Helloo, after playing Persona 3 I've wanted to make this character for a while, but haven't felt confident enough in the techniques. The goal is to practise hard surface, PBR materials, realistic hair, and hopefully a cute girl face. Aiming for the same level as FFXV characters in terms of aesthetics and fidelity.
I'm a big fan of Soejima's work, so hopefully I can do the character some justice!
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Put in some proxy eyelashes and hair, trying to get a feel for what this will look like early on. I want to do something interesting with the iris, to make them really emissive and robotic.
Body blockout -
Once the proportions are looking okay I'll go in and replace all the proxy meshes with proper stuff. Thinking about using MD for the body suit to try and push the cloth to the next level. She's pretty super human in height, wanted to really accentuate the long legs but call it out if it looks silly.
Critique much appreciated, please let me know if anything in the silhouette looks wonky.
Thanks for looking!
Looks good so far for a blockout! Maybe the mechanical parts look a bit blobby, and the midsection looks too revealing. Face looks fine!
I'm really curious to know what process you use to create your proxy hair. Would you mind sharing a breakdown?
Keep it up!
My only crit right now would be that the area around her hips where the legs connect seems awkward to me. I think it might be too bulky and the angle is off? Not sure, but keep up the stellar work man!
Can't wait to see more!
I feel like, given the aesthetic of the sculpt, it should feel less wispy and more like an actual tights or spanx. Specifically, looking at the cross foldsgoing across the buttock cheeks' valley.
How long did it take to get sculpt like that?
Her proportions seem fine. though this is considering how you made her face look more real than anime, so I assume you're heading towards that direction.
However, I think it will be good to slim down the gold plates on her thigh a little. I think its creating this weird shape just underneath her crotch that obstructs her silhouette just a tad.
I'm looking at this picture of her. I'm aware its anime proportions so this could just be that.
Jean-pascal - yeah, sure! I'll do that for you and post it in here.
hofsta - thanks for pointing that out, I'll definitely resolve that area more.
brian - haha, yeah that cloth is all proxy stuff at the moment, hoping to make it in marvellous designer for accurate folds, I'm interpreting it as a kind of thicker rubber rather than something thin like spandex.
Tom - thanks, I'll take another look at that! There's a multitude of design inconsistencies but I'm aiming more for the Art book version which is a slightly different design than the ingame concept art. http://myfigurecollection.net/item/72269
To get to this level a couple of weeks working in the evenings, I'm rubbish at keeping track! I've actually pushed the proportions a little more stylised since then but not trying to go too crazy with it.
Sorry guys if this thread might be really boring to watch, its mostly going to be me attempting to model all this hard surface mechanical stuff and then hoping it comes together at the end. I'll keep putting stuff into the zbrush doc just to preview it though, but here's a quick max screengrab with dodgy shaders of some of the shoulder joints.
The headband is an annoying shape, might have to use some zbrush for it even though I'm a noob at using it for anything hard surface.
worked on the headband, tried adding in her little head mounted guns from P4A but I think the position needs tilting up, can't quite work out the shapes.
with these settings -
Then I make a quick dynamesh blockout for the hair volumes and shapes before laying the insert meshes on top of that - also I draw them on the underside of the blockout shape too for added thickness. Then just a matter of using the move tool to get something I'm happy with. The back took a few tries, I was really unsure about the overall shape. I used this method with my Ahri character too and its a really nice brush for imitating that figurine style hair - even though I'll be replacing mine with planes in the end.
Quick WIP, been refining things and doing loads of max modelling. Still need to get some more bits on her, will post some more full body stuff soon.
I see you're making the Arena version, will you be making the massive guns that come out of her back?
Here's a WIP of her wrist gun, I haven't had a huge amount of practise modelling hard surface stuff so I invite weapons artists to tear it apart.
Workflow so far has been modelling sub-d then zremeshing to fix any kinks. It really sucks noticing proportional problems after spending a long time modelling it. Going to remake that gold cylinder next week and maybe do some damage/dents
One thing you might like to consider is your shoulders. Currently you're matching the concept design, but that only gives you two axis of rotation instead of three. If you wanted to make the design look more functional, you could add a twist axis where the metal joins the fabric part. It wouldn't need much to show it.
Thank for you pointing that out, I'd love the functionality to look semi-believable. Is a twist axis a helix shape like this?
Progress so far and some colours in zbrush. Still need to revisit the cloth and model her feet.
Inb4 some game journalist decides to feature this piece on a persona fan art article.
I would think it would be more faithful if she had a younger face as she is meant to look like a highschooler, unless that's not a look you're aiming for. Either way the model is looking fantastic
Love what you did.
seems like your art direction is way more realistic than the concept you are using (wich is fine!) but I feel it makes the simplification of the legs a little strange.
I would amplify the curves of the legs a bit but that's only my opinion. I don't know the character much or anything.
Anyway, once again great work, i'll be following the progress!
Your work on her face is particularly impressive!
Poribo - thanks for your paintover! I'm going to have another look at the face before baking
Tits - Thank you, yes I definitely agree the legs look quite shapeless, after posing her a bit they definitely need some attention, thanks for calling it out.
NegevPro - Thanks, I'll look at all of those and fix it! Yep in the final I wanna do a shot with some bullets flying about everywhere.
Now just have to apply the crits and finish the high poly and give all the elements more attention. There's so much more work to do still!
I've just taken on some work which means my evenings are going to be very busy so I won't have much time to work on her for a while, so going to put this on hold temporarily...
Baked all the maps down to low poly though she's still mega in terms of tri count. So many damn elipses.
I wanted to make her face a little more realistic so I ended up reworking the facial proportions again and made her eyes a little smaller, though still going for a FF vibe.
Next step is hair creation so hopefully she'll look a bit cuter.
Something is bothering me a bit about her still but it might just be the blank stare, please crit if you spot anything/have any comments!
Thanks for looking!
Started on the hair, put in some chunky planes to block out the basic shape. The image on the right is a paintover of how I want the strands to look. Gonna try creating some hair planes from baked splines instead of painted like usual, hoping to get more maps out of them and hopefully a better result. The hair also needs way more depth, hoping to create that by baking AO and maybe using parallax. Also the cast shadow of the planes themselves might help.
Please fire away with any crit on the placement/hair texture, this is my first attempt at making realistic hair textures from scratch so I want to learn!
I'm also working on hair planes right now for my proj (avatar pic). You 're an inspiration that I must not be lazy or just half-ass the art piece.
PyrZern: Its a pain for sure. I always used to rush it at the end because I dreaded doing hair and was burnt out, so mine was half arsed too. Keep going and refining it and remember to transfer normals, it saved this hairstlye, ha.
Maybe I will do the texture first, then place the hairplanes around, instead of do all hairplanes then texture them...
Which one did you do first ?