I’m still deciding on base colors, something makes me very unhappy so far…
Meanwhile I’ve added various eye-related geometry. Most important (for me) is the AO - it’s a small thing but I can’t bear to look at a face without it.
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I didn’t have much free time lately, but when I did I would often open Blender, pan view for a couple of minutes and quit 
Trying not to feel too discouraged, but things don’t look so good - not sure if textures will improve or break things completely.
And then I read this forum every day and everyone doing cool stuff… * sigh *
Still, good or bad, need to finish this one and move on.
I’m just trying to squeeze a few minutes a day of tweaking here and there when I feel awake enough for it. Done some simple procedural bases for textures. As an advanced user I can use not only Noise Texture but also Wave and Voronoi 
And even distort them a bit =D
I’m not sure I can do much more procedurally (not in this file at least), my PC starts making weird noises even with that Voronoi leather. So I bake them down as soon as I can, and later will paint over something more exciting on top. I hope. Soon. Ish.
That jacket leather will be redone from scratch - just trying to find a more reasonable workflow.
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This is my favorite WIP on the site, it always makes me super happy when I see a new post on it 
I don’t know if that helps at all with the motivations problems, but I’m really glad you’re working on it!
Your leather texture is looking really good, nice job maintaining the shininess of leather that often gets forgotten
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Thanks I hope I’ll get back into it properly come weekend and will stop whining (maybe just a little) 
Shininess is the only thing really helping to set materials apart - this character is like 50 shades of black =D
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Tiny update to show that I haven’t abandoned the thing. Lately in my free time I was either sleeping or thinking of going to sleep, which is about as productive 
Well, now I have more free time for a while, so maybe I’ll get it done.
I was also very tempted to redo the textures from scratch, so I avoided the moment of truth. But now that I opened the file again they don’t seem that hopeless? Maybe I just panicked before.
The process is rather destructive: anything procedural gets baked, any layers are merged.
I love non-destructive workflows, the option to go back at any moment and tweak the very basic shape or have a way to easily make variations. That’s why geonodes were a love at first sight.
…So the more is my surprise that I still prefer to texture on one layer, fix things by boldly painting over them. Maybe it’s because Blender’s paint mode is hard to deal with when it comes to big multilayered textures 
Oh well, I’ll do it bit by bit, merging down as I go, so that my pc don’t explode.
I’m making an effort not to make any silly jokes about “Paint it Black” and such. Why couldn’t I choose a more colorful character?! =D …I’m kidding, it’s an interesting problem to try and solve
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One thing that I notice is the metal (I assume they’re metal) attachments on the front don’t convey a lot of visual weight- I’d think they’d be pulling down on the fabric and creating some stretching or maybe wrinkles- I’m not sure how to explain it correctly, and I’m definitely not at my best and brightest right now, but it looks like they’re thin hollow plastic weightwise, not metal.
I mean, the whole thing looks absolutely amazing, ten thousand times better than I could do, but I did see that just now
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I think, I see what you mean (hopefully).
For now I haven’t done much painting on the jacket and nothing at all on metal, but I would be adding some shadows/bump under these things.
I’m assuming the blades like these would be anchored inside with wide wing-like shapes. If it makes sense. It should reduce the theoretical stretching of the fabric… right?
I have no idea what I’m doing
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Oh gotcha. This makes sense to me, but that really doesn’t mean much my wife is a seamstress, I’ll ask her and see what she thinks (if you want )
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I dread a “this is completely unrealistic terrible design decision” kind of answer (now that high poly stage is long over), but I’m curious (if it’s not too much to ask )
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The jacket looks like heavy leather, and if the metal is stamped (ie quite light) and reinforced on the leather then I don’t think it’s a problem.
I did notice it originally, but when you developed the leather texture, it seemed possible. Let’s hope the expert agrees. ; )
I like black-on-black. I especially like the pattern on the bustier(?).
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My wife said that the wings would mostly take care of the possible weight stretching, so you’re in the clear
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Painted legs and added black ivy pattern I planned from the beginning.
However it turned out too… noisy?
One way to solve it, is to color the pattern with more subtle overlaid color.
And in that case, reduce roughness for cooler effect:
OR to repaint it with different frequency: either with bigger curves and leaves OR with smaller elegant ivy, but wider empty spaces 
Does it still draws too much attention? Hard to say, maybe I should wait until the metal is painted.
I suspect I’ll just have to hold on to the mask for now and try different variants.
