I thought I’ll gather these in a separate thread? Solemnly swear to finish this WIP. It’s a very important point for me actually - I haven’t done anything truly complete in a looong while (except for my handpainted and even breathing Hellknight, but that was almost an accident), procrastinating and getting distracted with new models. My poor Commander character, I haven’t forgotten you, I’ll be back for you… soon… -ish It’s making me feel very discouraged.
The goal is to make real-time (sort of “game-ready” though I don’t have much in terms of limitations) rigged character. Then maybe start learning UE with it as a test subject for export and rendering (which is fitting since it’s a UT’99 fanart).
I want to make this portfolio-worthy, I guess? Whatever that means. I have a couple of full optimized characters but I’ve been reluctant to start a portfolio all this time with them…
…should I start with them anyway? They are a slice of my skill after all AAA!!! * insecurity attack *
Anyway… Since it’s a fanart, I have the major parts of design planned out.
Current status. I’ll probably remake the gloves and add some metal bits and the clothing should be done. Haven’t started on the face yet. Ignore the creepy placeholder.
These are tricky sausages. I guess I need to carefully add volume and some strategic folds to make it look like a glove. Maybe I was staring at it too long - can’t see why it looks so wrong to me
Oh, this is so good already! If I were an envious person, I’d be green now!
I do think there might be something very subtly off with the hand. Or maybe it’s just my hand that’s weird? I don’t really see it in the textured model, but the left one… it seems to have a slightly odd bend below the knuckles where the proximal phalanges start, just below the webbing. There is a bend there in my hand, but it’s less… sharp?
I’ve never stared at my left hand for this long, and the longer I look the less sure I am of this. Yeah, I know that’s real helpful.
There’s one thing that I can’t understand here. Look, if you follow the sewing that surrounds the thumb you would expect it to be a bit lower at the end to follow the same path as the one that comes from the finger, don’t you think?
That is very good point. I think this is one of the things that was nagging me.
My own hands are rather bony, so it’s kinda similar for index and middle finger at least (even less exaggerated than in my case, actually ). But since it’s supposed to be a glove it should not be so… sharp? =)
It depends: search for something like “military gloves images” shows seams going all over the thing.
Elegant skin-tight gloves usually have that one continuous seam, yes.
Sport/military types have thumb with its own UV islands sewn separately and seam’s either circle the thumb, go around the hand, or all the way up to the wrist
That said, right now it’s not clear what style this glove is supposed to be, so seams just look like sloppy sewing design. I realize now, I should pick a style and find some better reference images.
Weekend started a day early, so I’ve spent it contemplating the glove design in Krita. I keep getting confused by the controls - trying to move things with “G”, sample color with “S”, and don’t get me started on navigation - it’s a disaster
Originally I made sketches of boots and corsets over the base-mesh, but then arrogantly decided that I can improvise the rest XD
And new images… Figured that gloves should be more “baggy” to contrast the “skin-tight” big forms in the middle. But at the same time of relatively simple construction. So I think, I’ll go with this last one:
And special thanks once again goes to DooM3 for making me a completely paranoid hard saver
For the first time using Blender got a badly corrupted save. Phew, that gave me a start…
Anyway, the new glove. Looks like some of these folds would need to be defined later in low poly.
Trying to go for semi-realism (if it’s even a thing) - which means I can’t just sculpt folds all over the thing (though it’s tempting)…
After every time of inspiration and optimism comes an “unreasonable depression” period. Every hope and goal from yesterday seems too naïve and unachievable now. Head is mess and sarcasm levels are off the charts.
The only way is to trust the process and persevere. But I just want to sleep all day
Thought there will be more to add to the jacket, but after adding these “teeth” (“blades”) decorations it occurred to me that:
they create a curious framing… I like how it turned out. Very simple, but pointy. I think they work well with “unreal curves” used in boots, shoulder pads and spine;
there will be inevitably more detail and patterns with textures;
consequently I should be very careful about adding any more stuff so it won’t end up being too noisy;
I should stop and go to the next stage at some point.
So I guess that’s it for clothes? [Unless someone sees something wrong with them?]
