Polycount is a small part of the motivation for good topology in regards to characters.
The flow of edges determines how the surface will change and shade in response to deformation. Bad topology can absolutely ruin the best looking character when animated, while making skinning/rigging a pain in the ass and unnecessarily time consuming. If you're working in a team environment, this becomes more important. Any rework incurs latency and wastes team time, and you'll invariably piss off your colleagues.
That said, your artistic requirements will determine how important this is - you're unlikely to notice issues on a RTS units face. A realistic character viewed up close in first person? Definitely a problem. Basically, as little concern as your project allows for, but no less.
That in mind, since I tend to do more detailed characters, the best approach I've found is the one that allows me to avoid any real retopology or unwrapping for the majority of my characters (clothing excluded, but a lot of that can be automated) giving me the time to either push quality elsewhere in the pipeline, or spend it on characters that don't allow for such an approach.
Also, extrusion is really slow. Blender got PolyBuild not too long ago. It's similar to Maya's QuadDraw, both of which are inferior to Topogun. Seriously, check it out. Really quick.
Right? Take a look at ZRemesher as well - it's still the fastest consistent workflow I'm aware of, though there are cases where you'll want to do it by hand, and that's where Topogun comes in. You'll want to do some clean-up around loop intersections for animated meshes, but considering game models can exceed 100k polygons these days, getting 98% of the way there in a couple of minutes by drawing guides is pretty great.
I really like sculpting and I feel that's ideal for making detailed characters compared to block modelling
Absolutely. ZBrush was revolutionary when it came out, and a large part of why CG took a huge leap forward in the early 2000's. Polymodelling has it's places, but organic detail is not one of them. Doesn't matter whether it's detailing chipped concrete or warped metal, producing gnarled trees or characters, if you want your art to look good outside of "lowpoly" art styles, I'd say a decent grasp of sculpting is absolutely mandatory. It relies more on traditional art skills than conventional modelling, but as you get better you'll find yourself able to sculpt complex characters without references in a couple of hours. Really rewarding being able to make anything you can think of, quickly.
I'd honestly suggest trying Zbrush. It's unfortunately moved to a subscription model, which I'll have to decide on when it gets an update I actually care about (my permanent license no longer receives updates), but nothing comes close in terms of sculpting. It's also pretty great for hard surface modelling where the resulting topology isn't especially important (almost all of it).
Polycount is a small part of the motivation for good topology in regards to characters.
The flow of edges determines how the surface will change and shade in response to deformation. Bad topology can absolutely ruin the best looking character when animated, while making skinning/rigging a pain in the ass and unnecessarily time consuming. If you're working in a team environment, this becomes more important. Any rework incurs latency and wastes team time, and you'll invariably piss off your colleagues.
That said, your artistic requirements will determine how important this is - you're unlikely to notice issues on a RTS units face. A realistic character viewed up close in first person? Definitely a problem. Basically, as little concern as your project allows for, but no less.
That in mind, since I tend to do more detailed characters, the best approach I've found is the one that allows me to avoid any real retopology or unwrapping for the majority of my characters (clothing excluded, but a lot of that can be automated) giving me the time to either push quality elsewhere in the pipeline, or spend it on characters that don't allow for such an approach.
Also, extrusion is really slow. Blender got PolyBuild not too long ago. It's similar to Maya's QuadDraw, both of which are inferior to Topogun. Seriously, check it out. Really quick.
Right? Take a look at ZRemesher as well - it's still the fastest consistent workflow I'm aware of, though there are cases where you'll want to do it by hand, and that's where Topogun comes in. You'll want to do some clean-up around loop intersections for animated meshes, but considering game models can exceed 100k polygons these days, getting 98% of the way there in a couple of minutes by drawing guides is pretty great.
Absolutely. ZBrush was revolutionary when it came out, and a large part of why CG took a huge leap forward in the early 2000's. Polymodelling has it's places, but organic detail is not one of them. Doesn't matter whether it's detailing chipped concrete or warped metal, producing gnarled trees or characters, if you want your art to look good outside of "lowpoly" art styles, I'd say a decent grasp of sculpting is absolutely mandatory. It relies more on traditional art skills than conventional modelling, but as you get better you'll find yourself able to sculpt complex characters without references in a couple of hours. Really rewarding being able to make anything you can think of, quickly.
I'd honestly suggest trying Zbrush. It's unfortunately moved to a subscription model, which I'll have to decide on when it gets an update I actually care about (my permanent license no longer receives updates), but nothing comes close in terms of sculpting. It's also pretty great for hard surface modelling where the resulting topology isn't especially important (almost all of it).