playing around

So today i have mainly been playing around with zbrush as the character i want to produce should have a rough and rugged face and the the best way i can think to do this is with textures and normal mapping.

The head model that i have made so far is clocking in at 1300 polys so i know i need to lose some detail in the base mesh but anyway. I unwrapped and exported the base mesh as a .obj and imported to zbrush where i started to play with the form of the face adding a deeper brow more of a pronounced chin and some general wear and tear on the face. this took the base mesh up to a staggering 31,750 polys. I then took the 1300 poly base mesh and the high poly mesh into XNORMAL a program that creates normal maps from a combination of the base and high poly meshs that normal map is then placed into the base meshes material maps which should give a more detailed look than the actual model contains.

And heres some piccys....

Before normal mapping


And after


And an image of the progression from base mesh to finished high poly model.