WIP: Female Fantasy Character

[Dervish]

the ear, so ya get a figure of the character ^^ im pretty confident with the general shape, when needed i gonna work some more detail into it a later stage, but feel free to comment on it

[Freefall]

Looking very good :) Maybe you can make the ear a bit more pointy towards the top?

Keep it up :thumbsup:

[Dervish]

if i point the ear more top it gonna look too elflike, have made it a bit longer to the back now though.

[orenshved]

looking good! i don't know about the ear though. the inside looks like a human ear, but the outer part look a bit stretched, an elf's ear should look human except for the proportions, otherwise you are left with a big chunk of flesh at the upper tip.
that's just my opinion though, could be wrong. :shrug:

[Dervish]

updated the update section above, the head is done now, also tried out some shaders.
i gotta work on the facial region more i think though, i kinda dont like the cheeks and jaw the way it is. any suggestions?

about the ear, i dont know that much about elf ears but that they are big and pointy, but i dont want it to be elf like as mentioned, so i think i keep it lil fleshy up there so no one can accidentally mistake it for an elf.

ps: the eyes are spheres with a texture, just placeholders

[Cleveland]

hey dervish,

good job so far, but there are a couple of areas that you can improve upon.

the ear shape, you are making quite clear, is a matter of your preference. but if you want her to fall within the humanoid realm convincingly, then the ears themselves are going to have to move inward. right now they seem to be sitting on a prom inene of the skull that humans just don't have.

the bottom of your nose is fine, but the transition from the cheek to the bridge is just too sharp. always think of the bridge "tenting" the skin there. i hope that makes sense.

you may also want to do some work on defining the eyelids a little better.

all in all though, a solid piece of work. keep it up.

cleveland.

[Dervish]

thx for the cc, not pretty sure what you meant about the ear( my english isnt the best ), but after i examined it closer i had the impression it was sitting on an imaginary round bone where it joins with the head, could remove the effect completly but made the hole thing flow better, also worked out the eyelids more, really looking better now :) , also changed the nose, the cheek-bridge join looking soft enough now? i think if i soften it even more it will become "fatty" ^^
what ya think about the neck and how it joins the torso?

[Coaster]

Hello, nice work so far, I think the main thing lacking is definition, all the right shapes are going on, but you just need to tighten up the areas where forms meet, like the nostrils and the lips, it's hard to tell but maybe you could fill out the cheeks a little, the cheekbridge join still looks a bit sunken to me, you don't have to soften it, but it needs pulling out a bit.

[Dervish]

yeah, also im not so confident with the cheeks, just cant make them look right, they arent cute enough like this, ive changed quite a lot in this one, even realigned the lines completly to make the cheek -> jaw area look better but it somehow doesnt statisfy me yet, kinda stuck on that area ^^.

another thing, i finally got around reactor, found a way to actually stop it making wierd things and also make the cloth even look good, a small video is attached with that. the body aint even half defined yet but enough for the test.

[Dervish]

well, tweaked face for hours and then gave up and just put a shader on to cover it instead j/k
i think it looks quite nice and cute now. also changed the ear to look more realistic like oren suggested in the first place, really looks better.

the body needs a lot of tweaking i think, so dont hesitate with crits

[EdySusanto]

hmm looking nice :)

may be defining her rib a bit will help this model looks much better :)

[Dervish]

update, worked out the torso better, also added arms and legs, tough i really have problems with the knees and elbows, just cant get it right, any tips on those would be really appreciated, and on anything else :thumbsup: anyone else thinks the head is lil bit too big? not sure

[Dervish]

for her wings i planed something like this here, hope i get the body done soon.

http://img218.echo.cx/img218/3118/wings1ni.jpg

[Dervish]

quite an update, how ya like the ears now?

[Dervish]

update again, played around with hair, oh well, better crap one then none at all ^^
also added feet and hands, feet not very detailed yet since i havent decided yet what shoes she will get. also cutted out the wing part since i want to remake them. crits please :bounce:

[Cleveland]

hey dervish, good work, she's starting to come together now.
as always, there are little thngs that need to be worked on. you may need to push some points around to define her abs more and her obliques. i'm not sure but i think that her pelvis may need more depth in the y axis. her breasts need to be a little more affected by gravity, i think and a little wider in x. her legs are nice. hands seem good. try tosmooth the brreast>pectoral>deltoid region.

her nose still needs improvement but the whole face is getting there i think. even though she's evil, you may want to make her default face more expressionless, it will help you when you need to animate.

overall a great update.

cleveland.

[ChanceXUAN]

GOOD WORK，well,if there is a crique,I'd like to say that an evil girl should be sexier

[saltydogdesign]

The corners of the mouth are too sharp -- they should curve a bit instead. And I think the lips stick out a bit much, making it look like she's pursing them.

The anatomy of the body looks quite good, though.

[Dervish]

first off, thanx for the crits.