Just left to freeze and fix seams now.
If it makes you feel better, every single thing you post here feels unachievable to me that is so cool! You make beautiful clothing design look so effortless
I always have a lot of trouble sculpting heads - textures add so much to the final look that I can never predict how it’ll go. Will it look human at all?
[I think the only time I got it right straight from the sculpt was WandaVision fanart - still shocked about that]
Orthos always look awful and make me move things unnecessarily (what a word). But perspective (120mm) on the other hand seems okay.
So I’ve decided to paint-sculpt on a copy to get a preview of the future texture. I can already see it’ll be fun to color a seemingly monochrome character
The face needs character. Maybe it should be longer according to the reference I got from the game… which can’t properly run on my PC anymore, oh no
Note to self: don’t forget asymmetry… this time.
Ahha, well to be fair I had the base mesh to work with - I spent more time tweaking features. And then undoing the tweaks. And then doing them again…
However, after last SculptJanuary, I can make a decently human head from a sphere in an hour and a half Self-imposed time limits do wonders. Can recommend.
Next time you do this, could I trouble you to record it? I’ve seen quite a lot of videos of this of course but they’re always timelapses and they zip around so fast you can’t actually learn anything. My current best time for sculpting a good looking human head is 3 days, so I could definitely pick up some tricks from you
Not much of an update but a wall of text diary-style. Safe to ignore.
Honestly, it’s hard to keep going. Scorching heat turned into freezing rain. It’s almost as dark during the day as if it were winter. Cats are piling up and hinting that maybe we should not get up and be productive at all. But…
I’ve been scrolling through my gallery and remembered that SculptJanuary challenge was pretty much the same. By the end of the first week I was completely drained out of energy. Everything seemed like insurmountable task - eating, playing, being awake. I didn’t expect it to happen so soon, New Year usually charges me with at least two weeks worth of optimism.
But it was just the first week and I thought “Well, it’s stupid to give up now, I’ll do one or two more prompts”. I did 21 out of 31! Some of them pushed way beyond what I thought I could do. I even still feel proud about some after so many months.
And each day felt like a start of a complete and utter failure. Go figure.
So, the lesson here is… I can’t trust my own head I can’t just wait until it passes. It won’t. I should work around that.
I’m trying to break up the process into simple straightforward tasks so that I don’t just stare at the screen feeling lost.
The plan:
retopo: body > gloves > boots > jacket > shoulder pad > buttons and blades. In that order so that the character has a complete body before optional clothing;
iterative task to the above - test joints for simple deformation. Mainly hips and knees (look closely at Bayonetta?) But don’t get TOO obsessed - topology can’t solve all the problems - don’t forget… again;
unwraping: boots and gloves (and arms?) are going to be mirrored. Probably. Should I bother?
baking: well this is going to be fun;
texturing: yay!
hair;
rigging;
…who knows what the future will bring, hope I’ll get this far.
I finalized the hipoly and divided it into neat collections.
First thing I nuked from my “curve manager” script was “curve assembler” - it took evaluated geometry from curved arrays and turned it into new normal mesh object. Well, with geonodes we can do the same thing with much less pain and more flexibility!
I forgot that the “assembler object” had bright Object Color - it brought up all the seams and looks like an interesting design idea to explore in some other model. Don’t get distracted!
And then my brain caught up to me: I don’t have to destructively join anything! Just use same “assembler” to create an object from a collection. I can then shrinkwrap Retopo to the whole thing and don’t feel anxiety about breaking stuff. Experience tells me that I won’t go back to fix anything anyway, but the mere possibility takes away some doubts.
It may seem silly that I go through so much organizational trouble and write up every little thing…
But I’m hoping it’ll help me workaround some mental traps now and in the future.
This is far too relatable. I also enjoy a look into your process, it’s very helpful to me your seam adding and highlighting script/geonodes setup is just about the coolest thing I’ve seen today. Have you already shared more info about that and I’ve just forgotten?
It’s making me feel very discouraged.
AAA!!! * insecurity attack *
). But since it’s supposed to be a glove it should not be so… sharp? =)
that is so cool! You make beautiful clothing design look so effortless