Also, I constantly listen to music while blending too =D Today’s playlist turned a bit retro after I read Piranha’s mention of Deus Ex. And while the Icarus theme was the whole reason I, immediately upon hearing it in trailer (really, no other reason at the time), decided to get acquainted with this game, today was all about the original’s OST. And Unreal’s, which shares at least one composer. There’s just something so nice about their “non-action” themes 
Phew, that’s a relief, thanks 
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Ooh yeah the second version looks awesome overlay is magic, that, add, multiply, and soft light are basically the only mix modes I use. Nice job!
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Oh yeah, the second version looks good. I don’t think it’ll draw too much attention, which the first one definitely did.
And yay, !
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This takes WAY longer than I expected. Granted, there were some extraneous factors at play (and I can’t believe I wrote “extraneous” correctly on the first try). It’s been feeding my anxiety a lot these two months - I should be faster, more decisive, right? It should have been a straightforward enough project. It never is, but it should have been
At least through all this I’ve learned something about myself: I certainly don’t lean into full realism - I have neither hardware, nor taste, nor sense of subtlety specific to it. My next project will almost certainly be further into NPR, dammit. That’s not to say NPR doesn’t require those things… it’s just very different.
For this I’ve tried to reach a middle ground. It is consciously stylized - some areas are meant to be almost completely void of “realistic” details like wrinkles or damage - for the readability. There are damaged parts, but no dirt - things meant to be used, but well-maintained. Of course, some other parts might just be design and execution mistakes, who knows 
Can’t say I’m happy with everything - to my eyes some things seem too noisy, too muddy. But I need to wrap it up at some point, so I have to accept what has been done and move on (again).
So, unless someone has any last minute critique, I’m finishing the texturing phase.
Ideally, I want to add hair and a simple rig by the end of the week - otherwise there will be another big pause.
Completely repainted the face. It wasn’t hard - just one click with Fill tool to erase all the progress and it’s become so much easier to fix mistakes. No regrets.
Suddenly reluctant to add details, I’ve decided to leave the spine dead simple. Same for “blades” and the way they are connected to the jacket - in the end I just don’t see a good way to add anything else to it (just a little bump for buttons).
Boots is what causes me the most pain right now. “Paint” and “Lines” layers still not baked down. But I don’t think anything can be done to fix this thing. I don’t know if there’s anything TO fix. A pair of fresh eyes said it’s all good… 
Overview:
Portrait view:
Anxiety is not good for productivity. Sure I need to push myself beyond my limits and all that, recognize and fix my mistakes. But “there’s something wrong with it, oh no, what am I doing with my life” is not a good debugging statement. If no particular problem can be identified - move forward. Better to have an ugly fully rigged model, than never-ever-finished model in the WiP folder.
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I don’t have any feedback on the texturing, other than it is gorgeous Nice work!
This is a new one: “You’ve contributed more than 20% of the replies on this thread, consider giving others a chance to reply”. If I’m replying too much, let me know, and I’ll observe and like from a respectful distance instead. I won’t be offended at all
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Thanks! =)
And I’m happy to see any replies - keeps me going. Thank you for moral support!
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I come in with fresh eyes. It’s really nice, and though I don’t comment much on here (mainly a lack of knowledge, or better words than “nice”) I’ve enjoyed the steps you took to get here! “There is no mistakes in art” might be the most unhelpful thing, but my fresh eyes puts this work on a higher shelf 
I’m no expert in characters, let alone humans, but I like what I see. Great work!
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That is some superior edge wear!
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I’m suddenly conscious of bumping the thread with “non-updates”, so sorry if I don’t react to comments with proper timing
@Minamookevlar, thanks for the kind words Being stuck with this model for so long (longer than usual), I have trouble seeing things clearly 
A product of getting extremely confused with color spaces (when did it set itself to “linear”?), going crazy with low opacity brush, adding color ramp to fix stuff and as a result clipping values in a way that unexpectedly gives me an edge wear I’ve wanted all along Not exactly procedural, but not fully handpainted - a balance of happy accidents and conscious choices.
Generating hair curves
Heard a lot about new hair system - you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing some tests a while ago. But I’m not “alpha-tester” type of person so I hadn’t touched it until now. Probably a good thing too since I didn’t have even a basic understanding of GeoNodes to aid me before.
…I tried generating haircard texture with particle hair once. What a pain that was! This is so much easier. It’s not perfect, but only because I’m running into my own ignorance and laziness. At least now I can understand the parameters I’m tweaking - I put them there!
Here’s the result. Diffuse, Alpha and Roughness in 1k, clipped opacity. There was a Normal but I’m not sure it’s of any use here… I will probably have to re-render the texture as I start putting cards on the model - it’s hard to tell what values will be needed.
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