[WIP] Frost Giant - critique and advice

Fraktayne

Hi, here's my WIP of a frost giant.
A bit of an explanation here, I tried doing this kind character because I am very weak with making clothes/ costumes. 
I tried brushing up on my anatomy but that's about all I can do for now, so by making a character with a bit of clothing I should be able to learn a bit.
But one of the things I cannot understand is how to do haircards to make hair and fur.
So I chose to create a nordic character, means a lot of animal fur and beardy men to get better at it.
Any help and advice is appreciated and thank you.

Here I am currently blocking out the costume

Fraktayne

Update
I started working the shoes and the pants
Here's where i'm at.

Fraktayne

Update
I'm slowly working my way up the costume, I'm just refining everything.
Currently no problems but I assume doing the hair and the fur later will be troublesome.
Here's where i'm at.

Fraktayne

Update
Been playing around trying to make hair cards but as expected, hair is my weaker skill.
Anyway, here's what I have for now, going to take it to blender afterwards.

Crazy_pixel

So far I like your progress. The details are going in an interesting direction. Is he armed?

Joseph_Bramlett

For your fur ide look into the fur shell technique. They used it in shadow of the colossus but even in more recent games like uncharted 4 with furry character jackets. It might be the solution your looking for.

Fraktayne

Crazy_pixel said:

So far I like your progress. The details are going in an interesting direction. Is he armed?

Thanks! yes he will be but I wanted to get the hairs out of the way cuz it seemed very tedious.

Joseph_Bramlett said:

For your fur ide look into the fur shell technique. They used it in shadow of the colossus but even in more recent games like uncharted 4 with furry character jackets. It might be the solution your looking for.

Thank you, I'll look into it. I didn't know there were techniques involved haha.

Fraktayne

So uhh, I've attempted doing the hair but I've spent time doing and redoing it cuz it looked really bad.
Is there a more practical way of doing hair? what I tried to do was manually add them but it was really hard to control the planes and it looked so bad maybe it was the hair texture?
basically wasted a whole day trying to do the hair haha                                                                                                                           help (T-T)

Crazy_pixel

I found the other day this plugin, looks pretty handy. Or maybe its also a good reference.
https://gumroad.com/l/hairtool

Fraktayne

Crazy_pixel said:

I found the other day this plugin, looks pretty handy. Or maybe its also a good reference.
https://gumroad.com/l/hairtool

looks cool thanks!

Joseph_Bramlett

Dont think of it as a day wasted just think of it as a day spent moving in the right direction. Hair card textures can influence how good your hair looks but in my experience the placement is the most important thing. What ide recommend is finding a open source model online with hair textures already made as a starting point. Use them with your own hair topology in order to get used to placing hair cards. Adam SKutt has been the defacto hair card guy for many people in recent years https://www.artstation.com/artwork/02anK , at least Ive seen his name come up quite a bit. The ide is hair is made in about four layers with a base thick layer that you then build up in thinner layers until you get a nice fluffy look. Sadly hair card placement takes forever but placing it manually always gives the best results. 

Fraktayne

Joseph_Bramlett said:

Dont think of it as a day wasted just think of it as a day spent moving in the right direction. Hair card textures can influence how good your hair looks but in my experience the placement is the most important thing. What ide recommend is finding a open source model online with hair textures already made as a starting point. Use them with your own hair topology in order to get used to placing hair cards. Adam SKutt has been the defacto hair card guy for many people in recent years https://www.artstation.com/artwork/02anK , at least Ive seen his name come up quite a bit. The ide is hair is made in about four layers with a base thick layer that you then build up in thinner layers until you get a nice fluffy look. Sadly hair card placement takes forever but placing it manually always gives the best results. 

Yeah doing the hair might give me permanent brain damage hopefully it gets easier.

Fraktayne

Update
I think i'm progressing but it's very tedious, this hair thing.
Here's where i'm at right now, not even half of all the hair is done (sigh*).

Fraktayne

Hi again,
So I finally finished the hair problems, It's the best I could do for now but I think I'm satisfied and hopefully I do better in the future.
Here's where i'm at currently, I've used fibermesh to create the furs, it might not be the best tool to use but It really helped me to generate a fairly decent (in my opinion) set of cards.