Was so thrilled to see this piece come together in the end, can't wait to see her posed if you manage to get that rig! Looking forward to seeing whatever you start next ^^!
This is just amazing. Love the look of wonder and "ethereal" in her eyes. I'm speechless about her hair, must have been quite the ride doing it. (rides can be bumby and frustrating sometimes ). As a person who struggles with hair (that's why my models are bold, or hooded ), this is joy to look at. Overall, very impressive!
I feel like a doofus coming in and saying it looks awesome just like everybody else. But it does!!! You have a fine eye for detail, I love how you can apply it to the tiniest (but most important) details. Merveilleux!
But I saw you talking about finishing and rigging it (some time ago). So did you ever get to the rigging? So much more work huh
So sorry, such a Late response to all the messages, I though I would get to do my posed model before the holidays so I was waiting to answer to all this but this is getting a bit too long. I WILL be getting my rig sometimes soon, my rigger unfortunatly got a bit busy and didn't get a chance to work on it as early as she though she could. I was a bit more in the hurry to get it back at first as I was looking for work and wanting to release it asap but I'm currently booked until june now so the rush is gone. I can't wait to play with her once she's rig, I'm gonna try and come up with something nice, hopefully
@gfelton Those are indeed shoes hahaha some might call them heels I believe :P . Glad you enjoyed the work and think I did justice to the game (even those I definitly have better tech than the original!!) @acealmighty13 thanks man, thats very nice of you @Tomtegubbe Haha! I've never been told I worked on super girly stuff before, that's a first. I'll take it. Praised or not, girly or not, it's all about personnal taste! @Elithenia Glad you enjoyed the hair and makeup, definitly spend a lot of time on those two things glad it was worth it. cheers! @Ged I was suppose to record the process but I realised it was going to be hours on end of watching me place polygons strip on a character's head. I might try to do a quick overview of the process I used for the haircut and do a short video of a less complexe haircut to better show the process, it's just always hard to find the time to do this. Plus I always find I'm not the best teacher. @MrHobo Gotta love that transluency effect! I'm the worst with posed character, always takes so long to do those that I gotta have a first serie of shot in t-pose, to finally release final setup months after, it's definitly a trend for me. @gsokol I must admit I haven't tried paralax on the ice, I am not too familar with working with that kind of shader (with the exception of eye setup) Not too sure what kind of effect that would give, not sure I'm ready to go back to the drawing board at this point too, might keep that in mind for furtur work if the needs ever arise again. I know marmoset is currently working on releasing shaders with refraction, but it's a little bit late for this project so I'm not sure i'll update the whole project for it. When it comes to the skin I have lightened her skin, multiple times, through the course of this project. The lighter-colder version always ended up giving me this alien kind of vibe or too much of a corpse look I didn't really appreciate. Let's say I went with something more of the rosy cheeks we get when we play outside for a long time in the winter. I prefered that to the cold cadaver look which I believe the lighter skin gave her. But once again, it's all about personnal tastes and making choices, and as this is a personnal project I allow myself to make such choice . @CrowXD Glad you liked the hair! Just like most artist, I work with quads, you are right that in engine the mesh is triangulated wich can sometimes affect triangulation and cause normal map issues. Unfortunatly most clients/studio prefer for us not to triangulate our mesh (riggers usually don't like that) and prefer for it to be triangulated only in engine. To avoid any triangulation issue I usually manually triangulate some parts of my mesh where I expect triangulation error to possibly cause issue in engine if the triangulation change. it Isn't fool proof but that's usually the technique I use since I am not usually allowed to work with triangulated mesh. @Anchang-Style Thank you!! @JacqueChoi @Snakes Thank you, also very excited to get my hand on the rig, it's taking a bit longer than I expected but my rigger for a bit busy with work and freelance gigs, It's totally worth the wait tho, she's a pro. @Nikolas3D Might do a quick flat if I get around to it after I do the final pose. glad you liked the work @Opilo Awesome, good to hear you enjoyed the ethereal look of her eyes, I wasn't so sure about it at first. The hair wasn't that difficult to make as it was just very time consuming, but that's very true for hair in general, I believe. Hair is definitly something I use to have so much trouble with (and still do in a way) Taking over that kind of challenge is definitly a great learnign experience, you should do it! (don't start with something that shitty tho) @Shanana Hahaha thanks for reviving the thread, I had forgotten to answer to all of those other messages! Glad you liked the work, merveilleux is such a nice word to use, thank you. I am still indeed waiting for my rig, my rigger was supposed to finish before the holidays, unfortunatly work got with hectic for her and so she haven't had the chance to finish this yet. I believe I should be getting the character back in the next couple of weeks tho, I'm very excited. She's also a pro so it's definitly worth the wait Can't wait to finally make the final shots for this.
