Valeera From World of Warcraft - (Overwatch Style)

Astrocoolbug

Hey everyone, I've been taking a little break since Kratos because I was getting a little bit of burn out and I didn't want to make it worse. So I started a new character to keep myself practicing. I'll have more updates for Kratos soon, but for now I wanted to share my progress so far on Valeera.


(EDIT: Current Progress)

Again I'm trying to adapt a character as if I could throw them into the Overwatch universe, just going for that  semi stylized/realistic look. I'm taking a lot of inspiration from a few sources. I'll post my PureRef board at the end of this thread so you can see.

These are some pretty early stage blockouts so I just want feedback on whether or not proportions and silhouette is working. Don't woirry about details at the moment unless you have feedback about the appeal of her face which is really what I've spent most of my time on right now. I also gave myself some notes about these areas.


This is was my first Revision and the results are seen now below

There's still a lot that needs work, and I am by no mean committed to anything. a lot of these shapes were made real quick just to get a sense for where things are going to go. Something I struggle with and why I chose to do this piece, is when anatomy blends into clothing. If you look at my Kratos project, the anatomy is pretty forgiving since he's pretty much just half naked. I think my weakness is when you look at his legs and feet where the anatomical structure gets lost in the clothing. So for this character she has parts that are skin but also tight clothing as well as bulky parts. I think the weak areas right now are here Upper arms and upper legs. I'm curious what anyone thinks!

And here's my PureRef Board like I said. Looking forward to responses!

Astrocoolbug

I've been making lots of iterations just sort of everywhere. I'm really trying to make sure the silhouette reads well. I also spent more time studying proper anatomy for the legs so I hope that's coming across. I may have fudged it too much in some areas so let me know if it feels off.



I used some new brushes this time around too. The clothing folds were way easier to pull off with the SK brush set. I've also tossed the old shoulder blockout and started a new one.



Here's also a shot of the head with nothing around it, I haven't really touched it since I started posting this character so any feedback on this would be appreciated.



I spent most of this morning redesigning the shoes. I tried out a new technique for these by using a lot more of zmodeler. I was always intimidated by zmodeler before, but after messing around for a bit it was pretty easy to get a desired result.


Anyway, I'm liking where this character is going. I got feedback on my last character that a lot of texture work really starts in the model itself so I'm going to spend some more time in the modeling stage to make sure that I accurately represent certain materials and surfaces at this point in the process first before jumping into substance.

Thanks!

Astrocoolbug

I've been making lots of tweaks and decided to add some color so I can see how the model is starting to look.

I think in terms of base proportions things are looking good. The head region is a constant thing I'm rearranging. The way the hood and the pony tail connect is done is so many ways in various versions of Valeera and it adds a lot of height to her so I want to make sure it's still reading properly.

Also I just added that ribbing detailing on the boots and its still pretty lumpy so I'm going to rework that soon.

Here's a closer look of the face.

Overall a lot of the detail work on this character comes down to clean edge flow which is something I need to get better at. the way her collar piece looks is the level I want to go for over the whole model. The whole torso piece is a bit of a mess at the moment so I'm going to clean that up quite a bit.

As for the hair, it's too much like tubes right now so I'll make sure to go through and carve out some more details.

The shoulders are also probably the most abstract piece on her so that's going to take some time to get right.

Astrocoolbug

I've been chipping away at this character slowly, I've had less time recently so progress has been a bit slower but I also want to make sure I stay in the modeling stage a little longer than I did with Kratos. I got feedback there saying that I should try and make sure surfaces feel like their intended material before texturing so that way I'm really just putting icing on the cake. I have started to do that with the chest piece but everything else is kind of basic still. However I have started building up more geometry on the model.


Hood detail has been added, and I've begun really trying to segment the shoulder pieces. Things like the pony tail has some more work to go.

Aside from this I've retopologized the head to start some texture testing to see if I'm liking the direction. I applied some basicc color and through it into marmoset to see how lighting is going to look.

Overall progress is being made and I hope to have the modeling finished soonish.

Astrocoolbug

Hello Everyone its but a little bit but I've picked up Valeera again and I decided to tackle the two areas I really struggled with in my Kratos project. The Hair and Eyes.

