[FINISHED] Cyberpunk skater gal

Rikard86 · Jul 2018

Been at this for a bit now so thought I'd make a thread to dump all the stuff I've made so far for feedback. Everything is still susceptible to change at this point.

Aiming to make a cyberpunk styled character of my own design. What I have so far:

- Head sketch. This is due to be reworked since UVs were temporary, was made to test skin shader, hair mesh, facial features and makeup design. Will probably also end up adding a few more accessories, but that's a lot down the road.

- Body sculpt. Started on a simple sketch made in Photoshop and worked on the design, ended up straying a bit from it although most of the elements are there (minus the skates, those will be made separately and will be detachable, but if you check the boots picture you can see where they will attach). Skin detail on hands and body is still missing.

- prosthetic arm design, looking for a more industrial, "utility" design than a sleek one. Was a ton of fun to make, but I'm biased towards hard surface so yeah. Don't think I'm going to add more to this in zbrush, further detailing will be made via height maps.

Will keep you updated.

Rikard86 · Sep 2018

Small update, it's been a busy two months, bear with me.

Finished the basic shape of her skates a while ago, haven't got around finishing them yet. I'm postponing proper detailing since I want to retopo the character first.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/af/5hd2wb2qkprj.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/zi/vozqh5kgc4qm.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/oi/kcgcamyvf87t.jpg

Didn't add much to the design. If you squint you can see a few changes (mainly volume wise and small details).

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/px/k6ojp8ytmh7p.jpg

Started retopoing her body, making a few test bakes along the way to test UVs and topology. Will probably end up keeping the head, although it needs a bit of a rework. Her jacket is still haflway done, will probably show it once I'm done with it.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/zt/p82z0rqunf4w.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/d5/phtjiink1cvv.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/8t/5ejy77jp7yq3.jpg

See you soon

Brian "Panda" Choi · Sep 2018

Do you have MD patterns flats for the clothes?

Rikard86 · Sep 2018

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Do you have MD patterns flats for the clothes?

This is manual sculpting, I didn't use MD.

Rikard86 · Sep 2018

Character is fully retopoed now.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/v8/rrlcy4nn840c.jpg

Kind of halfway through.

Next up:

add a few mods to her head (nothing too visually busy, planning to add some kind of music reader "earring" and something for her forehead as a means for her to interface with the reader), maybe play a bit with her half covered eye
make proper UVs for the clothing (will probably split top and bottom)
fix the baking errors (can you spot them?)
go a bit over her bare shoulder (refine the shape a bit + rebake)
finish up the skates

Rikard86 · Sep 2018

Decided to go with texturing her to get a good sense of how her materials should be. Started by focusing on the clothing (body parts are not textured yet as I might rework her head texture a bit). Focusing on lower body atm, upper body is still very wip.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/eb/vn6t85ae4c8v.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/66/eatcyw5ukrwi.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/tn/eca3tuiosy5a.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/ay/oxk1dfrtivka.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/af/5rcszot9dszc.jpg

Will post next update when she's fully textured and I start detailing her accessories.

slosh · Sep 2018

Pretty cool so far. her chest area really bugs me though. With a zipped tubetop type thing unzipped, I would expect to see a lot of volume for her breasts and yet there is barely any. Unless its supposed to be like a leather bustier, it just seems odd that it would stay in place. Plus it is unzipped QUITE a bit...just seems odd. At the very least I would double her bust size so she at least fills out that top and it looks like it would hold it up. Otherwise, I would just zip that up close to the top and stick with the current chest volume.

Rikard86 · Sep 2018

slosh said:

Pretty cool so far. her chest area really bugs me though. With a zipped tubetop type thing unzipped, I would expect to see a lot of volume for her breasts and yet there is barely any. Unless its supposed to be like a leather bustier, it just seems odd that it would stay in place. Plus it is unzipped QUITE a bit...just seems odd. At the very least I would double her bust size so she at least fills out that top and it looks like it would hold it up. Otherwise, I would just zip that up close to the top and stick with the current chest volume.

Yeah, it's supposed to stay up by itself. Thinking I might just give her a slightly bigger cup size at this point, or come up with some weird explanation about it conforming to her body and stuff (which might be more interesting, like adding some sort of mechanical skeleton to the corset and making it slightly visible via height map, as if it was a whalebone corset).

Or both.

I'll think about it I guess.

