Brief 2 - Final Outcome + Beauty

Here we are..

After a quick paced and stress filled few weeks, here we are at the final outcome of my second 3D Brief. Regina Vampria is alivee~

Thank-yous

The people at Digital Tutors are bloody life savers, I'd be so stuck if it wasn't for their helping hand. Thanks guys. <3

Many websites gave me many ideas but this one was specifically helpful. Just from a general understanding of things. Animation Tips

Mister Elizalde's work also gave me a bit to think about with his iconic style. Thank you so much for being a motivation and an inspiration! Mister Elizalde

There are so many other people I want to give hugs and cookies but, let's not make this blog too lengthy. You can probably find them in previous posts.

Outcome, incoming!

Brief 2 - 3D - Persona: Vampria

Beauty Shots

Vampria <333

In closing.. I think my summer will be spent enhancing my 3D skills and diving into the great and mighty.. Zbrush! <3

That's all for now~

Brief 2 - Setting the Scenes

Finish in sight, boys~

Well, that's all the hard stuff out of the way. It's the final stretch from here!

Scene mode: Activate.
Because of the tears shed while skinning, my time management failed me a little. However, I managed to pick everything up and get it all done in time. Praises to my laptop for not giving up on me now. Multiple renders at once to keep it heated up. My new cooler couldn't come sooner could it..

Anyway, now I just have to set up the scenes to showcase Vampria for a final video!

Spotlight
To give a full turn of Vampria I set up a quick spotlight scene with slow spinning camera. Vampria walks on the spot, but maybe I should have had her walk in a line. Or change the plane she walks on to make is a basic colour with a bit of reflection. If I could go back and edit it, I'd change it for sure.

Quick Street
A quick 5 minute set up of boxes with street textures on them. Half wrapped so the bits that are seen by the cameras in various scenes actually look okay. That's all I was concerned with, considering the scene wont be used for anything else. Does well, considering. I wanted a creepy dark, 'stalks the streets' vibe.

A total of 10 cameras with like 5-6 lights per scene. Moonlight, cold blue skin, dark mysterious shadow vibe.. Contrast fade from dark to light when she steps out. It was all thought out. My sketchbook is full of little scribble diagrams..

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - Dreaded Skinning!

Update: Okay. I spent half a day trying to make the ClothFX modifer work, without success. My many attempts were tossed as the Jacket wouldn't collide with the hip area properly and seemed attached to the foot plane. After various reskinning, tutorials, forum help, I decided that my final model would have to be without the clothing FX. Sad face..

-----------------

Let's get this over and done with.. :(

Boning.. Hah.
Before you can skin, you need bones to skin to. Duh.

Bones are simple enough, you get it right one side and throw it to the other with a single button. Easy, chyeah. Here's the bones:

The Time has Come.
Alright, as expected the skinning took a full day or so infront of my laptop like a zombie. A few attempts had to be made because of some mirroring and element issues. But I've learned from my mistakes. Geometry lying under geometry does NOT blend well in skinning. My badd..

Here's some saves I could find of the boning process:

I have the Jacket as a separate object to try a Clothing FX modifier on it. A little advanced, I know but it's worth a shot if you ask me. :)

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - Making her Pretty

Texturing is always the fun part..

Laptop had a few issues causing a lack of screenshots for this part and the following parts, but I tried to save what I can. The 40-odd save files of my progress is always helpful in these moments..

Dual Monitor Savior

Photoshop and Max in unison.. Made things so much easier, holy molly. 

Progression shot
Still have a lot to do but at this point the eye, the skin and the leggings were done and dusted. 

Final - No Bumps added yet.

What's next?
.. Oh, Skinning.. Yaayyy..

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - Unwrapping

Glorious Seams~

Unwrapping my model wasn't at all difficult like I thought it would be. The topology being in place allowed me to use the various loops to make the seams I needed.

Saving and testing and Checkmate!

Relaxing and pelting, making everything fit into place. Seams given their space. Ready to fire them into Photoshop and make. Her. Pretty!

How Beautiful~

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - All Modelled

Just a peek.

Image or two of the model before I make her look booty-ful.

Here ya go

Onward..

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - Clothes 'n' Boots

Cover 'em up

Got the base model, now onto the clothes. Lots of Symmetry!

Corset/ Leggings

The simple action of pulling out the poly's from the specific areas to shape these items of clothing to my model. They don't change much so this method is alright.

Jacket

In the side view I made a spline of the jacket around my reference image. From there, the shell modifier and more shaping and extruding to get the final outcome.

Boots

I tried a few times making the boots only to get more annoyed the more I tried. I eventually created a box (im so sorry...) and it gave me the shape I was needing. I drew the reference with tilted feet which was.. Weird. So, I made them more straight. I'll tilt them using bones. Give 'em a natural pose to start.

Texturing...

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - Re-doing the head!

In Short..

I couldn't help but get slowly more annoyed the more I saw my characters face. I don't know if it wasn't shaped right or the poly count went through the roof, but I was never going to feel satisfied unless I re-did the whole head.

Entirely.

It didn't take more then 3 hours to completely re-create and shape the new head. I'm much happier with this outcome. Less.. Boney, in my opinion.

Now, I can move on..

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - The Hair

The hair can give a character so much more.. Life.

