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Project: Draconic Lady - Posing

Concept: @arttasysworld

I actually finished this step back in May but never got to posting it because I have had a pretty big life project I have been working on. Now it's mostly sorted I can get back to finishing this off!

For posing I actually experimented with a couple of new tools like Mixamo and Maya's quick rig, but in the end they more than what I needed to pose her for just a still render. So I went back to what I knew, just builiding a basic rig, which was quick and got the job done.

I always do love the posing stage, it's when I feel like a model actually starts to take on life, I got really excited at this point as she was really coming together.

To move the bulk of the hair I just used a latice deformer and then manually adjusted indivdual hair strands into the position that I wanted. Making sure to keep an eye on the camera view so it would look as close to the concept as possible.

She is now ready for the final stage! I have been hanging to get into Unreal for so long now, but maybe the delay was a good thing. I have seen a bunch of new YouTube tutorials come out for exactly what I want to do so that's going to be handy.

[avrilgibbon]

Project: Draconic Lady - Test Render

Concept: @arttasysworld

So I have become kind of stuck, frustrated, not sure where I am headed with the breakup and flyaways stage.

I started to realise through the process that I had probably made both the strands and the actual hair chunks too thick with not enough variation or clumps within the actual cards. Placing any of my "flyaway" cards without them starting to cover up the cards underneath was proving really hard to do. They also just weren't looking light or fluffy to me like I felt they should. I also just wasn't sure how the hair line was looking and just overall a bit lost on what to do.

I realised a lot of my concern was coming from not being sure if it was actually looking any good, possibly from staring at it for too long.

So I decided to try and do a test render. Initially I thought I might jump ahead and get into unreal to see how it was looking, often I find when you're learning something new a lot of doubt comes from being unsure of the next stage. But after opening UE, looking at a couple of tuts I just kinda noped outta that idea. It was definitely going to take too long to learn how to get her in there, which would ultimately push finishing the hair out further.

And. I Just. Want. It. Done.

So I decided to just set up the Arnold shaders and see how that turned out. I realise Arnold is going to look different to UE but the purpose is to push me forward and see what I can do with the cards I have. Like am I just being pedantic or can I just make this work and get it done?

The first problem of course was that the Albedo was super desaturated, which I had noticed when creating the texture maps. I have no idea why this was and I wasn't going back to figure it out so I just adjusted the levels in photoshop.

Once I was happy with the colour I was glad to see that it wasn't looking too bad and rendering it definitely gave me the perspective I needed to see what I need to do next.

I did a bit of a draw over, identifying what needed to be done:

The left side hairline line isn't too bad, I think I can just add some transitional pieces

Right side needs work: It's too far back and needs to be filled out underneath some more.

The entire thing needs to have loose, single strands that don't all flow with the overall shape and hide/breakup those flatter pieces on top

Lots of fluffy, flyaway, curly bits near the ears and caught on the horns

Now I think I am ready to just get this shit knocked over.

[avrilgibbon]

Project: Draconic Lady - Test Render

Concept: @arttasysworld

So I have become kind of stuck, frustrated, not sure where I am headed with the breakup and flyaways stage.

I started to realise through the process that I had probably made both the strands and the actual hair chunks too thick with not enough variation or clumps within the actual cards. Placing any of my "flyaway" cards without them starting to cover up the cards underneath was proving really hard to do. They also just weren't looking light or fluffy to me like I felt they should. I also just wasn't sure how the hair line was looking and just overall a bit lost on what to do.

I realised a lot of my concern was coming from not being sure if it was actually looking any good, possibly from staring at it for too long.

So I decided to try and do a test render. Initially I thought I might jump ahead and get into unreal to see how it was looking, often I find when you're learning something new a lot of doubt comes from being unsure of the next stage. But after opening UE, looking at a couple of tuts I just kinda noped outta that idea. It was definitely going to take too long to learn how to get her in there, which would ultimately push finishing the hair out further.

And. I Just. Want. It. Done.

So I decided to just set up the Arnold shaders and see how that turned out. I realise Arnold is going to look different to UE but the purpose is to push me forward and see what I can do with the cards I have. Like am I just being pedantic or can I just make this work and get it done?

