Barded Steed (Realtime)

Here's part one of a much larger project to create a next gen real time character and mount for use in games. I wanted to push myself in general with this piece but particularly with creature sculpting & anatomy, complex armour that can be animated, complex texturing, optimal retopology and (the dreaded) realistic real time hair card creation - all whilst maintaining detail & realism.
The armour is based on the piece at the Met which is originally from armoury of the counts Collalto at the castle near San Salvatore, near Treviso (original artisan unknown).
The horse & barding were created in ZBrush then retopologized & unwrapped in Maya before being textured in Substance Painter. I used Photoshop to create a number of custom alphas for the patterns of the armour that were then used inside of ZBrush. I used Xgen to bake the hair cards before placing them in Maya. everything is rendered out in Marmoset Toolbag.