Last Time I had a hell of a time trying to get a gradient shadow to work under the top eye lid. I was able to figure it out this time around but I do wish there was a way to may it even more pronounced. It's a bit of a double edged sword though since I also want her eyes to be glowing so I'm curious if people think it looks ok or if there are other things I can do.



Now for the hair... Kratos only had a beard so I think I was able to get away with a few mistakes since it wasn't a huge focal point of the character. That's not the case this time around. And I'm still having the same issues.


(Note: The only geometry that really has been worked on are the ones that are textured)

Issue #1: This was a similar issue I had with Kratos where the tips of the hair pieces seem to bake at weird angles. I've tried to fix it in Marmoset but to no avail. I think is may have to do with the normals on the low poly but I'm not sure how to approach it to make sure I get the desired effect.



Issue #2: There are some very strange shading issues on the front part of the hair, the Ponytail is actually fine so I'm not exactly sure what is different since I retopoligized them the same way.



Also for reference I am using the anisotropy shader in Marmoset to try and recreate the effect that the hair effect Overwatch has.

 

Feel free to ask for more images if It's not enough information. Thanks everyone!

Astrocoolbug

Ok update, I fixed the second issue I just had the green channel of the normal map going the wrong direction. Oopsie.

I think I  may have gotten the 1st issue under control as well but I will have to see.

Astrocoolbug

Ok so I was able to fix my two main issues.

Solution to Problem Number 1
Flip the y channel of my normal map or just export it correctly from Substance the first time

Problem Number 2
This was a bit of a more complicated problem where the tips of the hard strands were baking weird artifacts. I found my solution to be was to harden two edges at the tip on opposite ends of the strands. This forces the normals into two planes of projection that way it isn't trying to do a full cylinder when there's not enough room.

It's a bit hard to explain so if you are also struggling with this I can show how I fixed it if anyone wants to see it.




There's a bit more tweaking I will do but I have the desired look mostly there for the hair!

I plan to finish up the model in this week and then move onto baking and texturing the rest of the character.

Astrocoolbug

Alright so I made my first milestone for this character. I feel mostly content with how the High Poly has turned out and will now be moving onto the next phase. I made a post over on ArtStation, here's the render I posted.

Astrocoolbug

Alright so I've begun texturing, here's a pretty rough blockout of colors and shades. I spent extra time with the skin but I will need to add some SSS soon.



Something I'm curious about is if anyone has any methods that would help sell the look of these gems, I plan to give them a sand blasted glass look however I'm wondering as well if there's a way to add a bit of Parallaxing inside the gem. If anyone has some cool techniques I'd love to hear it.

I am using Marmoset to render so keep that in mind.

Astrocoolbug

Here's an update of the texturing, still working on parts of it but I would say I'm at the 78% mark. Few things left to do, and then polish from there.

Astrocoolbug

Picked up Toolbag 4 recently and wanted to try out some renders on Valeera's Daggers. Still working on the high poly but I quickly slapped some textures on to test out the new refraction settings. Still will need some tweaking and I would like to incorporate the raytraced settings if possible. So far the Rasterized render is look better personally.

Left dagger is just the base shader with no refraction. Right is the refraction, edge glow, and inner glow applied.

There's baking issues still and I'm testing out a lot of new workflows like using blender for editing normals since I find Maya's workflow to be very cumbersome. Just wanted to ultimately post something over the break since I had more time to work on this project.

Astrocoolbug

Alright so I started messing around with Toolbag 4's Raytracing features and got to this point. I think I still like the rasterized look of the daggers more so I'm going to need to spend some time with raytracing to see if I can get back to that look, but in terms of clarity I think the raytracing is the way to go for this.

I'm going to do a lot of clean up and tweaking over the next few days and hopefully get a rig going so I can pose her soon.




So far loving Toolbag 4, so many great new features!

Astrocoolbug

Here's some recent renders I took, updated a bunch of textures and lighting.

Astrocoolbug

Finished up Valeera, Head over to my Art Station to see the full breakdown.

msevergnini

Nice!

francisbaud

Yea it seems like a LOT of work went on this character model, looks really good!