I am working on a low poly base for some characters. I am trying to use as few polygons as possible. I would really appreciate if someone could give me advise on my toplogy or any other areas I should work on. The characters will be animated later on in a game engine. Is the overall poly count enough to have some decent animations? Do I need any specific edge loops to get decent animations? The character will be presented in a top down view.
At the moment I do not like the topology around the shoulders. This area was quite simpler before, but I tried to have a loop from the chest area over the arm and ended up with more polygons. I am concentrating on this area as I have problems animating the arm. Whenever I bend it down it overlaps with the torso. If I give the arm bone more weight to affects the torso, the torso shrinks too much.
I did not have much time lately, but I have tweaked my topology a little bit. I think I am satisfied with it now. Especially the edgeloops around hips and shoulder is better now. You see it immediatly while animating. I have added animation and clothing and am facing new problems now. The geometry of the character is shining through my clothes. The clothes are based on a copy of the characters torso and they are applied to the same armature.
You could use a mask modifier to hide the faces that are going to be obscured by the clothes. Check if your game engine supports hiding parts (à la WoW).
