. It's manual so it may take more time but it also gives you a lot of results. I'll be working on my little steam-man to learn the tool in the very near future.

For baking, I'm avoiding Maya and using a tool called XNormal, it's rather cheap and worth the purchase. I've never played with baking so I need to sit down and learn all the things you mentioned. I'll have to go through some of the resources online to understand all the different maps, but from what I understand they are useful for texture work in addition to providing depth to a low poly model.

Yeah Warjacks are awesome, they use 3d modeling for most of their current work, which reminds me I need to send an email to my contact there. Have a great night! Favved!

I'll check out Fro sometime. Maya's supposed to have it's own retopo setup, but I've never checked it out. I should, the vids I've seen online make it look rather powerful. At my school, it has an issue with crashing the computers, so that's why we don't use it there, but I've heard from most people that it's because of how those computers are setup, so it isn't a common issue. I hope anyway.

Baking texture maps is extreemly useful, the AOs (ambient occlusion) can often be rather resource intensive, but well worth it if the utility or program that creates it is worth its salt.

I've been going to school for the last year learning a lot about Maya and other tools for gaming art and animation. It's awesome stuff! Learning to rig a model for animation is a whole other adventure if you ever plan on undertaking that! It feels frick'n AWESOME though when you make something you've modeled move for the first time.

I learned rigging, skin weighting and animation basics on my own. Did a basic walk cycle and some other stuff. I'd like to learn a facial rig at some point also, but right now I'm working through the model workflow from high poly to low poly (baking maps to apply).

Anyways awesome stuff!

I agree! I've loved every moment of it since I started learning it all!