Yeah so it has been a while. I am still very much alive and kicking but a lot of stuff has happened in real life so I was a bit occupied. However I am not going to bore you with that stuff. In my search for not so 3d I stumbled on this talk about workflow through lester banks. Very inspiring.
Blocking in the outfit
Still a lot of work to do but the outfit is progressing nicely.
Hair Progress
I’ve been working on the hair some more. I did a detail pass in Zbrush and baked out the normal map. I see in this render it just needs a little more refinement and I think I need create a color base with polypaint to break up the solid nature of the hair now. But I am heading in the right direction.
It is funny how Overwatch, a game that I play, seems to creep in to the concept.
Hair second pass
Getting there.
Hair base mesh
So I’ve created the base for the hair on top of the zbrush build up. It proved to be a nice guide to get an idea how to build it up. It still looks like she is wearing bananas but I am sure if I add one more layer of detail it will look good.
Another thing that changed are the teeth. At first I wanted to keep the simple version but with the current texture I felt like she needed some proper teeth. I am really happy with how the eyes turned out.
Next up finishing up the hair and start with her outfit.
Hair Process
I decided to redo the hair and thus went to zbrush to block it in better. Here you can see a timelapse of the process. I am currently retopologising it in #cinema4d.
Up close
Progressing, but still a long way to go. Still having lots of fun!
Recovery
After the latest crash I managed to recover the base and redid the painting. Like I said sometimes redoing things work out better. I now have more control over the appearance in a non-destructive way.
Texturing in progress
Since the uv’s were done I was able to start some texture work. (Sorry for the missing Eyeballs, 😉 ). I’ve replaced the eyebrow mesh with just a textured one. This will make it way easier when I create facial shapes for expressions, besides it is much more in style with the original drawing.
For texture work I prefer to work in Substance Painter because it is really powerful and straightforward. It also gives me a lot of freedom because of baking some texture information.
Playing around in c4d r19.
With Maxon’s release of Cinema4Dr19 we have Physically-Based Rendering in the viewport as well. It is a real time rendering method which provides you with instant feedback over what your light is doing as well as your Cameralens (Depth of Field). This will be such a timesaver and looks awesome.
To be continued…
🙂
PS: A real lesson again. Went out for groceries and the whole Substance Painter crashed on me again. CTRL-S is your best friend! Always SAFE SAFE SAFE! Not all is lost, the base is still there. Well the repetition is a welcome practice I guess.
Invisible Progress
WARNING! Technical nerdstuff in this post.
One of the things that is really tedious in 3d is the creation of a proper uv map. The best way to describe a uv map would be “If you kill a deer for instance for the pelt you skin the animal.” So you unfold the hide so to speak. The same applies for the 3d model in this case. It is like an unfolded version of the model.
This is needed to give the 3d application an atlas of what goes where. When deforming the character with joints the shaders and details will follow properly. The numbers and letters are there for a reason. It is to be able to check if al the UV islands are pointing outwards. If not you would spot it instantly because the text will be mirrored. You can also see if there is a lot of stretching or deformation going on.
I usually use c4d to unwrap, don’t ask me why, the UV tools date back to the middle ages. After the unwrapping I import the model in to Zbrush and use the UVmaster tools to properly smooth the UV’s. 9 out of 10 it will give you something decent to work with. For mechanical models I usually stay in c4d or maya.
It may seem like small or no progress but after this stage the fun with texture painting can begin.
