I like the character you chose. A personal favorite of mine. I disagree with the thought of making the thighs thicker, unless there's a meaningful reason for it outside of "just make the thighs thicker". Personally, I think this character is elegant and will benefit tremendously from a proportionate body that is muscular, yet athletically trim and feminine. I especially like how the breasts are not bulky/huge, as it doesn't distract away from the overall presence/posture of this epic character (a goddess). That's how I see Shiva. The complete package, that is meant to be viewed as a whole, and if any area would offer a distraction, it would be her eyes/gaze. Which goes hand in hand with story driven elements that bring attention to dialogue.
@MrHobo I've had long discussion with character artist about the decision to attach a mesh together or not and the reasons for it. Its extremely debatable and I did have a talk about that with you. The cosutme itself is a ''shell' to which I kept a ''grow'' selection of polygone in to make sure no hole could show up at any point. @Kend Thank you! I'm looking forward to finish her too! @''Michael Rosa'' Thank you for sharing your ''in depth'' opinion on the character! I totally agree with you about the tight area but There is no good or bad answer here, it's often all about personnal taste and preference. I am personnally not a huge fan of overexagerated breast who quickly become the center of attention on a character, I always try to keep it as natural and proportionate as possible. Breast comes in all shape in size of course . Hopefully you like the final result when I get to it!
I'm finally done with the topology (UGH so long!) for now I kept the hair as a ''loaf of hair'' as I like to call it. This will be only use as a base volume and the rest / layers will be fully done will cards. This will probably require some test like I did before, hopefully this works out well. So now I'm starting up on some UV work, see you soon for texturing
"for now I kept the hair as a ''loaf of hair'' as I like to call it. This will be only use as a base volume and the rest / layers will be fully done will cards. " So you'll texture that too and have hair cards come out of it or will it just be a guide? I'm asking because I'm making a beard and I wonder if it would be best to make it all hair cards or also have a solid mass of hair behind the cards.
@Leinadien Yes I would texture that part too and also use alpha on that one too to keep the loaf effect as subtle as possible. Then I would place layers of hair cards over to get the real hair effect I'm lookign for. I only did the load of hair in tha case because the spiraling section of the hair where it all starts from would be really hard to sell with just hair cards. I a case of a beard the volume and complexity isn't as great. Unless you really want to get a cartoon/stylised looking beard I would stay away from the 'loaf'' technique and make the whole thing out of cards.
No update on the thread I'm afraid, just wanted to answer his question, I'm currently unwrapping and will update once the bakes are done
Are you planning on doing a nude version? If not, is it even worth retoping some of that thin armor...why not just bake it into her body and model a few lips where the silhouette needs it? Looks super clean though!
wow, Ive completete missed this thread. well well...better late then never. anyways, looking awesome! dont really have any crits, maybe the wing/cape thingies are a bit lowpoly compared to the rest of the body?
@slosh I hear you, I used to always make sure my mesh were kind of watertight with the armor directly modeled in and everything. But more and more I get requested to keep everything separated, It does help with mip mapping as those edge will always clean no matter the distance etc etc. It also gives a much cleaner look overall but like you said, I could totally have attached the costume to the mesh, In this case I just decided not to. like @polymator mentionned I had done the full body aldready to use as my new higher poly basemesh so I just went ahead and kept thing separated. @lotet Hehe late welcome to the thread! glad you enjoyed the work so far. The wing-thingy where indeed a tiny bit lower-rez compared to the rest, I did add couple of loop to make sure to keep the silhouette smoothed.
Just a silly little screenshot I did for fun in toolbag 2 while checking out those bakes. Really happy to be done with the topo/UVS and bake, looking forward to start the texturing, I might be starting with the hair, hopefully I manage to get the look I want once I start adding the card in
@lotet@gfelton you guys are funny Thanks for thinking I nailed the material while I only applied generic color-Ao across the whole thing in this screenshot. Glad you enjoyed the render, I got a lot to learn when it comes to lighting and presentation
Awesome progress! Could you show how you did the skin tight meshes? I'm doing something similar to that and the edge flow looks very nice and seamless.
@lotet@gfelton you guys are funny Thanks for thinking I nailed the material while I only applied generic color-Ao across the whole thing in this screenshot. Glad you enjoyed the render, I got a lot to learn when it comes to lighting and presentation
haha, but you still have adjusted the gloss havnt you? and I guess you have a skin shader going on for the skin so there is that. on top of that i think the simple lighting looks great, I generally prefer straight forward lighting to some over complicated stuff.
but yeah, I guess Its a bit funny. it shows what you have so far looks good In whatever lighting and material I though.
