Yes you make sense although I’m not familiar with how the material baked tutorial was done. Anyway took me ages to find a tutorial of a game character clothing but here is one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkFSLucKam4&feature=channel
This is a very well known method and means your character is made up of one mesh which is alot easier for a game character. Making a character out of seperate meshes is what I tend to do but I don’t make game characters very often. The few that I have made I have done something similar to this video. When you get a bit more comfortable with it you can get a bit more creative with them but this is a good starting point.
zbrush has ways to do pretty much the same thing but you sound like you know blender a little better. Bit of advice though, you can take your lower poly game character and sculpt in wrinkles and such to create alot more detail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6IKYPrHDz0&feature=related
Here is a video (there are new brushes since this video was made though, smooth crease etc.) you can then create a normal map and export your lower poly version. Attach the normal map and you have extra detail on your lower poly model. This is ideal for a game.
If you just divide a low poly model and generate a normal map then you won’t notice the effect of the map. If you have high poly detail then you will and your model will look much nicer. Here is a tut to show you what I mean but I would recommend zbrush because it has far more sculpting capabilties than other programs.
http://www.blendercookie.com/2009/12/26/intro-to-uvssculpt-on-the-alien-character-part-2/
You have also got lots of painting tutorials on zbrush so you certainly make the most of it.
Also be aware that when you divide a model in zbrush it slightly smooths the lowest subdivision level of the model. I actually quite like this but if you keep importing and exporting the model you will ruin your model. So all you do is move down to the lowest level before exporting (as you would), and click the ‘cage’ button. This will change your model back to how it was. Then export. Easy really but I know alot of new people get caught out with this when they first get it.
blendercookies.com would be useful for you too. Has tutorials on rigging and topology and other bits and pieces. There are also plenty of video tuts on youtube for zbrush and these can often be very useful, as well as the ones you find here.
As you may have noticed I’m encouraging you to start over because this will help you learn faster as you work out better workflows and get more practice. Especially when you think of how many hours you can potentially waste trying to correct models etc. However if you really want to save your characters then you could do this quite easily. Import one of your meshes in blender and split the screen. have the 3d workspace in one, and the uv editor in the other. If you go into edit mode you will see your uv map for that mesh. Now go into object mode and import another mesh, again you can view your uv map. In object mode you can join the 2 meshes (or 3, 4 etc. depending on how many you have for your character). If you go into edit mode and view your uv map it will look quite a mess. However you can grab each uv island and shrink them and do some rearranging so you have them all with their own uv space. You now your character as one mesh with uv’s. Now you will have to get comfortable with a 2d painting program. you will need something that supports layers. (Gimp is free, you may be best searching Gimp software if you don’t already have it). From Blender export your uv layout. From the uv editor select uv at the bottom tool bar. select scripts and click on export uv layout. save this and open it in your painting program. now import your old texture maps as new layers select the texture islands that correspond to your uv islands. (some useful selection methods exist in the better 2d painting programs). you will need to make each layer a little transparent so you can see what you are doing but essentially you will shrink the selections you have made and move them to fit to your new uv islands. You will also need to erase the rest of each map (learn a bit about transparency). when you are done merge them all together (but delete the uv layout) and you will have a new texture map. You may find that you have not quite fitted them correctly and have lines down your model but you can easily fixed that in zbrush. Like I said above I really don’t recommend this though. If you know what you are doing it may only take about an hour but it is incredable wasteful for a game character.
If I was to make one I would build my base geometry in a program first. If you wanted to use blender then it is quite quick for this. I would then create seams around the clothing and do my unwrapping. (tuts on blendercookies for this). I would then import into zbrush. I would define the details in zbrush and export a low poly character. This would be the only importing and exporting I do as I would save this final version in all programs I use, I would just transfer the maps I create around. I would paint in zbrush (which was the main reason I got it although I have found many other uses). I would generate my normal map form the high poly character in zbrush and I would clean up my texture map when it was finished in a 2d program. You could even use the one in zbrush for this. (remember ‘crop and fill’ to maintain the size).
Finally you could also become familiar with the retop tool in zbrush which can be very useful when you run into trouble.
p.s. I forgot to mention if you have a body underneath clothing then when you make your animations for the game you may get the body popping through the clothing, especially when you consider the sort of movements a game character may be making. This is easy to deal with in 3d software but I am not sure how you may deal with this in a game engine. If you delete the polys that cannot be seen then I am not sure how well it will deform either. If you decide to join them up by the vertices then you will probably have alot of tidying up to do and I think this will be quite time consuming. Point is the tut at the top is better for game characters and the method you have followed is better for high res models for animating in 3d software. You are obviously free to disagree with that but good luck all the same.
:)
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