Character Model - Kara

How dare you! I joke, of course. It’s fine. I’m happy to keep making tweaks. What would you suggest, I just puff them out a bit more?

Yeah i think so, i think the particles need to arc out just a tiny bit, give it a bit of substance. Maybe ask a girl politely if you could take a good look at her eyebrows… :slight_smile:

I think they need a bit of variation in colour to, very dark grey to almost black and perhaps the odd grey one. I guess probably make up involved in your vision, but even with makeup, nothing is proper black. You’ll get the odd missed hair that didnt catch the makeup and maybe its a brunette hair…

1 Like

Puffed out the brows a little more. I do have a bunch of references I’m looking at. It may just be the lighting that’s making it look a little flatter perhaps? Will experiment with color variation. Atm, I’ve just set Random Color up to 1.

Quick render with new brows. Just need to change the seed for the left brows to give some variation.

1 Like

Woah so much of updates since i saw last, eyes are really starting to pop now, good work !

1 Like

@Lapland Thanks!! :slight_smile:

Some smaller updates. Added the eye makeup back, but much more subtle. I think it looks a lot better now. Tweaked the texture around the lips, and also cleaned the nose up a little. Was looking a little orange. Tweaked the spec map ever so slightly aswell. I really want to have a crack at the hair next. There are still some things to tweak, such as the texture (or lack of) around the ears, but I know the hair is going to be a pain in the…erm…bottom. So I wanna get going on that. Will also give me a break for a little while from looking at the creepy diffuse texture

So…as a starting point, this isn’t awful. But this is gonna suck so hard!

Disclaimer: THIS IS NOWHERE NEAR DONE! :smiley:

So just placed a few base children hairs down to start getting general shape. Maybe ~10 or so parent hairs. Also, just the principled hair shader, stock. Temp material basically.

So the plan is for a sort of messy ponytail, with some fringe hairs at the front. If I can’t get a Ponytail to look decent, she’ll just have her hair down I guess.

Gonna take a while to get right, but I’m confident (sure…). Any tips appreciated. I’ve already seen the CG cookie tut on hair, and the one from Nazar.

Working on getting the base hairs down. This layer is to define the general shape and hairline. I’ll then add layers on top of this one, to define the hairline a little better, add some wispy bits, fly away hairs etc…Plus a little bit of a fringe. I may also add another thinner layer behind the hairline, to act a sort of fill layer, which will just thicken up the general hair area, and minimise gaps. I may not need it though.

Starting to understand particle hairs a little better. It’s quite a slow process…

Got a lot done on the hair today. I started by tweaking my initial shape layer, and then went about adding 5(I think) more layers on top. there are a few clump strand layers which help soften the hairline a bit, and add some thickness to the hair overall. The two different clump particle systems have varying thickness and density. Once I was happy with the clump hairs, I went ahead and added some baby hairs along the hairline. These still need some slight tweaking. I’ve also added what I call a scraggle layer. A layer for the out of place hairs that get picked up by the backlight quite well. There is still some tweaking to so, but I’m greatly encouraged by my results so far.

I am yet to add the actual Ponytail yet, as you can see. This’ll simply be another particle system, again with several layers to build it up, followed by a final layer which will wrap hair around the base of the ponytail, so I don’t have to worry about hairbands etc…

Here are the particle systems in view port…

Here is a test render before I added the baby hairs, which soften the hairline…

I did also bump some of the child numbers up after this render also.
Here is the latest render, with all the particle layers…

I still need to do a little blending on the hairline. Kara does also have a bit of a fringe, which I’ll experiment with adding.

For now, I’m pretty happy. Material is just stock Principled hair shader, and honestly, it’s not too bad.

EDIT:
A little tweak. I think I need another layer of smaller strands, or at-least some more on that layer, to fill a few gaps, and add some more variation etc…Also tweaked the material settings a little.

