Amani - Original Egyptian Woman Character

GeorgeCrudo

Hey everyone I'm taking a Game Art class with Adam Skutt where we develop a character over 8 weeks. I'm working on an Egytpian Woman with facial features and most likely hair based off of the model Imaan Hammam. Still a lot of details I want to figure out. I'm thinking she might be near-futuristic mixed with ancient Egyptian but for now it's just working on the primary forms and base shape of the character herself. Let me know what you guys think so far. It's absolutely a WIP at this point

GeorgeCrudo

Here's a minor update for this character Made a lot of changes to the body. Tried to tone done the muscles, make her more feminine and just some general fixes.

GeorgeCrudo

For Week 2 we started making some clothing for our character. This is my first time in Marvelous Designer so there's a lot I'm still learning and trying to wrap my head around

GeorgeCrudo

Here's some more updates  Roughed in some of the elements like the gladiator sandals and jewelery and did some fabric sculpting on top of my MD pieces. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

GeorgeCrudo

Hey everyone Here's some more updates! I added a little belt, a new draped shoulder shawl, some more wrinkles and I added a beaded necklace to the neck/shoulder piece using Zmodeler and Nanomesh

GeorgeCrudo

Just a small update. Made some face and body adjustments, and redid the shoulder shawl from scratch  

GeorgeCrudo

Thinking about changing the belt to something more like this...I like how simple the original one is though and don't want the design to get too overcomplicated and busy so still experimenting and trying to find a good balance.

GeorgeCrudo

More pictures of the latest version with a new really roughed in belt. Also I did some skin detailing which I forgot to post but here's some lip details

GeorgeCrudo

Some more updates Decided that her name is going to be "Amani" because it's an anagram of Imaan (The model I used for reference) that also happens to be a Muslim name.

For this update I made some structural changes to the face, added a really rough hair block in (we're gonna be doing hair cards for this later on so I may regret the fro....but for now I'm determined lol)

Also fleshed out the belt and finally got around to doing something with the sandals. They still need some more love though.

GeorgeCrudo

Started to do some retopo on the head. Still needs more pieces to be finished but I would love any critiques on this so far as retopology is something I'm still not totally comfortable with.

GeorgeCrudo

Finished the Retopo on the head


Also I'm going to be going crazy with hair cards. This is the reference I'm using for the type of hair style that I want for Amani



Here's some hair that I generated with Maya's XGen plugin and rendered out to use as a hair card texture. Now the real fun begins.....

Leinadien

Looking great although if you want to be historically accurate you would probably have to make her caucasian.

GeorgeCrudo

@Leinadien Thank you  I will keep that in mind. My original concept was to mix in some modern/futuristic elements so I've been a bit loose on the historical accuracy but I'm still working out the kinks (Literally!) so anything is possible moving forward

Fingus

I think that was a riff on Gods of Egypt.
Looking great so far. Really interested in seeing how the hair turns out. Are the highlights baked in or are you using a normal map?

GeorgeCrudo

@Fingus  Oh woops. Went right over my head if thats the case hahaha
Thank you Me too haha It's all baked in. I just did some basic lighting on XGen hair in Maya using the xgen physical hair shader and mental ray to render.

Mateus

Hey man!
I wish I had more knowledge to give you proper criticism. But for now, what I can say is that for me the knees and biceps are looking a little strange. The knees seem a little too carved and lacking a bit of form. For the biceps, it doesn't have a nice transition to the lower arm. I think you could look for some references for them.

That hair seems very challenging!
I'll keep watching.

GeorgeCrudo

@Mateus Thanks for the crits man! I'll go fix those up. Admittedly the appendages did not get as much love as they should have in this process so I will polish them up
This is still very early WIP but here's what I have for the hair so far! Would love any critiques and advice. I think at the moment I might need bigger strands for the more base pieces (Not the curls) as there is too many super small ones and that's not really in line with my reference

GeorgeCrudo

Looking at last nights mess of hair with a fresh set of eyes and restructuring it from the base layer up so it has a bit more order to it. Not sure if I should change the color of that top layer to be a bit darker to the base layer or find a way to transition it better

Leinadien

Your reference seems to have thicker hair close the skull, then strands are poking out. Yours seem thick all over, maybe thin it a bit and let the background shine through.

GeorgeCrudo

@Leinadien That's a good point. I was thickening it up to build up the mass cause it's so big but now I can probably go in and root (HA!) some of it out.  But you're totally right. Once I finish getting the rest of the curls in I'm gonna go back down the layers and get some of it out. It'll look less messy and have better silhouttes that way too.

I'm also still feeling out that wispy layer on the top. It makes it look too much like a birdnest if I go crazy with it (as evidenced by the first one I posted) but I guess I just gotta find the right balance.

GeorgeCrudo

@Leinadien Took your awesome advice! Think I still need to dial it back a bit more but I think it's starting to get closer

Mateus

I think it's looking a lot better!
keep pushing it.

GeorgeCrudo

@Mateus Thanks man!

Went in and tweaked it a ton. Only some minor differences from the last update. Although I cleaned up the back quite a bit. 

GeorgeCrudo

Did some really rough skin painting in Mari just to get an idea of what shes looking like so far. Still a lot more work to do on the skin

GeorgeCrudo

Finally got a roughly finalized version of the low poly. Still needs some tweaks and polish but this project is still chugging

GeorgeCrudo

I finally finished the low poly! I started doing some baking and fiddling around in Marmoset. Still need to do the eyelashes and proper eyebrows for the face. Then I'm gonna move on to baking and texturing the body as well

Marmoset Viewer: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/W3aG2

GeorgeCrudo

Lot of trial and error in baking down her necklace and painting the beads in Substance Painter. It's still really rough at the moment. Need to do some more work on it to get it much more polished. Specifically the connection with the neck brace, skewing issues and the color mismatching along the bottom row of beads.

GeorgeCrudo

Here's another update on this project Focused on doing some texturing on the clothes. Still need to figure out the best way to handle that necklace as I don't like how it looks right now.

Larry

Hey mate, I love the character! In your title you mentioned amani, that tribe name is used in the game world of warcraft. Also when you mentioned about futuristic egyptian style, Pharah from the game overwatch came to mind  (you guessed right, blizzard fan here) I also have a thing for this kind of hair on people, one thing I believe you could improve though is adding a midline to the hair. Well not exactly a visible midline, but hair of such sort tend to have lower volume in the middle and they go from the mid to the sides in an eliptical pattern, sort of like the letter 'm'

GeorgeCrudo

Thanks for the critique Larry! I actually think I'm going to call this project completed as I feel like I've been working on it for far too long But if I ever return to it I will implement that fix to the hair. As you can imagine it's a bit of a tangled mess to dive back in to

That's actually really cool! I didn't know it was associated with WoW at all. Pharah was definitely a bit of an inspiration however. The name Amani actually came from rearranging the letters of the models name (Imaan = Amani)

Anyways here are the final renders I have for her There is still room for improvement of course but I believe I have run out of all the steam I got for this project. Thanks for the help everyone!

See all the renders and a Marmoset Viewer on my Artstation page
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ld805