UV Mapping

I had previously unwrapped Gloria - our main character, which took me a really long time, probably longer than it should of, but I got there in the end. I knew in some places it was a bit messy and the way I unwrapped parts probably wasn't the most efficient way to do it. I had to re do some of the maps however as when it came to smoothing our character she turned out to be a fair few too many polys. Ideally a character should be as low as possible around 6000 - 7000 polys, trying to be the most economical. Because she was so many polys I went and started deleting unnecessary edge loops and by doing this I got her below 8000, the issue was that by deleting edge loops I had messed up the uv map. I think by deleting edges after it was mapped I may have deleted the seams which would distort the map itself. I was annoyed at the fact I would have to re do most of he unwrapping again, but in hindsight it was a good thing. This time I was able to make the map a lot neater and more understandable.

Now knowing this, with our second character we have smoothed him and then Lija deleted the unnecessary edge loops first before unwrapping him. This shouldn't distort the map in any way as we are doing it after the editing stage. We just hope that smoothing it beforehand won't be detrimental in any way as we were told to unwrap first then smooth. I guess we shall soon se if there are any issues, but hopefully they would be an easy fix if anything.