@sefice Would love to help but I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the skin tight meshes? @lotet Haha yah I just applied a single material to the skin, then a single material for the clothing in that shot. I did adjust the gloss of course I've seen so many artist do very amazing and interesting lighting recently, trying to learn how to light my models a bit better, will do some more test once the character its done. But yah more often than not simple stuff looks great.
I'm doing hair cards now. every character artist nightmare,
@sefice Would love to help but I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the skin tight meshes?
Oh, I meant her clothes. xD It wraps her body topology so nicely. I'm doing something similar but I get penetrations here and there so I was wondering how you did yours.
@SveinY Thanks man, glad you've been enjoying the thread @Benvox2 thank you, once again love that DS3 scene your doing, makes me want to make a DS/Bloodborne character @sefice I'm not sure if you are asking about the clothes on the sculpt or on the lowrez so I will go over both. To make the clothes for the sculpt I worked on the body until i was satisfied and know stuff wouldn't change too much (to save me headaches later). then I polypainted the shape of the costume directly on the body. I brought that mesh in a topology program (in my case topogun) and created a topology for the costume i wanted directly on the body following the shapes I polypainted on. After that I shelled the mesh in 3ds max and remove the excess inside faces. The topology doesn't have to be perfect and it can be done pretty quictkly but having a proper topology in zbrush allows me to keep this way cleaner and easier to work with than a dynamesh or an extract technique which I feels can end up being more muddy or imperfect. I usually use the crease option in zbrush to make sure the shelled edge don't become super smooth when I subdivide. For the low poly the technique was similar, once I was done with the whole body topology I ''pushed'' a copy of the mesh to comform with the depth of the costume. Then I brough it into a retopology software and cut through to create the costume. I hope this help
For the low poly the technique was similar, once I was done with the whole body topology I ''pushed'' a copy of the mesh to comform with the depth of the costume. Then I brough it into a retopology software and cut through to create the costume. I hope this help
This was what I was looking for! Thanks for taking the time! Can't wait to see this all textured up and shaded!
@sefice Glad it helped @happybell I get that question a lot and I really wish I could give you a magical trick that would solve that famous hair question, unfortunatly the answer isn't as fun. I've myself always wondered if there was a efficient pipeline to save me some time when working on hair but so far i've yet to find it. I placed basically my hair card by hand, for most of them. I do use other technique like sometimes the IMM hair brush (but it didnt work great in the case of this haircut in particular so I didn't use it at all) to start a base that I later polish inside of 3ds max. I also used techniques like creating splines (sometimes from my proxy mesh) and either using the rendering option to turn it into a planes or path deforming a plane on it. That can work well for straight-long hair without too much curves. In the case of the spiral parts it had to be done by hand. I've yet to start texturing but It's pretty straight forward, I still paint all my hair cards and their alpha by hand inside of photoshop. @Natland Thank you
So I'm done placing hair card. I believe this is enough (for now...) i'll start creating the texture and alpha which usually mean I will end up adding-moving things a bit to get the final result i'm looking for. I'll keep you updated. The hair proxy+hair card is standing at an impressive 17k tris. Hair (especially that complexe and long) is such a budget killer. I could definitly optimize it but at this point I feel the whle project is so high resolution it might not even be needed.
On and just a little shot from marmoset toolbag 3 beta because i've been just having a bit of fun/trying it out.
This is a wonderful project! So interesting to be able to follow a pro's progress - the learning opportunities are invaluable. Thanks - I'll be following the progress.
@lotet soooo much work, also obviously needed to add/reworked the cards after I added the alphas. The front part especially I didn't retouch yet but there is tons of work to do on that part still UGGH Marmoset 3 looks very promising. @tda@Daf57 Thanks guys !
Finally making progress on the damn hair but still a lot of work to come, I can't wait to finally start texturing the actual character...!!
I have already said this, but i feel with all this praise it would be worth to point out again. If there is anything that takes away from this pretty ice goddess, it would be that bologna arm, I can cut up a complete bologna in 8 minutes by the way. :pleased:
The hair looks super smooth ! Also I'm really digging the SSS on her skin. This character is really coming along and matches the Square Enix style. Especially with the way ff15 looks
I have already said this, but i feel with all this praise it would be worth to point out again. If there is anything that takes away from this pretty ice goddess, it would be that bologna arm, I can cut up a complete bologna in 8 minutes by the way. :pleased:
You were already warned about this, stop the trolling or we may take action against your account.
