Reallusion Character Design - RMCeallach

RMCeallach

What's up, all? I'm new to Polycount, and this'll be my first contest submission, but I'm excited to get going and be active in the community. Reallusion products are also new to me, but Character Creator seems pretty solid so far. It's not the way I'd normally begin doing character work, but it looks like it's going to save me a lot of time. Playing around with it to get started, I've adjusted most of the facial options in some way or another for my first character. After a little body tweaking, I'll move on to importing into ZBrush for detail sculpting and then get to clothing creation in Marvelous Designer.

Here are a couple WIP screenshots documenting facial changes made in character creator for my first submission:

RMCeallach

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been working on it over the last couple weeks, but life gets in the way sometimes.

Here are some of the reference images I gathered as inspiration for the head, body, clothing, and accessories:

RMCeallach

Here's my work in Character Creator finishing up the body, then bringing the exported OBJ into ZBrush for refinement:




I want this character to look semi-realistic, but stylized, like you might find her as a playable character in Street Fighter V, or a similar title. I'm not going into great amounts of detail, other than to exaggerate the musculature and some of the body's curves.

RMCeallach

Here, I've masked and extracted hair from the head, applied matcaps and very basic polypainting, and used InsertMultiMesh and ZModeler brushes to create ear piercings:

Afterward, I masked part of the arms, hands, legs, and feet, and used the ClayBuildup brush to create some quick wristwraps and footwraps:

RMCeallach

I still have more refinement to do in ZBrush, but I decided to move into Marvelous Designer at this point and start creating clothes for the character so I can export and bring them back into ZBrush for sculpting:

AdventDestiny

Very impressive work! I'm also pretty impressed with the ZBrush interface you got set up, very efficient.

douglassoares

Impressive! I think the foot band need to be more thin 

Alexionna

Hey this looks awesome keep up the good work. I like your detail with the ear piercing. 

RMCeallach

Thanks for your comments, guys! Sorry, it's been a while since the last update. I've still been working and documenting my process, but I keep forgetting to post it all, so get ready for a massive image dump.

@AdventDestiny - Thank you. The interface is still very much a work in process, as I'm always finding new things I want to add or replace in my interface.

@douglassoares - Thanks. I thinned it out a little, but the wrap ends are still a little thicker, as those spots, along with the knuckles or toe joints, are usually wrapped a few more times than everything else for protection.

@Alexionna - Thank you. I've since changed the piercings a little, which I like a bit better. You'll see the new stuff in another update below.

First off, here's the body sculpting I did in ZBrush:

As you can see, it was pretty minimal, mostly just highlighting and exaggerating the bone and muscle structure.

Next, the sculpting process for her gloves:

I masked off areas where I wanted raised, padded sections, inflated them, and assigned Polygroups to them for easy Polypainting. Then I applied a mesh pattern to the underside using NoiseMaker:
Finally, I painted the gloves and fingernails with a combination of Spotlight textures, alphas, and Polypaint:

RMCeallach

After creating the gloves, I worked on creating a graphic print baseball cap. First I masked and extracted a section of the head, and used the size deformation, Move brush, and Rotate Transpose tool to make it fit around the hair:

I then extruded the bill of the cap with the MaskPen and Move tools, and Polypainted it with a combination of Spotlight textures and alphas:

I ended up having some issues with Character Creator's mesh throughout the process of making this character, not the first of which was an issue with the eyelashes and the cornea of the eye. I hid the cornea and the old eyelashes, and instead opted to create FiberMesh eyelashes. They're a little in disarray below, but they came out nicely after using the Groom tools for a few minutes.

Here are some headshots of the completed hat, new piercings, and improved eyelashes, both pre- and post-render within ZBrush:

RMCeallach

I made some high-top fighter boots with laces and a velcro strap next. I began by using Shadowbox to create a quick undersole, and masked out a pattern on the bottom to make the tread:

I then made each section of the shoe uppers separately by masking off various sections of the feet, and Polypainting them to match the rest of the outfit:

RMCeallach

Despite following along with a lot of tutorials on the subject, I actually had a hell of a time bringing all my low-poly and texture exports into iClone 6 and animating it in a way that looked even remotely good. It's unfortunate, but with time bearing down on me, and other project deadlines looming, I'm going to have to pose this in ZBrush, do some renders with KeyShot, and do a turntable animation for my submission.

Below is the finished, pre-posed model in ZBrush:

I did a relatively quick, unfinished pose with Transpose Master, to check for any issues with posing, and to get an idea of what kind of pose I want the character to be in. There were a few minor issues in this attempt, mostly due to my lack of care in masking, but it looks pretty workable.