1st Game Character: Futuristic Warrior

[beartraps]

Looks much better. Do you plan on sculpting him? If so I would clean up your mesh and get rid of as many tris and stars as possible. If you plan on having hard edges on the extrusions be sure to add support edges for smoothing.

[Josh LaFayette]

Thanks for the comments guys, I appreciate it. Nitka, 30 percent seems like a lot to me, especially since this guys face doesn't account for that much of the model. After I get the detailing done, I might give the face some more room on the UV's if it needs it.
dieone: Thanks, I've been working on rebuilding the low-Poly mesh to allow for better subdivision. Here's how the new mesh looks compared to the low-poly:



Here's some shots showing how the new mesh subdivides:



I also did some quick normal map tests, and ran into some problems.



You'll notice I'm getting some ugly shading, and I don't know what's causing the problem. Any pointers or advice would be great.

[pantsburgh]

Smooth groups getting baked into the NM? Paste the NM?

About the 30% on the face, the brain has special face recognitionery that makes it quite important to spend extra poly and texture detail on faces. It really will look better, I promise.

[BadSpleen]

When baking the normal map, make sure that the mesh you are baking to has 1 smoothing group, i.e. all surfaces smoothed together.

This stops any artifacts that may occur whilst baking the normals.

-Adam

[Nitka]

I understand.
But bear in mind that is not enough. Look at this picture.
More importantly, the face or shoes?
Good luck. Good model!