HMC #19 - Cheetara

#101

Hmm Cheerara, sculpting those pants must have been fun! Great work so far!

#102

waaaaaaaaaah!

Damn Too late… after see the She-ra post I want to make someting like that.

And BTW its beautifull done. keep it up pal :thumbsup:

weel, lets search anoter idea…

#103

What?? How did I not know you were doing this challenge?? Lookin’ great! I’ll admit I had a bit of a crush on her back when I was little. Hell, she’s still hot… er, yah. Keep it up!

#104

IDK, I’ve only been commenting in your thread this whole time. Yeah my little boy is way into Thundercats now. Cheetara is about the only female lead that he likes.

#105

Haha, guess I thought you found it from my sig. Are you going to do a cloth sim on the pants as well or just some zbrushing? I find that a cloth sim can be a good starting point

#106

Not necessary, they’re going to be pretty tight. :smiley:

#107

I’m curious as to why your ornaments, clothes and other addons to the character have so much more poly density than your base mesh?

There also looks like some dodgey topology areas on the flanks of her pants where you’ve got depressions running across the flow of the geometry. That could be bad if/when you try to pose her as you’ll could easily get some jaggies there.

#108

Oh, that’s because I haven’t done anything with her body yet. The dodgey polys are where her butt is poking through the pants. That will be cleaned up, just haven’t gotten to it yet.

Okay, these next shots may not look like anything special but it happens to be the first thing I’ve ever successfully brought anything from ZBrush to Lightwave. Thank you Rage very much for that eureka moment. It’s also the first time I’ve ever polypainted anything that wasn’t just messing around.

In LW I deleted about 11k polys from the inside that won’t be visible. That brought the pants down to 17k. I then sculpted and painted upwards to 1.7million. Below is the ZBrush result. The wrinkles and folds turned out to be much harder to duplicate in ZB than I though they would be. Mostly a matter of finding the right brushes for the job. I downloaded and used the brushes from Selwy’s tutorial. Those worked pretty good but they seem to be for a different material type. For the leather I needed tighter, sharper modifications. It mostly came down to masking and inflating along with the Selwy brushes. Didn’t come out exactly how I wanted but it’ll do for now.

Back into LW, applied all the maps and 17k turns into 1.7million. Hot dog it works! I tweaked the texture color in Photoshop to get it closer to my original design. As you can see, the eyelets are way off now. Ah well, I figured as much. Movin’ right along.

#109

looking pretty sharp so far bud…

the knee area and ankle area seem a bit off in size (knee too small, ankle too large in the front/to/back dimension).

#110

Thems hot hot pants. Looking good mate.

#111

Hey man, the pants are looking cool… the vertical lines on the front lower leg kinda bother me tho, maybe they are too strong.

#112

Damn! Them some hot pants! Cinch those babies up! Noticed your question about threads in a different post. I dunno if LightWave has it, but I like to use a renderable spline. I just draw the spline and weave it through the holes and then give it some thickness and it works most of the time.

#113

Well, LW’s renderable splines suck. Better off making the spline and rail extruding a disc. Also you don’t have to literally weave it… it just needs to look like it is :wink:

#114

Looking good, my only suggestion on the pants is the back of the knee/leg looks strange.

#115

Woo, good to see the TF2 guys, you know who you are. :smiley:

@Neverman, Brainsample - Okay, I addressed the ankle area. I think I might be too far gone on the knee. That’ll have to be something I correct if I have time. Maybe, just maybe Cheetara is way more muscular than those models you posted Brain so her knees look small compared to her massive thighs… anybody… anybody, hehe.

@Airflow - Appreciate it bro.

@Snows - Those were done with the intention of the boots covering most of it up. Check out the new view, tell me what you think about it.

@Japetus - When you said renderable splines I thought you were referring to ‘rail extruding’ like Snows said. What you do is place your spline as you want it then use a disc of the correct diameter that is extruded down the length of the spline. It creates actual geometry so you edit that afterward. I’m guessing what your talking about uses just the spline and then makes it ‘look’ like geometry? IDK

I think I may go with Razors method he is using on She-Ra. Create the bends at the joints and then use ‘bridge’ to join the geometry. Sounds like a winner with much less polys.

#116

So I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that these are the best results I’ve ever gotten doing 3D. I’m really excited by the output so far. You guys may underestimate what I CG noob I am sometimes. The other good news is that using Steve Warner’s ZBrush pipeline (the official ZB to LW pipeline BTW :D) I am rendering 50k polys as 1.2million. I am sort of aware of the science behind Normal maps and such but it still seems like witchcraft to me. The full shot of Cheetara below is composed of 1.2 million polys (subdivided). It renders in 1min. with full radiosity (final gather 64 rays) and area lighting. I like that. :thumbsup:

The bad news is I see that deadline approaching and I’m trying to fight off the procrastination monster. It took almost a full 2 days to finish the boots. It should be faster now that I’ve got the method down but still, only 8 days left.

So, the boots painted and sculpted in ZBrush. I realized pretty early that ZBrush materials don’t export. That’s actually a good thing as I would prefer using LW surfacing instead of trying to guess in ZBrush if I painted the shine correctly. Shrunk down her ankles considerably and tweaked a few bits here and there.

The boots in LW. Everything is simply mirrored in Modeler. Sorry, I wish I had time to paint 2 individual boots. This render finished at 4am last night. I seperated the front and back portions of the boots to create a seude boot plated with a leather shin guard.

Again, 1 min render time. :buttrock: Thankfully I’m using the 64-bit version of LW, looks like I’m gonna need that RAM. Okay, thats all I can say. Let me have it.

#117

Those boots are awesome! I still think the wrinkles where the boots meet the pants are too strong but maybe its just the shader on the pants. The wrinkle on the front I think goes too high up. I mean in order for the boots to be making those wrinkles they must be blood vessel busting tight :smiley:

This is looking very nice, you can do it! keep the monster away!

#118

Wyatt, yeah it’s pretty much a similar concept in Max. Those boots look great! Good job on the material and seams for them. The way your reinterpreting of her is going, I’m really looking fwd to how her hair turns out with those cheetah spots it has.

#119

@Snows - Alright alright, I’ll fix it. :smiley: Everything else is so tight they would be more folded tightly on top of each other rather than bulging out like that.

@Japetus - It all comes down to time. Do I have time to experiment with LW’s new FiberFX or do I make a mesh in ZB. Still haven’t answered that one.

#120

Finished modeling the corset. No sculpting or painting yet but it won’t be suede and leather like the boots. :smiley: My first design is a dark brown leather on the outside and a lighter yellowish color like the pants. The belts and straps would be like the darker brown. Any thoughts?