Real nice work! Your proportions look really good. It's just a personal thing, I get the impression that the concept has a more figure 8 feel. The arms in the concept seem a bit finer, nails or finger ends sharper, pelvic are larger, waist finer and head seems smaller. But I am looking at the larger 1/3 rotated concept rendering. Nice model you have there
great! no worries if you dont have time to show the hair process, any tips would be appreciated. I just sometimes find even when placing polys for hours the hair still doesnt feel great, its how to set up your viewport in maya(or whatever) to show the overdraw properly and stuff like that that would help me a lot. How to know what sorting order things will display in etc
Damn! I disappear from Polycount for a while and come back to find a whole mess of fantastic work. I know I'm late to the party, but Shiva here looks fabulously icey and regal as hell. Just amazing work, Marie.
I caught your update with the ice shards on FB a while back, but man...I still REALLY wish I could dig through your Marmoset scene/settings to see how you achieve that look with just a SSS map. Speaking of, I know she's pretty close to done already, but have you considered bringing that same icey material into other parts of her model as well? Perhaps for the shards in her hair? That would look cool as hell (pun intended) to turn it into a sort of glowing blue crown.
Really looking forward to seeing her finished and posed.
Allright I finished this character in november and at this point I doubt my rigger will ever get a chance to rig her as she was supposed to. I'm a total idiots who should have learned to rig years ago but this really isnt my thing so I will ask.
Have you considered mixamo? In the event that no one's available to rig her for you, you can get a solid skeleton with some decent skinning out of mixamo. Having said that Im sure someone will pop up to rig her
@MrHobo I tried mixamo! Unfortunatly the skinning got all fucked, specially around the shoulder area, I tried to fix it but somehow it did something weird to the skinning where I couldnt modify the enveloppes, I couldn't fix it unless i wanted to skin every single vertex one after the other
Oh well, that took a little while as always. I had started trying a bunch of poses when I noticed the twist bones in the forearm weren't working properly. I waited a couple of week more to get those fix but my rigger had a bunch of issue with stupid max furiously crashing on her all the time. Anyway, big story short, I really couldn't wait to call this done, ended up fixing the poses inside of zbrush and here you go, about 10 months after I finish this piece, the beautyshots (you didnt think it would ever happen, did you?)
If anything, for future projects I would highly recommend tackling skeleton creation and skin weighting as early as possible, as opposed to keeping it for the very end.
What I mean by that is that there is no reason to not take a couple hours to skinweight the early blockout model - it can be done with a mannequin version (split limbs, cylinders for individual knuckles, and so on) and will provide a ton of useful information when establishing proportions, testing poses early on, and so on. And then all this can be transferred to the final/baked low later.
It sounds less fun than working on the highpoly model and sculpt, but it pays off big time since it allows to preview the final results (pose, proportions) every step of the way. It also prevents one from being tempted to "overpose" the static model itself (not saying that this is the case here, but it does tend to happen a lot).