The first problem of course was that the Albedo was super desaturated, which I had noticed when creating the texture maps. I have no idea why this was and I wasn't going back to figure it out so I just adjusted the levels in photoshop.

Once I was happy with the colour I was glad to see that it wasn't looking too bad and rendering it definitely gave me the perspective I needed to see what I need to do next.

I did a bit of a draw over, identifying what needed to be done:

The left side hairline line isn't too bad, I think I can just add some transitional pieces

Right side needs work: It's too far back and needs to be filled out underneath some more.

The entire thing needs to have loose, single strands that don't all flow with the overall shape and hide/breakup those flatter pieces on top

Lots of fluffy, flyaway, curly bits near the ears and caught on the horns

Now I think I am ready to just get this shit knocked over.

[avrilgibbon]

Project: Draconic Lady - Hair Blockout

Concept: @arttasysworld

Finished the blockout , as expected placement took a long time and a bit to get used.

Started off with a skull cap that I am still debating whether I or not to use, as I think her hair line is looking ok without it (first image) Especially once I add some breakup/flyaways. But it was good to have as a starting point

I played around with making a few different hair card types as I wasnt exactly sure what I would need or what would look good.

Following along with one of the tutorials/videos I was using, I added 3 deformers: Bend, Sine & Twist. This made me realise that I really could have relied purely on the deformers to create the curly/wavy shape rather than trying to shape the splines. Something I noticed some other people doing was re-using the same hair cards for other characters and just adjusting the shape/size. Which I thought was a good way to save on time.

Got a few placed and I was honestly pretty excited to see it all start coming together! It felt like I had been in learning purgatory for so long which always makes you feel like you arent making any "real" progress because you can't see or show what you have been doing. Obvioulsy learning how to is part of the progress, I find it just gets frustrating if it goes on too long. It's usually at that point I stop being so careful about the results and just start doing shit!

Started doing regular mirror tests after each row to check how it was looking. Once I completed all the rows:

I cleaned up/organised my outliner

Mirrored each row, re-naming everything as I went.

Then went back through each layer again, fixing any mirroring to look less symetrical.

Now onto Breakup and Flyaways.....

[avrilgibbon]

Project: Draconic Lady

Played around with the Arnold Hair shader last week trying to get the right shade to match the concept and also the horns.

Went through quite a few iterations, first starting off just playing around with the Melanin levels and randomness as alot of the tutorials spoke about. At first I thought it looked pretty good but as soon as I tested it against the actual model witht the reference (top image) I realised it was way too orange compared to the almost peachy-red of the concept. I especially didn't like how the ends were quite yellow.

So I tested using just the base colour (Second image set) which at first I liked quite alot and was going to go with but after some feed back that it looked too flat and unrealistic I decided to keep playing around

So I added a ramp to the base colour to give it a nice gradient effect (Third Set)

And then I spend ages playing around with adjusting the melanin and randomness!

Too much and it looked more intersting but imediately started getting those awful yellow tips instead of the nice peachy ones. Not enough and it was too flat

So I finally laned on the last image which was the base colour ramp with .15 Melanin and .2 Melanin Randomness. Which I am pretty happy with, I think it has some nice variation while still matching up with the concept.

I meant to post this when I finished it last week but was too caught up in exporting the texturing maps. Been working on settin up the cards and getting the model into Maya this week, so I am about a week behind in my progress, but I'm planning on trying to stick to weekly Friday Updates now that I am back to regularly working on my projects again so will post that progress next Friday

[avrilgibbon]

Project: Draconic Lady

Spent the last couple of months studying/learning how to make hair cards and use Xgen. It's been awhile since I learnt something new so i kind of forgot my process and how much longer it takes when you are learning.

I was aiming to get this project done by mid year but because you can never really account for what will go wrong that you have to figure out. Or know how long things actually take because you have never done it before, that didnt happen. So like with everything this year, I have just kind of chilled out with the whole concept of a deadline and enjoyed the ride. And I have found it enjoyable, I forgot how much I do like figuring something out and how it feels when you start getting results.