Start looks like so:

After taking a short break, I looked back at my model and shaped the eyes and hair better then previously. I also completely restyled the head (check another post for this info). Here's the outcome~
Morphed into:

Clothe my lady, then texture.. bones.. skin.. animation!

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - The Body Base

Halfway, I guess.

I wanted to make a full base body just for future handiness. I'm really happy with how she looks at this moment in time. I'm excited to clothe her and get the hair into place! Eager~

Turbosmooth is on.. <3


Again with the feet.. They annoy me everytime.

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - Feet 'n' Hands

Double update~

After messing with the torso getting legs, arms, and defining it a lot more I moved on to the most.. Complex parts.

Hands

Starting with a cylinder for a finger and working it into a palm, ready for wrist connection. Risked a few extra poly's for nails. Hey, it works!

Feet

I didn't want to make proper.. Toed feet because they're gonna be hidden by boots the entire time. I'm considering redoing them because I'm not happy with the topology at all. But that'll be another time. I want to work on finishing the model completely first!

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - The Body

Eventually moving into 3D

We are being given extra 3D classes to give any helpers and tips on modelling specific areas, like the body, the head, the hands etc.

After our first extra class, I felt more confident creating a body for Vampria. The base of everything~

Starting with a Cylinder and getting.. Seriously picky, I fleshed out her torso.

Topology ftw~

Digital Tutors
Along side the extra classes I found 2 excellent tutorials on Digital tutorials that I'm taking tips from while creating my model. The guy is doing it a different way to what we were shown, so I'm following Mark's lessons while taking any tips and reminders from the tutorial. Between both, I'm getting the most incredible feeling while bringing my lady to life!

My only worry with the tutorials is that there will be too many poly's.. But that just makes it complex for me to work with. I can deal with that. <:

Watch this Space~

Wicked tutorial 1

Wicked Tutorial 2

Brief 2 - Vampria Design

Creating the references..

As I mentioned last time, I was finding it hard to draw in my sketchbook so I was moving onto photoshop. Which came out Successfully~


The Basis
I created a base body before moving on to combine the finalized aspects of my character. Making a front and side reference, along side a quick paint to give a feel of her character over all.

Now, let the modelling begin!

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - Sketches

Before I can begin modelling, I need something to work off as reference!

Well, firstly I'm aiming to make a character that's a 'Persona' of mine. So, a Persona is a character that is basically yourself. Something I've always wanted to do. 

My Persona is a mysterious vampire woman called Vampria. She's a character I use a lot in my notes to visualize certain points and she's.. Basically everywhere for me. I'm quite attached, so this opportunity to finally bring her to life was all I wanted~

The Style
Creating a stylized character seemed to be my focus point, so I spent a good 3 days doing nothing but drawing out poses and limbs of a stylized female character. Referencing Disney movies, tutorials, Dreamworks, and even the fantastic Underworld movie series, turning the lead actor into something less realistic.

I used the likes of the Tinkerbell movies, to get a feel for the 3D aspect of the stylized female. Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy gave a good cross between my own style and realistic proportions. Disney's Atlantis and Hercules gave good examples of the female shape for that style. Violet from The Incredibles gave good hair style reference. And of course Hotel Transylvania's Mavis! Along side some fan art found of an artist turning the disney princesses into Vampires.. Weirdly there is a lack of them..

Moving on
After getting a good feel for the style, I started to design Vampria. Strangely, I found this hard to do on paper.. Onward to Photoshop!

Watch this Space~

Brief 2 - Intro to Styles~

After a break for Easter and struggling to find any form of inspiration, I'm back with Brief 2 for this module. :)

Brief 2 - Character Animation.
The outcome for this is your modelled character in a walk cycle. Exciting much.

I wanted to make something my own, but useful. So, a persona seems to fit pretty well. A character based off myself, basically.



In terms of Style, I didn't want to do a simple model because it would feel.. Cheaty. But there's not enough time and I don't feel confident with a realistic anatomically-correct model. Anime/Manga style is always a back up, the 'Chibi' pop-head figure style seems to fit in the cheaty region (that's just me)



I've been looking for a good stand in the middle... Who's better then Disney?

Problem with choosing another style, especially like Disney is that it's SO iconic. So it needs to look right otherwise.. It's crap, honestly. How can I make such a style more my own? 

Thinking about it some more, it would probably relate to the incredible collab game series between Disney and Square Enix: Kingdom Hearts! <33

Or.. Final Fantasy! Eeek..

Cute... Button nose....

There will be some sketchy posts next time around but I'm just looking to test the water before digging in deep.

Watch this Space~

Brief 1 - Quick Tweaking!

Positive feedback from my final outcome! Heeell yeah! :)

Just a few tweaks to make, render it out when I go to bed.

Something was weird about the swipe at the end of my video, so I restarted it from scratch. Looking a lot better now, here's Testers:

Then the over all panning had weird textures on the handle.. (????)
It looked fine in 3DSmax, but it was just a quick adjustment to the light. And Bam.

Rendering for video 2!~

Brief 1 - Beautiful, little Scythe

Some 'Beauty' shots, rendered out from 3DS max pior to my final video composition.

I'm so chuffed with these, holyy craaap.

Mine Crescent Rose. <3