UE3 - UT3 Character Model W1P + a kweschun

Hi I'm building a player model for UT3.
this is a HiPoly model of his major armor structure. I made it last summer before the game came out. The head, hair and hands are final geometry for the game model.



and the concept. it was too daunting to draw the continuous flow of detail on the back and side images, so I freestyled it in 3d, resulting in my now problematic oodles of detail.




Right now the game model is over 10K triangles, because I'd like to keep the finer sculpted decoration like the shoulder, elbow and waist area multi-layered and open. I havent really experimented with how they'd look as solid geom, with just the normal map effect and darkness in place of the open spaces, but I'm in love with the way it looks Hi Poly, and would like to maintain that. Are Transparent textures allowed on UT3 models at all? I don't recall seeing any on any stock characters. That might be a way to save geometry and keep the multi-layered feel. The Final Body will not be empty inside, but I'd like some of the deco to stay spacious and intricate.

I just did some more tweaking, tho I have not welded my last vert, oh no.



I've decided to just fake the open areas with conjurer's tricks... ie Normal Mapping. I did a few tests in Zbrush and it's actually making me feel like a tard for Hi-modelling this far the old fashioned way. Definitely no prob to get the detail in. I'm going to steer clear of alphas, because if I ain't seen it working already in UT3, i'm not gonna use anything that will be another Jalapeno in the colon of this already irritable game.
It's amazing how the fear of crap like "will my favorites still be there?" or "are my keybinds still in place?" is as intense as being pursued in CTF...

Thanks for comments peeps!
Yeah the hipoly hollow structure in first pic was/is really just a roughing out of the main weave of the surface. Should have had the internal Filler body object visible. All the interior holes are rounded by turbosmooth, since I didn't even refine far enough to tighten them up. I'm probably not going to use it after all except for reference when I Zbrush the normal map.

As far as polywaste, it's very hard to decide what goes and what stays. I really want to keep the layered effect of each band flowing over and under itself. (Most parts are one continuous band) I began modelling with that in mind, but the count went too high too soon. I don't really have enough experience normal mapping a character to predict what areas can appear as I intend without any actual geometry structure. Guess I should just STFU and get crackin...
tho after spilling a delicious mug of sweet coffee on my keyboard and wacom last night, I'm having many "human interfece device" issues today My right wacom function buttons seem to be perma-pressed, tho they physically click up and down as always. gotta fix this jive first.