Before retopologising my model, I decided to re-block and re-sculpt it, because the shape of my character felt a little too simplistic for an assignment focused on sculpting, so I added some more curvature to my model as well as sculpting a more realistic foot shape.
It took a few more attempts than I had planned to retopologise my detailed mesh. At first I had trouble with making more than one live surface as I tried to retopologise different areas of the mesh separately, then chose to combine the mesh into one surface, but then that led to a different issue which was that the quad draw faces I was making became increasingly smaller as they approached curved or circular areas of the mesh, and it was difficult to maintain their uniformity and trying to avoid triangular shapes within the retopology.
If I were to do that part of the project again, I would have started by plotting out loops around the faces and joints of my model so that the more detailed areas maintained their uniformity so as to optimise the UV layout in terms of preparing for import to substance painter.
At first I had a small issue wherein the UV albedo textures appeared very small in my characters eye as opposed to covering his body, which was solved by adjusting the UV of the character’s eyes which covered the rest of the mesh on the UV template, but apart from that, I feel it was a straightforward process, and I eventually exported my mesh maps in to Sketchfab and uploaded my finished model; Barnaby, the baby emperor penguin chick who’s learning to swim (as illustrated by his armbands and swim gear)!
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/cute-character-assignment-53a221d0a3f143e283305d2d17432c82
