Normal Mapping

Here is my current low poly mesh with the high poly detail normal mapped down. I haven't finished painting the texture yet so this texture is just 50% grey with the ambient occlusion pass on top to help the normal map pop out. Overall I am pleased with the look. the low poly mesh is a mere 2500 tri's (I limited myself to a quarter of a next gen character poly limit as its roughly a quarter of the character) and it is really showing a lot of the high poly details. There is one glaring problem area in the low poly and thats the mechanical chest piece, the valves in the centre are appearing nice and smooth which is impressive as they are just four quads. But the rest of the chest piece isnt working incredibly well. I am going to keep playing around with it to get the best results. The other problem area is actually an issue I think with the high poly mesh and that is the head plates which as I have mentioned in previous posts I dont have the tools yet in my copy of zbrush to get really clean edges. But I can forgive this in this mesh as its the back of the character and wont be scene much I will be fixing it as soon as I can. Everything else I am really impressed by how much of the detail comes across in the low res mesh.