Even with just bakes and hair this is already great. Eager to see how you will tackle the eyes among other things. Also, the renders are looking really nice, too. Is that just local reflection creating the bounce light (inner side of her left arm) or does TB3 actually have another solution for indirect lighting?
Hair is looking smoooooooooth. Did you use fibers or some sort of hair plugin in maya? Or just handpainted strands? I agree with Lotet about the hairline but I'm guessing you still plan on placing more cards to create more volume there. Nice work Marie!
@TomGT Thank you!! @Asura Glad you are enjoying the look I'm going for! @gfelton thanks man! @Norron Thank you! @MrHobo Always handpainting my alphas yes. thanks @DerRazputin Thank you! yes I'm still unsure abouthow I will tackle the eyes, will probably need a bit of testing. I'm afraid I'm not able to discuss anything about tb3 for now @lotet Yah I also create the cards then add the alphas/texture. Once thats done I usually have to a polishing pass through the whole hair, at that point I had not rework the front part yet, It was just the original hair card placement without any modification. I have reworked the area a lot and will still do some other tweaks later most likely. @slosh Thanks! gotta love dem smooth hair! I do not use any pluggin etc. I still handpaint my hair and my alphas. Hopefully the hairline looks better now but still got some fine tweaking to come.
I'm just doing a tiny tiny update, I mostly wanted to answer the comments in the thread. I'm still doing a lot of tweaks to the hair because I'm picky and I want to make sure everything looks good in all angles etc. I have spend like 10 mins just to apply a very quick texture to her face, of course its totally super wip and I believe the skin color is too red-saturated for now, this will require some testing
Just realized I hadn't commented on this yet. The hair is looking so good! It looks super soft and the front has a really nice sheen to it. Are you gonna go realistic on the face texture and give her pores etc? Can't wait to see the next update!
I'm still alive! Life got a little busy but I'm back working on this I'm done with the hair (hopefully for real this time) and I'm continuing on the texturing, @future-fiction Hey blair, Glad you love the hair, you've gone some pretty impressive hair work yourself. I'm definitly going with a more realistic treatement for the skin, she does have pore details etc cheers!
Currently trying stuff with her eyes, I previously kept them kind of very white with only some blue-ish shading where the iris was suppose to be but I wasn't convince, trying different things, interested in getting some of you folks feedback and opinion on that
@Tits Wow. I know for sure the in-game shiva had those white-blue eyes, but I think those natural eyes you have at the moment look tons better. And its more similar towards the concept too. Looks very lively!
The star on her forehead is really weirding me out. the way it intersects with her hairline like that. not sure if its part of the textures but maybe move it down a tad if you can?
as for the eyes, they do look a lot better and matches the overall more realistic take on the character. they might come of a bit too normal though, maybe ad some glow in just the iris or something?
I think the eyes make her look too human. To me, Shiva is an ethereal being. It would be nice to have her eyes look more... otherworldly? Something like Tyrande Whisperwind's eyes, but not too milky. Not sure how you want to do this but making them glow should have a nice effect like lotet mentioned.
This Shiva is on point! I love how all the details feel tangible and layered. I do agree with @happybell that the eyes could use a bit of glow. Also getting rid of her pupils would emphasize the ethereal eye effect. Something like these.
I wonder if a very subtle glow on the iris could work, light enough to make it ethereal, but not too much to make it lifeless.
This is also just some of my own 2 cents for texture input, you can ignore it if it's the direction you don't want to go: I think it would be pretty cool to see an ice effect on some of her skin and/or clothing, kind of like what was done in frozen: It could be extended to having a snowflake shape in her iris or something.
I also noticed her hands are blue in the concept (not sure if they are frozen or gloves) and you have them as flesh colored in your latest renders, not sure if it was missed or done purposefully.
Keep at it though, this is coming along great and is super clean so far!
Shiiiiiiid. I'm still trippin over that hair. I gotta figure out how to make it look that nice. And you Said you hand painted that stuff? Goooooolllyyyy. Shiva is looking fine. This is gonna look TIGHT when it's finished. Can't wait.