@ cleave, could ya be more generic in use of words pls =) im not nativly english and my dictionary doesnt know these words, perhaps i wouldnt even know their german counterparts.
about the gravity thing, i actually thought physics(animation) would take care of that.

@ Xuan, i rather try to make her cute in contrast

@salty, the lips and and evrything above and around are my main concern on the face, gonna get some surgery there ^^

also the area where the arm(specifically biceps, schoulder and breast joins, right there is an edgeloop, wich makes it quite hard to shape it, dont know how i got it there, but i need to somehow get rid of it.

[Cleveland]

as per your request

"hey dervish, good work, she's starting to come together now.
as always, there are little thngs that need to be worked on. you may need to push some points around to define her stomach muscles more and her side-of-stomach muscles. i'm not sure but i think that her hip-area may need more depth in the y axis. her breasts need to be a little more affected by gravity, i think and a little wider in x. her legs are nice. hands seem good. try to smooth the breast>chest muscle>shoulder muscle region, make them flow together.

her nose still needs improvement but the whole face is getting there i think. even though she's evil, you may want to make her default face lacking emotion, it will help you when you need to animate.

overall a great update.

cleveland."

[Dervish]

thanx cleave, were actually just those first 3 ^^, not that bad at english, that breast shoulder area im loosing my head over cause cant find a way to remove the edgeloop there, and with it theres now way they actually come together.

[Dervish]

update, blue this time, i noticed people like blue meshes, me too, some topic for research why evrybody uses this or light blue tone for modeling.
did a real lotta tweaking quite evrywhere =) also gave her a slight smile so she looks friendlier,
gonna start with animating her soon, so take your chance to crit on the mesh, .. please :)

[Dervish]

this LookAtConstraint stuff is really freaky :)
http://img125.echo.cx/img125/6151/lookat9lr.jpg

[Dervish]

i did some research about shaders, and after some testing and tweaking i came up with that one up there? looks ok? no textures yet for bump and diffuse so i just took a cellular tiling to simlute it.

also shortened the lower legs, they were kinda oversized before as ya can see on the pics below, perhaps still too long?

[logotomie]

I assume u use max? The shader is interesting, although its hard to crit because i dont know what look you want to achieve. I would say , make the size of the cellular smaler. go for subtlety. maybe use the texture for specularity as well. for more crit i would need to know details of your skin shader

[Dervish]

yeah im using max.
the cellullar maps are just placeholders to have some structure in there to better see the shaders effects, they will be replaced with some nice textures after im done with the modelling and rigging part, was mainly wondering if the shading and specualrity looks fine for skin, and yeah, forgot to account the bump in the spec channels *sigh* thanx for the hint :)

also im already done with rigging( nothing spectacular, just took a biped and forced it into shape ^^, its enough for posing), though i have really trouble with skinning, physique is real nice but it has so much stuff to it i cant control very well. ive gone trough the tuts and refs that come with max but still dont get around to it, though id really like to stick with it since the normal skin modifier just doesnt give such realistic results. any tips on that would be really nice

[logotomie]

still, i would reduce the size of the cellular as the size affects the look of the highlights. As her skin is really red its hard to compare to normal skin. I guess you already read that skin usually becomes more red in the shadow areas because of sss and that it is more bluish in the light. But i wonder if this is really applicable for you as your chars color is so drastically different from normal human skin. Does she even have red blood? ;-) Your skin currently looks glossy which could work well for a fantasy char.

As for CStudio: I only have limited ability with this as i mostly link lowpoly stuff. And its hard to give general advise here. I would say: first try to get as far as possible with the envelopes. Especially for hands and feet the default values are not so good. Only when you cant improve the linking anymore this way, switch to tweaking individual vertices.

[Dervish]

yeah, that redish shadows and bluish highlights stuff, i faked it in the shader, not using real sss, i tried it out, but i didnt really like the outcome, maybe because i have no clue how sss(technically) exactly works.

about the animation thingy, i dont use cs, workingin max directly, no need for cs fo such "simple" stuff, about physique, theres much more to it then envelopes and and vertex weights sadly, bulging, sliding, bending, .... all the stuff, thats a lotta parameters, adjustable per vertex/envelope, and i have pretty much no clue about the values, played around with em, made an easier area deform really well, moved to next, and suprise it works a completly other way here, some areas are just really wierd. and could nowhere find a skinning tutorial that goes beyond adjusting envelopes/vertexweights in general, specially something anatomical would be nice, that actually goes into the diffrent joints.

heres an update of the shader, and an experimental hairstyle(needed some distraction of that skinning thing ^^ ) does it look wet? if so than its just right =)
http://l33tz.de/img/hair2.jpg

[Dervish]

her first steps, 5sec later she fell and broke a leg, the batteries of the cam went empty right after this shot though

http://l33tz.de/img/animtest.jpg

[Dervish]

since our little star is in the hospital with a broken leg, we got some temporary replacement, say hello to lisa

http://l33tz.de/img/skele.jpg

[Dervish]

that composition up there mainly has one purpose, amuse the viewer, hope it fits it well enough, skeles are free meshes from 3dtotal.com and wont be used for the final.