Rikard86 · Sep 2018

Think her look is pretty finalized atm, straying a bit more away from the concept tho.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/qv/4wfluecw6ie6.jpg

Gave her a proper skin material on her body. As per Satoshi's suggestion I had her fill her vest a bit more so that it properly functions as a corset (the zipper at this point can be considered cosmetic). Also gave her a bit of lipgloss and some minor circuitry modding on her arm and face.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/3e/t3e1q51du1tz.jpg

Received some feedback on the jacket which was pretty founded - the bright green color tended to flatten down all the shading and pull too much attention from her face. Didn't want to alter the color scheme too much so I picked another, darker color from her palette and used the green as accents to frame her body and lead up to her head. This also makes it a bit easier to see that it has accumulated some grime.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/jc/47704hpc40pq.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/li/0vd7yoat23qn.jpg

Skates are up next, stay tuned

Rikard86 · Oct 2018

Wanted to get her finished before a local convention here in Italy this weekend but that seems pretty unlikely, so I quickly rigged her, posed her and made a couple of renders so I can show her off. She's still missing her skates and her pose is whipped out is 5 minutes, although I'm thinking about keeping it as an alt shot as I kinda like the vibe she gives.

Original pics are 2k in case you want to check out the details.

About the skates, I got the lowpoly and some bakes going, so that's what I'm showing here. Proper texturing work will start soon (and I plan to add a lot of detail texture wise, so it might take a while.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/m4/b7q1vt20shio.jpg

All in all she's pretty close to completion but I'm kinda bummed I couldn't finish her for the convention.

See you next week with more updates hopefully

Rikard86 · Oct 2018

Think her skates are pretty much done.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/79/r34csxjyii94.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/e4/3sfb6wloebsn.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/5b/pvddul8tpezj.png

Unless I get some last minute suggestions I'm gonna move onto posing. I'm planning to keep her original pose (just making so that she's holding one skate with her hand and the other is on the ground) and to add at least an action pose, any idea for this one would be really appreciated.

Should be able to wrap this this weekend or on Monday at worst.

Ged · Oct 2018

the quality is really impressive, nice work on her skin and materials in general. I know this kinda goes against the cyberpunk/neon theme but personally I would like to see a version where she has much more limited colour on her clothes in particular as the colours are grabbing so much of my attention its hard to even concentrate on her face or shapes (and these parts are excellent so thats unfortunate). Having both versions neon clothes and normal would be great or if she was animated and her clothes looked normal and then she hits a switch and the clothes light up those neon colours

. Anyway great work!

Rikard86 · Oct 2018

Ged said:

the quality is really impressive, nice work on her skin and materials in general. I know this kinda goes against the cyberpunk/neon theme but personally I would like to see a version where she has much more limited colour on her clothes in particular as the colours are grabbing so much of my attention its hard to even concentrate on her face or shapes (and these parts are excellent so thats unfortunate). Having both versions neon clothes and normal would be great or if she was animated and her clothes looked normal and then she hits a switch and the clothes light up those neon colours . Anyway great work!

Hey thanks.

I've already played with her color distribution to make sure the accents frame her shapes and lead up to her face and hair instead of grabbing all the attention for themselves (except her boots, but those are supposed to be eye catching). I'm not sure what kind of effect downplaying them further might have, and frankly I envision her as the kind of person that wants everybody's eyes on her so I'm satisfied with her looks.

Your suggestion would make for a really cool feature if she was actually animated, now if only I had somebody to pick her up...

dGreenberg · Oct 2018

Nice work, @Rikard86; she's really come a long way! Ged brings up a great point with the clothes, and something to "turn on the neon" would be an amazing touch to the character.

Another option might be to really pump up the colors of the makeup on the face to draw the eye more up to her head. You did a great job with the face and hair, so it'd be great to guide the viewer up to the face to see the work you put in. I don't know if super saturated makeup will work too well or be a pain on the eyes, but it could be cool to see. Either way great work on the character!

Rikard86 · Oct 2018

@dGreenberg already tried doing that a while ago and kinda want to forget about it, it didn't look very good. Granted, the head in this screenshot is a few iterations back but you get the idea.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/za/d88ydinemrec.jpg

makeup is hard

dGreenberg · Oct 2018

Damn, you're right. I kept thinking that I'd seen your makeup ideations from before, but I must have forgot since I didn't see them in the thread. The current makeup version definitely looks better but it'd be great if you could still somehow pull just a little more focus up to the face.

Have you tried making any type of glowy, cybernetic eye (even if it's just like a glowing ring around the iris)? Kind of like the Illusive Man in the Mass Effect series or something. It might be less busy than the makeup if it works out. It's a tough call either way, but hope you post updates if you change anything else. If not you still got yourself a great looking character, man! Congrats on finishing her

Rikard86 · Oct 2018

@dGreenberg yeah, I've tried a bunch of stuff on her face, from faint eye glowing to straight up optic prosthethics, but they looked more out of place than outlandish (On this character, I know right?). Well, in the end, less is more.

dGreenberg · Oct 2018

Well said, man! It seems like you really pushed her further by trying out different methods, and you can never know what'll work out until the very end. I think the end results turned out looking really nice and it show the efforts you put in.