Arkham Knight Batman Justice league 3000 (videogames character creation break down)

Hi again,
this is one of the Batman skins I have done for Arkham Knight when I was working for WB games Montreal.

For the ones who are not familiar with the way modelling characters for videogames works here is a little breakdown of the process:
The model gets created in a 3d Program; Maya, Max, Blender, but lately Zbrush is the one that has been taking over since it is the most artist friendly application. It gives the freedom to sculpt, change forms and topology in a very easy way.
The model in gray you see below is made in Zbrush. This model has got not working topology (if you do not know what topology means, don't worry, it is explained below ;)) . This is way to heavy for a real time engine.

The next step is creating a working topology that can deform easily while animate.
The topology is the way the polygons are mapped in order to deform well when they are animated.
This image I found on polycount should be quite self explanatory.

As you can see from the wireframe there is no way it can hold the detail of a model who has got a higher polygon density.
So the next step is creating what is called a normals map.
A normals map is a texture that hold the details and changes the way the light hits the geometry giving the illusion of details that are not there.
The image below should sort of give an idea:

The normals map get generated by projecting the high res model to the low res using either one of the 3d programs I mentioned before or some specific programs like Xnormal or Substange painter.

Once we have our low resolution model it is time to give it colors and material properties.
This is done with different textures who affects of shiny, reflective or translucent out model is.

And this is what you finally see in the game!

Ciao. :)