Transfer details and Posing:

Let's go back to our original model inside of Maya and start to layout our Uvs. I am not planning to use this model for a Game or any kind of Real-Time application, so I tried to use as much UV Tiles as I needed, in this case I have separated the eyes and used a different Material. My final textures resolution for the Head and Torso will be 2K.

I first create a "Blinn" shader and connect a "Checker" Texture to the Color slot of the the material, most of the time you will need to increase the "Repeat UV" parameter in the "place2dTexture" node. The Checker allows me to visualize where do my maps are stretching.

Then I selected the head geometry and used the "Cylindrical Mapping" technique, after that I cut the Uvs along the neck and the back of the head. From there, I selected the Head UV Shell and simply used the "Smooth UV Tool". I repeated the process for the neck and chest and finished with the "Layout" tool in order to get the right pixel-ratio.

Now that we are finished with our Uvs, we can send our Low-res model to Mudbox. Here, we will use the "Map Extraction" feature in order to bake a Normal and Displacement map.

As I have modified the Hi-res mesh quite alot, I have to use the "RayCasting" method instead of the "Subdivision" one, I choose "Best Guess" for Search Distance and exported a right-handed normal map at a 4K resolution. The Displacement map was exported as a 16 bits floating points TIFF file.

Before moving on to the Texturing and Shading stage, I quickly created a skeleton in Maya by placing Joints at key places. I used "Heat Map" as the skinning method and started to pose the character.

At the same time I started to create some camera bookmarks in order to find an appealing pose and the right camera angle that goes with it.

From there, I created various embellishment meshes such as earrings and cloth for my character.