3 minutes ago, Bomjeshes said:

And tell me please, what does mean "skin before or after subdivision"? What does a "subdivision" mean here? Now I suspect there is a gap in my pipeline.

IIRC in 3Dsmax it's a modifier called 'mesh smooth' or 'turbo smooth'?, in Modo you press the tab key to set it on/off. Forgot about other software - too much years out of art business.

Subdivision turns your 'low poly model' to a smoother higher poly model. 'Catmull Clark' adds a vertex in the middle of each polygon, connects it to each edge midpoint and interpolates positions with neighbours. It works best for quad meshes with some triangles and pentagons an prefers valence 4 vertices (industry standart everywhere). 'Loop' is good for triangle meshes with valence 6 vertices. ('valence' is number of edges meeting at a vertex). Some tools (e.g. XSI) use Loop for triangles and Catmull Clark for everything else. Your goblin head looks like Catmull Clark result. 

Important: The artist may at some point decide to sudivide the whole model or parts of it, but usually you keep working at a low poly version and add subdivision as a postprocess so you work with fewer vertices than there will be at the final result. If so, you can decide if the skinning modifier is applied before or after the subdivision modifier.

18 hours ago, Bomjeshes said:

You mean left or right loop? (picrure in the spoiler)

The left. For low poly models that's good, for higher poly models it's better to let edges flow with muscles. I feel like your model is sort of on the edge of low/high, so in your case it's easier to fix it that way.

18 hours ago, Bomjeshes said:

Really? I thought face should have higher mesh density than body for good animation

Faces usually take up more polys than other parts, that's true. In your case though, there are too many that don't add much value and it's a bit out of proportion with the rest of the body. Good mesh topology is basically getting the most out of as little as possible.

18 hours ago, Bomjeshes said:

About normal map, it was baked from zbrush highpoly in XNormal

Hmm there's something off about it. Like the cords around his neck seem totally flat, what do they look like in the high poly version?

18 hours ago, Bomjeshes said:

About UW's and textures, I've read about texel density, but would it be better to scale the eye down and lost the UW space?

Sometimes yes, though In this case I think you can do better packing of the UVs, to get the most value out of a texture you'll want to minimize the empty space. Sometimes it helps to have an additional smaller texture map, but you can't always rely on that due to e.g. engine support/performance/resource limitations. JoeJ makes a good point as well.

19 hours ago, Bomjeshes said:

I've learned pipeline on elementary level. Now I want to improve skills and become a professional for working in gamedev. But I don't understand, what should I do, what mistakes I have, and where is exactly a difference between professional and newbie 3D modeller.

If you're not a member there already, sign up at polycount, there are a ton of great artists in that community who help out with awesome feedback. Don't get me wrong, we love to have you here and there are professional artists on these forums as well, but polycount is dedicated to art and therefor has a lot more professional artists in the community. Also, study the work of professionals, enter into challenges even if you feel you are not good enough and you'll get there.

Thanks for warm words and good advices, I guess now I should improve my topology for better following anatomy and simplification animators work

On 31.10.2017 at 11:01 PM, JoeJ said:

Important: The artist may at some point decide to sudivide the whole model or parts of it, but usually you keep working at a low poly version and add subdivision as a postprocess so you work with fewer vertices than there will be at the final result. If so, you can decide if the skinning modifier is applied before or after the subdivision modifier.

Oh, I haven't used subdivide modifiers, I just make loops by hands while retopologizing in 3D Coat. Does I add an excess work for myself?

5 hours ago, Mussi said:

Hmm there's something off about it. Like the cords around his neck seem totally flat, what do they look like in the high poly version?

1 picture - high poly, 2 - low poly with normal, on 2 looks ok, may be there was too soft lighting on my renders?

Thanks for help and links, I'm already going to take part in scsociety halloween challenge

12 minutes ago, Bomjeshes said:

I guess now I should improve my topology for better following anatomy and simplification animators work

Topology also means more of your work shows it self. Your neck looks good at the moment(Goblin) but if used in a game with mood lighting, like in a cave, the shader will work against your mesh and normal map. The result is that the neck would have a flat look.

With topology that flows with the model you will get much better shading and your textures will need to do less of the heavy lifting. You will also get a better model for a lower polycount.

Brilliant work. Really like the fish monster. The color schemes work really well. Your texturing is very good and well used. The character design is interesting. Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

Two improvements you could consider. Don't model in the T pose. This makes it harder to get the arm muscles right and makes it obvious when a character has just spawned. Having the arms in a more relaxed position makes it easier to model the arm and improves the normal map; while solving a huge amount of in game problems.

Make the toe nails darker(Goblin). Your feet has the lowest poly count and look a bit twisted because of it. Your color gradient fixes this but the bright toe nails draw attention to it again.

48 minutes ago, Bomjeshes said:

Oh, I haven't used subdivide modifiers, I just make loops by hands while retopologizing in 3D Coat. Does I add an excess work for myself?

Sounds you are missing something, yes. The image shows a low poly model with 2 iterations of Catmull Clark. You see the low poly is a bit off, e.g. at the lips, but the resulting sudivision is ok. The point is that you only work with the low poly version, so much less work and much easier to make coarse changes. When you are done you can add one subivision permanently and do some finer edits (e.g. fix some topology, but all anatomy should be already there at this point), then you may add another for the final result, but you keep the lowpoly around for other uses and fallback. UV mapping is also less work etc. (The screenshot is from my own modeling tool but any modeling tool should have this.)

I don't know how common this workflow is - some guys probably don't use it and say they are faster without.

Edit: Note that you always see the subdivided result while editing. Vertices appear at their subdivided position, not their 'off' position as seen on the right side.

Thanks everybody for your feedback, it was really helpfull, now I better understand what I'll do

I am very grateful to you
 

I'd increase the size of the front fish flippers for visual clarity.