@Rolang Thank you! looking forward to see your progress on your character! @Koromo Thanks for your input, I tried more complexe/detailed presentation with background and crystal in the background etc, Personally I didn't enjoy it as it became too noisy and was taking the attention away from Shiva. @pior Thanks again for sharing your valuable input and knowledge here, Unfortunatly I do not rig/skin at all myself and this is why I usually push the posing and rig to the very end. Still very valuable advice, thank you! @Mateus@lotet@Elithenia@Sunray Thank you!! @TeriyakiStyle Haha actually being a role model for finishing stuff would make me very proud, thanks @gabriel fernandez Me too, always loved shiva, Thank you! @MrHobo I wish I took bet, I would have won! @Asura You should have bet higher! Haha, Thanks! @Martoon Glad you enjoyed it as a FF fan @theStoff Thank you!! I typically finish everything I start, It's something i've always valued
@BittaSingh Thanks, Posting your own work on someone else's thread is not really the best way to get crits around here. I suggest you to do exactly like what I did here, Start your own WIP thread to show your progress on this character and receive critics
Replies
You have a fine eye for detail, I love how you can apply it to the tiniest (but most important) details.
Merveilleux!
But I saw you talking about finishing and rigging it (some time ago). So did you ever get to the rigging? So much more work huh
I WILL be getting my rig sometimes soon, my rigger unfortunatly got a bit busy and didn't get a chance to work on it as early as she though she could.
I was a bit more in the hurry to get it back at first as I was looking for work and wanting to release it asap but I'm currently booked until june now so the rush is gone.
I can't wait to play with her once she's rig, I'm gonna try and come up with something nice, hopefully
@gfelton Those are indeed shoes hahaha some might call them heels I believe :P . Glad you enjoyed the work and think I did justice to the game (even those I definitly have better tech than the original!!)
@acealmighty13 thanks man, thats very nice of you
@Tomtegubbe Haha! I've never been told I worked on super girly stuff before, that's a first. I'll take it. Praised or not, girly or not, it's all about personnal taste!
@Elithenia Glad you enjoyed the hair and makeup, definitly spend a lot of time on those two things
@Ged I was suppose to record the process but I realised it was going to be hours on end of watching me place polygons strip on a character's head. I might try to do a quick overview of the process I used for the haircut and do a short video of a less complexe haircut to better show the process, it's just always hard to find the time to do this. Plus I always find I'm not the best teacher.
@MrHobo Gotta love that transluency effect! I'm the worst with posed character, always takes so long to do those that I gotta have a first serie of shot in t-pose, to finally release final setup months after, it's definitly a trend for me.
@gsokol I must admit I haven't tried paralax on the ice, I am not too familar with working with that kind of shader (with the exception of eye setup)
Not too sure what kind of effect that would give, not sure I'm ready to go back to the drawing board at this point too, might keep that in mind for furtur work if the needs ever arise again. I know marmoset is currently working on releasing shaders with refraction, but it's a little bit late for this project so I'm not sure i'll update the whole project for it.
When it comes to the skin I have lightened her skin, multiple times, through the course of this project. The lighter-colder version always ended up giving me this alien kind of vibe or too much of a corpse look I didn't really appreciate. Let's say I went with something more of the rosy cheeks we get when we play outside for a long time in the winter. I prefered that to the cold cadaver look which I believe the lighter skin gave her. But once again, it's all about personnal tastes and making choices, and as this is a personnal project I allow myself to make such choice
@CrowXD Glad you liked the hair! Just like most artist, I work with quads, you are right that in engine the mesh is triangulated wich can sometimes affect triangulation and cause normal map issues. Unfortunatly most clients/studio prefer for us not to triangulate our mesh (riggers usually don't like that) and prefer for it to be triangulated only in engine. To avoid any triangulation issue I usually manually triangulate some parts of my mesh where I expect triangulation error to possibly cause issue in engine if the triangulation change. it Isn't fool proof but that's usually the technique I use since I am not usually allowed to work with triangulated mesh.
@Anchang-Style Thank you!!
@JacqueChoi
@Snakes Thank you, also very excited to get my hand on the rig, it's taking a bit longer than I expected but my rigger for a bit busy with work and freelance gigs, It's totally worth the wait tho, she's a pro.