yes, her skinning is horrible, not finished yet, and you see very well in that pic up there where the problem zones are, any tips would be really appreciated, also feel free to comment on her geometry, as long as i havent textured her its easy to change things and type in some more vertex weights

[Cleveland]

ah, yes, the bind.
i'm just getting to that chapter. so, can't help you right now, but inteterested to see how you work it all out. keep the updates coming. (i actually used a proper skeleton to reference my rig. think now that your way could be better, but mine turned out great.)

still think she needs more work in the areas that i mentioned. and is that shoulder muscle ridge on her upper arm intentional?

keep up the good work, dervish

cleveland.

[Dervish]

i really gonna loose my head over that skinning stuff, specially with that physique stuff, not very well controllable and really hard to get the results ya want, specially the bulging, kinda wierd. about my atemp on a rig, its for sure not better then anything, the iks and fks and whatever in there are pretty horrible, the only good thing about it is that it provides a fast nice skeleton that ya can move around. and if im going to really animate her i gonna definatly put other solvers over it.
and ive seen your rig, sure has eaten a lotta time, turned out nice, since i took the easy way for now im gonna have to learn it someday anyway too ^^

that thing under the shoulder is just the result of a subdivision of the polys right there, to test how the skin reacts then, the test failed, they gonna be removed again ^^, the shooulder breast connection im still working on, just cant figure it out how to move the loop outta there.
on the stomach im not sure if i want more definition, but also not very confident with its general shape.

edit: not much progress right now since im playing around with zb and normal mapping too ^^ also going to make some textures with zb, great tool ^^

[Dervish]

heres actually a zb render, i really begin to love that thing ^^

its just a test, but feel free to comment on the features, i personally only like how the veins turned out. still trying to get trough all the feats of that tool, its just great for modelling such details, and for a lotta other stuff ive seen from some vids. thats nearly 1million polys on there and all running smooth, i actually still have max open,..... *in love*
edit: right next thing after her will be a monstrosity as her pet or something, ^^
http://l33tz.de/img/zbtest.jpg

[Dervish]

i finally got a method to make the skin, i decided to put physique down, using the normal "skin" now instead, it may have no sliding and such, but at least i get predictable results, and after some playing around with the envelopes and weights ive got a pretty nice defoming hand and forarm, the thumb could use some more tweaking perhaps.
http://l33tz.de/img/handskin.jpg

[Dervish]

update, ive got the skinning done pretty ok, the parts that just didnt want like i wanted i just fixed with an "edit poly" modifier for the still, i came up with a new concept for the still too, how do ya like the pose? no details in there yet, cloth and sourroundings ( some neat effects ) will be coming soon. also what ya think about the lightning?

[Dervish]

lil update, changed the pose( arm and hand angle mainly ), added some volumetrics and hair, my computer had some issues to render with the volumetric hair shader so ive just converted it to polys for now till i can solve it.
also defined the stomach now ^^, what ya think about it?

[Dervish]

how about some crits? please :)

[Dervish]

some bigger update again, did some tweaks, added cloth, and redid the hair, its still geometry ( 800.000 verts, double that many faces ) since my comp seems to like that more than some simple volumetrics, changed the lightning a little, getting close to final, what ya think could be improved? really need some crits on it

[Dervish]

do ya guys think i should normal map something like this or leave it as it is?

http://l33tz.de/img/slip.jpg

[Dervish]

heres an example for the shoulderpad

http://l33tz.de/img/shoulder.jpg

[Dervish]

some input please =)

[peawy]

Hi dervish. Looks like you reeeaaally want some feedback here !:)
So, I'll try to give you some.
About the hand, may be the first and second phalange are a little too long compared to the last (you see, she can't close her hand completely like this).

About the clothes, don't know if it's bump or displace you're using (it's bump right ?), but you may want to make your maps bigger, because there we can see the pixels (especially on her panties).

Keep working, you're on the right track.

[Pony]

her rib's don't come down low enough and the top of the hips not high enough. If you ask me.

[Dervish]

thanx for the crits :)
now that ya say it the fingers are really a bit out of proportion. they arent meant to loose completly though, more of a presenting gesture.
those details on armor, thats geometry, zbrushed ^^, the zbrush shader is what makes it look that pixelated, normalmapped with max it will look smooth, was just wondering if it would look better or without ornaments, those are just a test, id make better ones.

hmm yeah, the ribs, just cant make them look right, ill try a bit more, they always come out to long or to short ^^, the hips i made that long to give them a rounder more female look.

hows the lightning coming out and the colors? quite new to all the stuff

[Dervish]

ok decided to call this finished for now, wanna work on a new idea, corrected some more stuff and changed the lightning, submitted to finished section, hope ya all like it.
feel free to still crit on stuff, might do some more renders

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.