Finished the retopology - Now What?

[Anonymous]

Hello! 

I'm very new to Maya. Thanks to my university, I was introduced to the software, however it doesn't cover what I truly want to learn doing - characters. I've been looking up tutorials online, but I find that they are either using really old versions of Maya, or are doing an extremely cartoony style, or, quite simply, are not beginner friendly.

I want something semi-realistic out of mine, and I'm hoping to make my character either high poly or medium poly. After finishing my first head concept, I just finished my first attempt to retopology (very messy) and now I'm just stuck.  The model is looking very blocky, and I'm not sure where to go from here. How do I smoothen it out + recover details? And what are the next steps I should take, texture wise? Are there any beginner friendly tutorials out there that kind of help mentioning the exact steps I need to take? I've heard terms "UV Mapping" and "Normal Map", etc, but I'm not sure what these even mean or or what they do, what order to do them, or find any tutorials on them?

If you know the answer, please use words that only a beginner would understand. I promise 98% of 3D modelling language still sounds completely alien to me, haha.

Thank you!