Ok so I’ve been doing some research on ZBrush modeling and animations. I found a video that explained that a model is made in Zbrush with all of the high polygons and intense detail. Those models can reach thousands of polygons and as a result, it’s difficult to animate those in 3DS Max programs and such. So to combat this, artists will take the model and export it to 3DS Max in a low polygon format, and then export the skin maps of the high polygon model, and apply those to the 3DS Max model, and it still has the intense detail but is more capable of animation and skeleton rigging? Is that true? Or am I completely wrong? Just trying to learn about it, thank you for your answers. I also hope this is in the right forum.
Hey friend, I’m new to 3D also and been studying my butt off, and your 100% right that’s hows its done you make your High poly model and make your maps from it then you can retopologize it so you can bake the maps to a low poly mesh like you said to get the high poly details while having good low topology ready for animation/game engines 
I don’t think you have to do this for rendering in Keyshot which is nice, but might have to for V-Ray in 3dsMax/Maya or any other rendering software.
Alright cool, thanks for answering my question! I was just wondering cause I am interested in all of it and never know how to do it and I can find tutorials that outline the basics but don’t go into too much detail on how each step is done. Thank you.
So my second question is when we animate the models while they are in their low poly model… do we render them in their hi-res version? Or is the rendered version still the low poly model with the high res skin textures?
Its low poly model that looks super high poly cause you use the normal, diffuse, ambient, specular maps that were made from the high poly model. Its really cool how all the maps work together to give a beautiful final product.
You should read about Normal and Displacement maps, both in your animation software of choice, and in Zbrush.