I have also been keeping a hair card study document while working on this, just recording all my resources and the steps to the process. It needs cleaning up but at the end I might share it for anyone who interested.

The clumps got finished off the other day, some of them I really like how they turned out and others less so. I probably made more than I needed but I figured as I don't really know what I need I would just make a bunch and hope some of them work out haha

Using the reference images as a guide and then creating curves defintely made a huge difference to having control over the shape of the hair. I don't think I would have been able to get the same results so easily just using modifiers, so really reccomend doing that. It can be a bit finicky to start with but once you kinda work out its quirks its great!

Working on the fun part of colouring the hair using the Arnold Hair shader. Starting to get really excited to see my character with hair soon. Poor things been balled for months!

[avrilgibbon]

Project: Draconic Lady

After doing a bunch of study on how to tackle hair cards I started working on getting reference together, the plan was origninally to pull out pieces of hair from the reference and then do drawovers to make my clumps but after just lassoing them out I kind of felt like it might be worth just using the cut outs and seeing what I can get from that, thought it might save me some time so was a worth a try and I am keen to get into XGen and start figuring that out. My last expericne was with NHair and I found it pretty tricky. So I figure I just need to jump in already and start figuring it out, then I am sure I will whether this was a good idea or not.

Might try and jump into it today, but I also have to do grocery shopping and potentially go into work because so many orders to pack >_<

[avrilgibbon]

Project: Draconic Lady - Horn & Eye Texturing

Defintely don’t feel like I utilised all the tools in substance for texturing the horns, was kind of just ready to move in and thought it was good enough....theme of this whole project I think haha

[avrilgibbon]

Project: Draconic Lady - Texturing

Painting the skin was really fun, I really enjoyed this who process and was pretty happy with how it turned out.

[avrilgibbon]

Draconic Lady: Skin Texturing

Texturing the skin in Substance was a learning experience, I just used whatever was available. Not super great, but it added some detail and texture. 

I think next time I will probably stick to doing the detailing in ZBrush, I would like to give the whole Texturingxyz thing a go. It looks like it gets some really great results. 

[avrilgibbon]

Project: Draconic Lady

Baking done in Substance, had some trouble because I stuffed up my Uv layouts and also had apparently moved the position of my model at some point.

Plus I think I need to learn/re-learn about UV layouts, because I packed everything into one (pretty sure this is old practice now) and I probably could have separated them into at least 2.

But this project is really about pushing forward, not being perfect. I just want to get something done and learn along the way.

[avrilgibbon]

Project: Draconic Lady

Retop, boring but necessary.

[avrilgibbon]

I realized I haven’t posted any progress on this or anything in awhile; life & work have been pretty crazy this year (as for most people this year) Once I finished up the Trimester I had planned on continuing on Lady Maria, but I just needed to ease myself back in with something a bit smaller so I am working on the model based off this concept by a friend of mine @arttasysworld It’s concept character for one for one of the races in a game we have been casually developing this year. We have been catching up on Discord every few weeks to nut out the genre of game, the story and the world which I have been really enjoying. This is going to be kind of a test of 3d style we are going for, which will give me some practice in the real time work flow plus different texturing styles. Anyway, sculpt is finished - on to retop!

[avrilgibbon]

Doll Master is finished! 

Concept by Katya Cyan

I did this as the project model for the digital sculpture course I teach at Griffith so there are a lot of things I kind of rushed through because I was also re-writing content for the course at the same time as working on this.

But its the first full model I have finished in awhile so yay! Now I can get back to working on the Lady Maria project I started.....oh like this time last year

[avrilgibbon]

Finished!

......almost. Need to pose and then attach all the flowy bits: Sleeves & Earring tassels. Then do some cloth sculpting and THEN I am done and can render. 

Original concept by the awesome Katya Cyan 

[avrilgibbon]

Just a some progress of this project

Only a few more things to finish off and then onto pose and render

[avrilgibbon]

Just a little update of where I am at with this character.

I have had to jump ahead on some things so she is missing a lot of pieces and is half finished on some aspects (like I have done no fold sculpting) 

But anyway, its coming along