Replies
I like the character you chose. A personal favorite of mine. I disagree with the thought of making the thighs thicker, unless there's a meaningful reason for it outside of "just make the thighs thicker". Personally, I think this character is elegant and will benefit tremendously from a proportionate body that is muscular, yet athletically trim and feminine. I especially like how the breasts are not bulky/huge, as it doesn't distract away from the overall presence/posture of this epic character (a goddess). That's how I see Shiva. The complete package, that is meant to be viewed as a whole, and if any area would offer a distraction, it would be her eyes/gaze. Which goes hand in hand with story driven elements that bring attention to dialogue.
@Kend Thank you! I'm looking forward to finish her too!
@''Michael Rosa'' Thank you for sharing your ''in depth'' opinion on the character! I totally agree with you about the tight area but There is no good or bad answer here, it's often all about personnal taste and preference. I am personnally not a huge fan of overexagerated breast who quickly become the center of attention on a character, I always try to keep it as natural and proportionate as possible. Breast comes in all shape in size of course
Hopefully you like the final result when I get to it!
I'm finally done with the topology (UGH so long!)
for now I kept the hair as a ''loaf of hair'' as I like to call it. This will be only use as a base volume and the rest / layers will be fully done will cards. This will probably require some test like I did before, hopefully this works out well.
So now I'm starting up on some UV work, see you soon for texturing
So you'll texture that too and have hair cards come out of it or will it just be a guide? I'm asking because I'm making a beard and I wonder if it would be best to make it all hair cards or also have a solid mass of hair behind the cards.
I a case of a beard the volume and complexity isn't as great.
Unless you really want to get a cartoon/stylised looking beard I would stay away from the 'loaf'' technique and make the whole thing out of cards.
No update on the thread I'm afraid, just wanted to answer his question, I'm currently unwrapping and will update once the bakes are done
@Tits looking forward to them bakes!
anyways, looking awesome! dont really have any crits, maybe the wing/cape thingies are a bit lowpoly compared to the rest of the body?
like @polymator mentionned I had done the full body aldready to use as my new higher poly basemesh so I just went ahead and kept thing separated.
@lotet Hehe late welcome to the thread! glad you enjoyed the work so far. The wing-thingy where indeed a tiny bit lower-rez compared to the rest, I did add couple of loop to make sure to keep the silhouette smoothed.
Just a silly little screenshot I did for fun in toolbag 2 while checking out those bakes.
Really happy to be done with the topo/UVS and bake, looking forward to start the texturing, I might be starting with the hair, hopefully I manage to get the look I want once I start adding the card in
cheers
Glad you enjoyed the render, I got a lot to learn when it comes to lighting and presentation
on top of that i think the simple lighting looks great, I generally prefer straight forward lighting to some over complicated stuff.
but yeah, I guess Its a bit funny. it shows what you have so far looks good In whatever lighting and material I though.
@lotet Haha yah I just applied a single material to the skin, then a single material for the clothing in that shot. I did adjust the gloss of course
I've seen so many artist do very amazing and interesting lighting recently, trying to learn how to light my models a bit better, will do some more test once the character its done. But yah more often than not simple stuff looks great.
I'm doing hair cards now. every character artist nightmare,
Oh, I meant her clothes. xD It wraps her body topology so nicely. I'm doing something similar but I get penetrations here and there so I was wondering how you did yours.
@Benvox2 thank you, once again love that DS3 scene your doing, makes me want to make a DS/Bloodborne character
@sefice I'm not sure if you are asking about the clothes on the sculpt or on the lowrez so I will go over both.
To make the clothes for the sculpt I worked on the body until i was satisfied and know stuff wouldn't change too much (to save me headaches later).
then I polypainted the shape of the costume directly on the body. I brought that mesh in a topology program (in my case topogun) and created a topology for the costume i wanted directly on the body following the shapes I polypainted on. After that I shelled the mesh in 3ds max and remove the excess inside faces. The topology doesn't have to be perfect and it can be done pretty quictkly but having a proper topology in zbrush allows me to keep this way cleaner and easier to work with than a dynamesh or an extract technique which I feels can end up being more muddy or imperfect. I usually use the crease option in zbrush to make sure the shelled edge don't become super smooth when I subdivide.
For the low poly the technique was similar, once I was done with the whole body topology I ''pushed'' a copy of the mesh to comform with the depth of the costume. Then I brough it into a retopology software and cut through to create the costume.
I hope this help
I'm still doing hair and this is endless
This was what I was looking for! Thanks for taking the time! Can't wait to see this all textured up and shaded!
