Retopology with 3D Coat

Today I'm trying to retopologize my character.  For this I use 3D Coat.  3D Coat is excellent for many things that Zbrush is not so good at.  Unfortunately I haven't done much more than retopo and UV'ing in 3D Coat so far.

This is the basic retopo section in 3D Coat

Here some basic 3D Coat tutorials

The tools I would mainly use for retopo in 3D Coat are;
Points & Faces - This allows you to quickly place dots, which then turn into verts and create faces
Quads - This is a more reliable way to force faces and locks to pre-existing geometry and dots
Brush - With this you can move geometry and relax areas (relax makes everything look more pro)
Delete - Obviously for deleting stuff as I change the topology & loops
Add/Split - Often used with delete to fix areas and get a decent line flow
Stokes - Not as reliable as I want so didn't use much - seemed awkward to fine tune, but god for making loops

Comparing the 3D Coat retopo & Z Remesh

The Zremesher function in Zbrush is excellent - I mainly use it for working on the fly and managing the polys better.  In the above example I didn't even bother making guide-lines of paint its density.  On the whole it is always better to manually do this for important meshes.

After retopology. I use 3DS Max to "STL Check" and tweak/fix the geometry.  I think the reason I do this is that I am comfortable with 3DS Max and it is more, er "sophisticated".

I'm quite happy with the result - I will maybe want to split into objects/elements for easier Skinning/weighting.
But now I have the updated base mesh in Zbrush so I can texture and rig separately as needed

Another great feature in Zbrush is its projection... It can push my new low-poly mesh tightly into the form of my original mesh.  After that you can sub divide the new mesh and project the details too - Lubbely-jubbly.

I spent a lot more time than I originally thought it would take to retopo the armour.  I'm actually quite happy with the results, which have retained much of its details and forms.  I would hope this for current generation - One way my model falls short though is that it currently is a single mesh.  Ideally each element would be a complete part, like the pauldrons and plates of the mail.  I could go further into it and complete each of these, but due to limitations I think I will do my best to finish quickly.

Today I was trying to find the original Unreal Character template which had a mesh and rig - It's not in my FMP project folder as far as I can see hehe.  Ideally I should put all the parts into a single folder and get the bugga rigged & in UDK (which may be harder and more complicated than I like)