Modelling and materials more or less complete for this variation of Kara. Not sure now whether to continue making the other variations of the character (hood up version) and then rig both, or whether to start working on adding clothes to the rig now and seeing how difficult it’s going to be to get right.
Started adding clothes etc…to the rig (nothing to show). It’s gonna be a fair amount of work to tweak it all, which I expected tbf. Because I’m only making stills, it doesn’t have to be perfect. The mesh can intersect a little if I can’t get it 100% right, as I can just edit things once it’s posed. But hopefully I can get it to a stage where I can pose it however I want without too much of an issue with the deforms.
So my brilliant plan is, put her in a pose that will provide ‘interest’ and then weight paint. Problem is that rig at a stretched position looks ok, but when it goes to something more simple, it messes up again 
Anyone got any tips? Heres the position I put her in. It’s not terrible as of now. Can see the strap I did weight paint compared to one I didn’t. Mirrored weight painting isn’t working either, so…
[EDIT] Just read a genius idea…when using this version of Kara, delete the legs! Then the trousers/boots become her legs.
[EDIT AGAIN] Yeah…thats actually a pretty solid idea. No intersecting of the mesh, except on hips a little, but much easier to tweak. Will do same with boots if I have to aswell!
Rigging not going too badly. Trousers, boots and top all rigged. Still 1 or 2 tweeks on the top, but I’ve done a really odd pose to stretch the mesh and try to make intersects. Belt and armour to go. Not a clue how to go about doing the armour, as it’s all solid, and doesn’t flex…
Looking great! I ran into exact same problem (and solution) when I was originally setting up my characters. I ended up removing the entire mesh except head/hands/ankles. The problem was, later on I realized that at some point my characters may need to appear in, shall we say, less clothes. If there will be that kind of variation for your character, perhaps you can keep a copy of the fully meshed model on-hand. For my latest iteration of my characters, I’m using “Make Clothes” add on which ultimately conforms to the mesh very nicely…there still is the occasional ‘poke through’, but like you say, that can be touched up.
Some more work on the rig has been done. I’m not going to get it 100% perfect. Im aiming for maybe 80%, as I can then clean up later on. Most of it is now rigged. Only thing now is the armour. I have an idea on how I’m going to do that, but needs to be tested. But for the most part, Kara is now almost done!
Huh…well that didn’t take as long as I thought it would. She is done! I have individual bones which tweak the shoulder plates, the back plates, and the plate at the front. There is a little bit of mesh poking through main front piece of armor, but it’s only ever on 1 side, so will be hidden in extreme positions.
Started working on one of the environments. A prison Cell, which features heavily in the first part of the story. Not really much to model, It’s basically just a small room with a door, and a bed and a toilet. Will probably make the Toilet and sink part of the same unit, as that appears to be common upon looking at some pics of cells. I also wanted to do a quick render of Kara in the environment, rendered out on a separate layer, with her own lighting. I think it’s come out pretty good, minus some of the same freestyle problems I’ve mentioned previously.
Looks great! I really like the sharp definition in this. How did you get the shading i.e. face and arms? that rocks!
The right hand clipping through the glove bugs me. If you’re going to make skintight clothes, then you should just color the skin gray and just change the color back when you want to take it off.
It’s still very much wip! But in final images, I will probably be applying the armature, and then making tweaks if needed to fix poke through etc…Im hoping that the rig is good enough to not have to worry about it too much. I done the rig in the pose above, to try and stretch things a little and see how the mesh responded.
Cheers! I did a lot of looking around for toon shaders in cycles. I discovered this http://www.minimaexpresion.es/cycles-toon-shading-tutorial-use-cycles-and-blender-compositor-to-create-comic-style-renders/?lang=en which is basically the node setup I found which works for me. Tweaked a little to better fit my own style. But the good thing about it is that it works well with image textures. I use different variations of this node setup for all the materials.
I should also add that I have 3 lights which follow the character. One at the back to pick up highlights, a main strong light to the left, and the a softer light to the right which brightens dark patches a little, and can also be used for slight color changes. It’s blue on this example.
So just finished story boarding with rough panel layouts, and for the first Chapter im at 29 pages. Not too bad. I’ve got 3 other characters to do, 6 or so rooms/sets, and various other small things. Sets and everything are quite simple, it’s just the characters that take a while.
More set work. This is the Airlock room on Karas ship. Almost done. Took me a while to get the materials and lighting right, but happy with it atm. It’s quite a small room on the ship, and I almost had to move it to another part of the ship because I realised the engines are right about it, but I managed to work around that issue by making the room an odd shape, sort of like a loft conversion. I may town the hazard stripes down a little. Seems a little too textury if that makes sense…
Nice! Just some random thoughts…if that’s the airlock door, why is it so high? If no artificial grav, then that answers that question, but then if so, why is it shaped somewhat like a doorway. Also no apparent opening seam, but perhaps it slides down?
^It’s shaped like a door because it is a door :yes:.
But seriously, the random question I have is why no handles? I assume that it opens automatically, but what about in case of a power outage or other emergency? How would you open the door and get out if the entire ship is malfunctioning? Even automatic doors at grocery stores have emergency fail-safes, let alone future spaceship doors.
To answer your questions.
Why is the door so high: Erm, Because the plot demands it? 
I Joke, but not too far off. Above the airlock room are the engines for the ship, and space was pretty tight, but I didn’t want to move the airlock to another part of the ship. That is actually using all of the space I can, with the door in it’s current position on the rear of the ship. I can probably move it down a bit.
Why is it shaped like a door: Because it’s a door 
Your are right, it slides up and down.
Why no handles etc: I didn’t even think of putting handles or anything on it in case of emergency. I should probably have something there. The door does open automatically, yes. The ship has an advances AI system. Think J.A.R.V.I.S or T.A.R.S. You also raise a good point about the emergency system. box on the right of the door I am going to replaces with a control panel of some kind, for emergency override. Box on the left could be a truly manual override, incase of loss of power.
Couple of changes. I moved the door down, and also added a control panel on the right. Also changed the pipes a little, and decided to put a small window in the door, as it was a bit plane and boring. Little bit of texturing to do, but for the most part, it’s done I think.
Some more character work. Still tweaking to do on the rig. But a nice simple outfit for this Character. This is Markus. He is one of the other main characters, and will be pivotal in the first chapter.
Once again, an exaggerated pose to test the rig.
Some updates. Got some great help in the rigging section of the site, which fixed most of my rigging, which is great! No more poke through! and it’s deforming properly.
Also moved onto another environment. A corridor. This is part of a large space prison. It’s looking pretty generic atm, but lots more things to add to it. This corridor leads to wings of the prison. It’s 17m wide and around 200m long, thats it’s real scale in blender. So it’s pretty large. Im trying to not make it look like the Andrew Price tut, as I’ve not even used it in anyway, but appreciate it’s quite generic…