@happybell I get that question a lot and I really wish I could give you a magical trick that would solve that famous hair question, unfortunatly the answer isn't as fun. I've myself always wondered if there was a efficient pipeline to save me some time when working on hair but so far i've yet to find it.
I placed basically my hair card by hand, for most of them. I do use other technique like sometimes the IMM hair brush (but it didnt work great in the case of this haircut in particular so I didn't use it at all) to start a base that I later polish inside of 3ds max. I also used techniques like creating splines (sometimes from my proxy mesh) and either using the rendering option to turn it into a planes or path deforming a plane on it. That can work well for straight-long hair without too much curves. In the case of the spiral parts it had to be done by hand.
I've yet to start texturing but It's pretty straight forward, I still paint all my hair cards and their alpha by hand inside of photoshop.
@Natland Thank you
So I'm done placing hair card. I believe this is enough (for now...) i'll start creating the texture and alpha which usually mean I will end up adding-moving things a bit to get the final result i'm looking for. I'll keep you updated.
The hair proxy+hair card is standing at an impressive 17k tris. Hair (especially that complexe and long) is such a budget killer.
I could definitly optimize it but at this point I feel the whle project is so high resolution it might not even be needed.
On and just a little shot from marmoset toolbag 3 beta because i've been just having a bit of fun/trying it out.
whats your impression of marmoset 3 btw?
Marmoset 3 looks very promising.
@tda @Daf57 Thanks guys
Finally making progress on the damn hair but still a lot of work to come,
I can't wait to finally start texturing the actual character...!!
Also, the renders are looking really nice, too. Is that just local reflection creating the bounce light (inner side of her left arm) or does TB3 actually have another solution for indirect lighting?
@Asura Glad you are enjoying the look I'm going for!
@gfelton thanks man!
@Norron Thank you!
@MrHobo Always handpainting my alphas yes. thanks
@DerRazputin Thank you! yes I'm still unsure abouthow I will tackle the eyes, will probably need a bit of testing. I'm afraid I'm not able to discuss anything about tb3 for now
@lotet Yah I also create the cards then add the alphas/texture. Once thats done I usually have to a polishing pass through the whole hair, at that point I had not rework the front part yet, It was just the original hair card placement without any modification.
I have reworked the area a lot and will still do some other tweaks later most likely.
@slosh Thanks! gotta love dem smooth hair! I do not use any pluggin etc. I still handpaint my hair and my alphas. Hopefully the hairline looks better now but still got some fine tweaking to come.
I'm just doing a tiny tiny update, I mostly wanted to answer the comments in the thread.
I'm still doing a lot of tweaks to the hair because I'm picky and I want to make sure everything looks good in all angles etc.
I have spend like 10 mins just to apply a very quick texture to her face, of course its totally super wip and I believe the skin color is too red-saturated for now, this will require some testing
Cheers, hopefully a better update soon
Life got a little busy but I'm back working on this
I'm continuing on the texturing,
@future-fiction Hey blair, Glad you love the hair, you've gone some pretty impressive hair work yourself.
I'm definitly going with a more realistic treatement for the skin, she does have pore details etc
Currently trying stuff with her eyes, I previously kept them kind of very white with only some blue-ish shading where the iris was suppose to be but I wasn't convince, trying different things, interested in getting some of you folks feedback and opinion on that
Definitely liking the new direction for the eyes.
as for the eyes, they do look a lot better and matches the overall more realistic take on the character. they might come of a bit too normal though, maybe ad some glow in just the iris or something?
The hair is looking mighty nice
I do agree with @happybell that the eyes could use a bit of glow. Also getting rid of her pupils would emphasize the ethereal eye effect.
Something like these.
That's what I had before
it just felt so Lifeless
This is also just some of my own 2 cents for texture input, you can ignore it if it's the direction you don't want to go: I think it would be pretty cool to see an ice effect on some of her skin and/or clothing, kind of like what was done in frozen:
It could be extended to having a snowflake shape in her iris or something.
I also noticed her hands are blue in the concept (not sure if they are frozen or gloves) and you have them as flesh colored in your latest renders, not sure if it was missed or done purposefully.
Keep at it though, this is coming along great and is super clean so far!
I'm still trippin over that hair. I gotta figure out how to make it look that nice. And you Said you hand painted that stuff?
Goooooolllyyyy. Shiva is looking fine. This is gonna look TIGHT when it's finished. Can't wait.
Anyway keep up the great work!