@Nikolas3D Might do a quick flat if I get around to it after I do the final pose. glad you liked the work
@Opilo Awesome, good to hear you enjoyed the ethereal look of her eyes, I wasn't so sure about it at first. The hair wasn't that difficult to make as it was just very time consuming, but that's very true for hair in general, I believe. Hair is definitly something I use to have so much trouble with (and still do in a way) Taking over that kind of challenge is definitly a great learnign experience, you should do it! (don't start with something that shitty tho)
@Shanana Hahaha thanks for reviving the thread, I had forgotten to answer to all of those other messages! Glad you liked the work, merveilleux is such a nice word to use, thank you. I am still indeed waiting for my rig, my rigger was supposed to finish before the holidays, unfortunatly work got with hectic for her and so she haven't had the chance to finish this yet. I believe I should be getting the character back in the next couple of weeks tho, I'm very excited. She's also a pro so it's definitly worth the wait
Your proportions look really good. It's just a personal thing, I get the impression that the concept has a more figure 8 feel. The arms in the concept seem a bit finer, nails or finger ends sharper, pelvic are larger, waist finer and head seems smaller. But I am looking at the larger 1/3 rotated concept rendering.
Nice model you have there
I caught your update with the ice shards on FB a while back, but man...I still REALLY wish I could dig through your Marmoset scene/settings to see how you achieve that look with just a SSS map. Speaking of, I know she's pretty close to done already, but have you considered bringing that same icey material into other parts of her model as well? Perhaps for the shards in her hair? That would look cool as hell (pun intended) to turn it into a sort of glowing blue crown.
Really looking forward to seeing her finished and posed.
I'm a total idiots who should have learned to rig years ago but this really isnt my thing so I will ask.
Anyone up to rigging-skinning her?
I'm available right now and I would be really glad to help you with her rig but unfortunately I'm a Maya user...
May we all say alleluia
(my rig is done, thanks to very busy Marie-Christine
I had started trying a bunch of poses when I noticed the twist bones in the forearm weren't working properly.
I waited a couple of week more to get those fix but my rigger had a bunch of issue with stupid max furiously crashing on her all the time.
Anyway, big story short, I really couldn't wait to call this done, ended up fixing the poses inside of zbrush and here you go,
about 10 months after I finish this piece, the beautyshots (you didnt think it would ever happen, did you?)
Impressive Marie! You achieved an awesome next gen ffxiv Shiva!
Why Square Enix didn´t included this in their last dlc...what a shame...
If i need to criticize something... i would have put some ice crystals in the background or "fractal ice" like this as an alpha or a backdrop:
If anything, for future projects I would highly recommend tackling skeleton creation and skin weighting as early as possible, as opposed to keeping it for the very end.
What I mean by that is that there is no reason to not take a couple hours to skinweight the early blockout model - it can be done with a mannequin version (split limbs, cylinders for individual knuckles, and so on) and will provide a ton of useful information when establishing proportions, testing poses early on, and so on. And then all this can be transferred to the final/baked low later.
It sounds less fun than working on the highpoly model and sculpt, but it pays off big time since it allows to preview the final results (pose, proportions) every step of the way. It also prevents one from being tempted to "overpose" the static model itself (not saying that this is the case here, but it does tend to happen a lot).
@Tits This came out REALLY well
@Koromo Thanks for your input, I tried more complexe/detailed presentation with background and crystal in the background etc, Personally I didn't enjoy it as it became too noisy and was taking the attention away from Shiva.
@pior Thanks again for sharing your valuable input and knowledge here, Unfortunatly I do not rig/skin at all myself and this is why I usually push the posing and rig to the very end. Still very valuable advice, thank you!
@Mateus @lotet @Elithenia @Sunray Thank you!!
@TeriyakiStyle Haha actually being a role model for finishing stuff would make me very proud, thanks
@gabriel fernandez Me too, always loved shiva, Thank you!
@MrHobo I wish I took bet, I would have won!
@Asura You should have bet higher! Haha, Thanks!
@Martoon Glad you enjoyed it as a FF fan
@theStoff Thank you!! I typically finish everything I start, It's something i've always valued
I suggest you to do exactly like what I did here, Start your own WIP thread to show your progress on this character and receive critics