Hello together,
refering to tjnyc´s thread I said, I´ll post my multi-part-character in an own thread.
I had some similar thoughts like tjnyc, I wasnt pleased with the limit of about 3 mill polys for a full character. My athlon xp 2200 with 1,25gig ram isnt able to handle more than that amount, it even often crashes ZBrush, when it goes over 2 - 2,5 mill polys. So the only solution was for me to split my model into several suitable parts to be able to give every part a aprox that polycount, the whole character had. The next question was, how to get the parts back together properly once they are detailed.
Well, I will explain in short what steps i followed:
I created the body of the character (everything except the head) with ZSpheres, posed it inside ZBrush and saved the lowpoly model. I made a single head before and thought it would look good and fit well to the body. I used the Demo of Silo to connect body and head, formed the cape and sleeves and reimported the result into ZBrush. After some basic detailing of the clothes, i assigned different polygroups to the parts i wanted to split. Now the important part: After finishing polygroups you can show a single polygroup (and hide all others) by shift+strg+click on that group. When you now delete the hidden parts, you got your single group with the pivot from the original whole model. This will be the same with all other parts. All single parts will keep the same old Pivot. And thats the point: If I want to put them back together, I only need to place the complete model on the canvas and place a marker and lear the canvas. Now i can load any of the highpoly-parts (every part has between 1,5 - 3 mill polys) and click on that marker. If everything wokred correct, the parts perfectly fit together, like they never were aparted.
Like tjnyc already stated, its important to keep an eye on the seams, where the parts will join together again. Either assign your polygroups in a comfortable way, so that the seam is not seen (for example the seam between hand/arm and sleeves, that is inside the sleeves), or you need to pay attention on not changing polys near the seams. If you dont,
you will realize that the parts will have ugly cuts at those seams.
Now some pictures:
this is the ZSpheremodel of the body, already posed and ready to export into Silo to connect head and hands and building the cloth.
the model in Silo with started cape and head ready in place to connect.
here you see the Silo-final with ugly hands, ugly sleeves and cape, reimported into ZBrush.
this is the point where i decided that i had enough basic detail and I was ready to split.
yes, its Jantims great bronze material. 
I just wanted to see how it looks.
as the only detailed single part I want to post the head. Its far from finished, but I would be glad if you can tell if you like it at its current stage. Maybe you want to see some things changed.
This is a version that is not the most actual, as you can see from the face, that looks now like in the pix above. behind this link youll find the big version, where you can see the texture and surface detail. For texturing I used the great DecoBrush. And, yes its the teddy-texture 
finally, here is a version without texture and some vegetation, that, how i thought, came out quite interesting (although nothing on the model is really finished 
)
Well, I will post updates, as soon as they are ready. I also plan to record a ZScript abt the process of splitting a model to get highpoly-parts and putting them together again properbly. Unfortunately I cant get online this weekend 
So I can read the forum on sunday again.
But please, feel free to give any comment and critics, it would make me happy to read your oppinions!
thanks and greetings
froyd
