#project:s+agame

[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

Retop, boring but necessary.

[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]

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

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

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]

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]

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!