Bit of early morning Blending…Tweaked the hairline a little, added a few whispy bits, and fixed a few things up, including adding more smaller clump strands. happy with it for now. I’m sure I’ll make further tweaks, but next step is the actual Ponytail itself…

I’ve been messing around with Marvelous Designer the past few days. It’s pretty fun.

I’m still not 100% sure what kind of outfit she is going to have. I was going to go for something a little more casual. Just messing about atm. Will probably change it to something completely different.

The undershirt is from the old model, not created in MD (the actual undershirt will cover the belly). Scarf thing also doubles as a hood

As I say, just playing about atm. Got MD for ~ a month, so should have settled on something more final by then.

Still working on the clothing using MD. Got it got a couple more weeks before it expires, so need to get a move on. I’ve settled on an outfit, and I’ve also posed the body. (Can’t really tell from the render). The body is separate, and I’ll likely keep it that way. Just base materials down for now. Not sure why the stitches on the jacket are white, but I’ll fix it. Think the body is still a tad too big. I’ll keep working on it, and make adjustments.

Few tweaks to the scale, plus a better look at the clothing. Some work to do on the pose I think. I’m also gonna rig the face slightly, just so I have control over head rotation, and eye rotation; likely nothing more. Atm the head looks a little stiff. It shouldn’t be too hard.

Changing the pose means changing the clothes in MD. It doesn’t take too long, but I need to get the pose settled on ASAP. I think rigging the head a little will help with that.

She will have a gun in at-least 1 hand, the other may also have one. Not decided yet. She does have 2 guns, but may have one in a holster.




1 Like

head and eyes now rigged.

Impressive everything, except the skin looks like it could use more sss? The clothes and hair are very well done!

1 Like

Thank you! :smiley:

Yeah, I turned it down a while back a little too much. Realised yesterday that I should turn it up a little more.

Started cleanup work on the Marvelous Designer clothes. There is a pretty clever trick you can do in Blender which makes this incredibly easy. This video was very useful!

They’re still high poly, but, now no tris, and clean, sharp edges, which gives me more control. Also, very easy to unwrap!

At the moment, just the Principled shader with a leather normal map I’ve taken straight from MD.

Probably lost a small amount of detail, but overall, I think it’s fine.

I think the jacket is mostly ok. Shirt might need some fixing though. If I have to do the jacket aswell, then I will.

1 Like

Continued to clean up the clothes meshes. A few tweaks still on the jacket, but ok for now. Will do some more work on the materials next. Also bumped the SSS back up a little.





Some small updates. A few more tweaks to the retopod mesh. I’ve also done a little bit of sculpting on the trousers and the jacket. Just to define what was already there, and add a little more interest, especially on the arms of the jacket which were looking a little bland. Will probably tweak it more. Need to add the zipper to the jacket, which shouldn’t be too difficult. Also need to model the belt and gun holsters which will go on each leg. That should help it take shape a little more, along with her guns in each hand.

I’m thinking I should be able to use some of the original scenes I made, and just update them a little to be slightly more realistic. I’m thinking for final render I’ll have a few shots like this one from different angles; studio type shots I guess. I’ll also have an in scene render which I already have very much in mind bases off of one of my favourite panels I made in the original comic. Thankfully render times aren’t too bad (at 1000 samples). I could definitely optimise a fee things I think. I should probably experiment with the denoiser at some point too.

Critique welcome as always.

1 Like

Jumped back into this for a while. Currently working on a new face diffuse, as I wasn’t completely satisfied with the UV mapping for the first one. I’ve now tweaked it and got a much better resolution. I’m giving substance painted a go for this, and it’s pretty great honestly! So good to be able to paint directly onto the model, more or less lag free!

Here’s a render I done a couple of days ago. Nothing really changed on this, but just higher res and more samples. Changes will be posted soon! Going to tweak the hair a bit too once the new texture is done.

Progress so far on the new face texture. No spec or normals maps yet (need to redo the normal map…resolution issues) Making changes is super simple, as it’s all layer based in substance like photoshop. Happy so far. More to come!

1 Like