After the sculpt of my character was finished I needed to create a lowpoly version of my model. This was another element in the process that I had never proceeded with before, and on reflection there are many things about this stage of the process that I would change. I understood from my knowledge of rigging that good topology in the retopologising stage is essential for making a good rig- as a result I followed some good tutorials about required topology for facial rigging and around problematic areas such as elbows and knees of characters.
However, later on in the process I found that I was not entirely happy with the topology of other areas unique to my rig, such as the shoes and the accessories. As a result this led to some issues when it came to UV unwrapping, but ultimately this stage was successful. Creating a lowpoly of the model is essential for the performance of both Maya and unreal, as the size of my export from zbrush was roughly 1GB per file, and as a result would not be appropriate for a game or rendering for film. Later in the process I have found that I made some errors in the topology that required me to slightly adapt my model, such as an issue with the pendant of the necklace in the original design. If I have time in the future I would like to adapt this with some simple hard surface modelling inside of Maya.