Blender vs Mudbox Workflow for Games

So right now I’m really confused…I’m following video tutorial here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg-GUvYRHcU for making a Human Template Character. My intention is then rework it further, animate, and use it more for video games. I originally started with mudbox but I grew frustrated because I’ve been told and am hearing its bad workflow to start with a sculpting program so I previously played around with blender and came across the above video for making a low poly human character and I’ve been wanting to learn it more anyway since it seemed more game-friendly though I’ve heard Maya and 3ds work better so i’m not sure anymore other then it seems to be preference I guess.

The engine I intend to use is Unity 3D and I recall at the beginning of the above video that this type of character template is designed to work well for games which I am working on in blender. Well i’m pretty much finished with it almost and I noticed that the Subdivision being at Level 3 with the Modifier on has the Tris Count in Object View is much higher then what it shows in Edit Mode so this as really concerned me since it shows the Tris at around 230k + currently.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/AQEjNT8.png

Or is that inaccurate? I know they say for games its best to try to keep the polycount as low as possible. The original character I created in Mudbox to start with for this game I am working on was around 500k but after retopology I dropped it to a mere 153k. I was thinking this was still much too high even though I ported him into Blender Fine to try to animate and I had him all rigged up but the rigging was not working so I started from scratch with just blender instead since I thought maybe this would be better to keep it lower for game use which has me concerned and wondering am I wasting my time. Also I remember that the starting mesh to work from in Mudbox which is normally for a base to resculpt is at around 66k I believe. So I’m pretty much feeling like I could go back and rework it all to be far less then what the Tris is currently at in Blender…I’m very confused and am not sure at this point if I should continue but I’m very inexperienced at this too so I find myself stuck at a standstill again right now.

Does anyone who’s made video games have any tips or advice for me so I can get over this problem?

Deygus, a typical workflow for games:

  1. Build your low-poly character in a modelling tool like Maya, 3DSMax, Blender, etc

  2. UV map the character

  3. Export the character into zBrush/Mudbox

  4. Do your high-poly sculpting

  5. Bake out the detail into a normal map

  6. Apply the normal map to your low poly character

Also, I can’t stand Blender. It uses Z up which causes all kinds of problems with Unity’s Y up.