By skipping straight to a low-poly model rather than sculpting a high-poly model and then retopologizing, the author saved an immense amount of time. UV mapping I expect they wouldn't have saved much time. The AI texture maps (complete with baked in shadows and lighting that wouldn't work in all lighting conditions) saved them an immense amount of time, but doesn't include the normal mapping step that would usually occur with the high/poly low workflow. Of course there are some artifacts there but the end result is really good for a prototype for a low budget indie game.
Using Mixamo once again saves an huge amount of time over hand rigging the mesh and instantly gives you access to a large library of animations that can be projected onto the Mixamo rig.
This is a very clever use of the available tools by very experienced character artist in my opinion. Your average HN reader is not going to be able to achieve this in 4, 18 hours or otherwise due to simply not having the required skillset to get from one end of the workflow to the other. Kudos to the author.
Using Mixamo once again saves an huge amount of time over hand rigging the mesh and instantly gives you access to a large library of animations that can be projected onto the Mixamo rig.
This is a very clever use of the available tools by very experienced character artist in my opinion. Your average HN reader is not going to be able to achieve this in 4, 18 hours or otherwise due to simply not having the required skillset to get from one end of the workflow to the other. Kudos to the author.