I continued texturing by firstly going back and texturing stockings onto the legs, which is a much more efficient method of creating stockings rather than using a mesh.

I played around with roughness and metalness to get the sheen of stockings.

Followwing the feedback from my tutors, I made some adjustments to the anatomy by making the ankles and knees portrude a little more, and adding more geometry to the ear shell as it was noticably low poly around there.

I also spent a long time adjusting the UVs for my jacket, and actually retopped part of it as it was baking poorly.

Once I had a good bake I built up the wool tweedy jacket material in substance, using a similar method to the towel I made in the previous project.

The lapels and skirt used matching leather, which I built up using masks.

I used curvature and adjusted the levels to make the stitching on the shirt pop better.

Next I did some work on the hair. I decided to use fibermesh this time in order to produce simple transitional hairs that I needed as well as eyebrows and lashes.

Once finished I brought them into max and retopped them using planes.

I then added my opacity in substance and began texturing. Afro hair texture is generally more matte visually due to the many curls and crevices, so I paid a lot of attention to the roughness values to get it just right.

I was really happy with the roughness values and the way the normals appeared, giving the hair a nice texture.

I also really liked how the shape of the eyebrows came out.

I adjusted the position of the lips a bit, closing them and uncreasing the corners.

I also made a transparency map for the sub surface.

Next was the rigging! It was pretty simple to rig as there weren't really any crazy assets, apart from the skirt but that was an easy fix once I spent some time weighting properly.

I got a briefcase holding idle animation from mixamo, and did some minor weighting fixes. Here is a preview!

Last thing I did was place her in Unreal with the rest of my characters ready for hand-in. My last blog will be about the finishing touches I made to my work!

I startd texturing the skin using a colour zone base, and then layering skin tones and clouding gradually.

Once the skin was done I started on the makeup, using a selection of reference images.

I did a lot of backwards and forwards with the skin tone, makeup opacity and roughness.

Once I was happy with the first pass of the skin, I moved on to the clothing, starting with the glove. I started witht he creased leather and added my own mask layers to it to get the fine leather of a glove and the gentle indentations to add visual interest.

The leather for the garter strap was a lot more coarse and a little damaged around the edges. 

I used curvature maps to highlight the edges of the belt and the rougher and darker crevices.

I also added some roughness layeres to create dirtier patches or areas with finger printing, such as on the brass.

 I created a quick weave material for the thread on the button.
  

 I regularly tested my materials out in marmoset to see the true roughness values.
  

I used a similar patented leather on the strap of the shoe as the belt of the grandma, although this one was a lot smoother and a bit shinier.
  

  The lower part was made of off-white leather and the heel tip and toe tip was capped in brass.

For continuity I had used the same brass on my accessories as the briefcase. I spoke to my tutors about how I could make the briefcase more interesting and brutal looking. I capped the corners in brass which made them look sharper and bolder.

I also added some subtle denting and damage to the case.

I also created a logo in photoshop, using the triangle symbol as seen on the rest of my character with a filigree pattern within, and the latin words 'Ingenio Maximus, Arte Rudis' which is an edgy way of saying 'maximum ingenuity, raw technique' or 'greatest in genius, rough in skill'. To me, this was a fun way of representing the methodical and lethal approach this character would use in a fight, whilst also playing off of the pretentiousness of random latin phrases on things that companies and rich people seem to like.

I added this blood stain for a bit more story telling as to how she would use the briefcase in a fight... you get the idea. I might tweak this later on once I finish the first pass of my textures.

Here is what I have so far! The next blog will focus on the clothes textures and any adjustments I make to these ones.

I started the unwrapping process, keeping the head and chest part connected. I used symmetry for the most part and did some asymmetrical tweaking of the retop to match the slight difference in shape of the eyes.

I also added a mesh for the waterline.

The hair cap was simple enough, it pretty much followed a basic cylindrical shape with some slight changes for better topology.

The legs were retopped using a similar method to my other characters, which allowed for good deformation around the hips. I then added in a crocodile mouth at the back of the knee and added a loop around the patella at the front of the leg.

The jacket was tough to retop as I needed to get underneath the collar, but I was able to produce some nice looping around the lapels.

BUT WAIT!

Luce from the future says:

I made the retop of the stockings, but literally as I am writing this I realise that it's so much more efficient for me to just texture the stocking material onto the leg as it is skin tight. So what I will do is go back and repack these clothing UVs.

Anyway I carried on with the retop by creating the hand. I improved on the topology from the last hand I made, giving the loops around the knuckles a better flow.

The shoe was pretty complex but by breaking it down into small parts I was able to tackle it quite effectively. I'd say the challenge here was maintaining the sleek shape of the high poly whilst trying to remain as efficient as possible with my budget.

Once all my objects had been retopped, I moved on to unwrapping.

I unwrapped the jacket similarly to how it would be tailored.

Same with the skirt.

All of the accessories went into another sheet, like the belts, shoe and metals.

The briefcase had its own sheet.

I did some test baking and at first I had a couple of baking errors, such as this part on the glove, and a normal map error on the inside of the lips. These were very simply fixed by adjusting the cage size.

Once I did this the bake was a lot cleaner!

In the next blog I will go over my texturing process.

I had to make an inner and outer sole, as well as the upper part of the shoe that wrapped around the toes and the heel seperately.

I made the triangular buckle in 3Ds Max and imported it, then I move the leather strap into the right position over the buckle tab.

The gloves were made by extracting the hand and working in subdivs to add the creases.

I also made the main belt buckle and earrings in 3Ds max, and importwd them. 

This is the buckle before I positioned the leather belt end underneath it. I really liked the silhouette of the buckle.

The cuffs were made using Zmodeler.  I had to extrude the edges down the centre to create a crisp cuff shape where the two ends meet and  secure them using cufflinks.

The garter was secured using a rectangular link.

I sculpted the hi-top hairstyle using a combo of brushes and noise. I will be adding hair alphas to the surface.

The earring s were added, and then I made some adjustments to the facial features to make them more anatomically correct.

I also completely reworked the jacket and skirt as I was not happy with the first attempt. I made the shame a lot neater and the lapels more symmetrical. I then roughed out the shirt and collar shape before detailing them.

This is the model so far. I am happy with the silhouette!

I spent some more time adjusting the folds and adding some creasing.

I also created a gap where the stocking would be laddered. I will create this using alphas. 

This is just a quick blog for some Unreal presentation work I did over easter. At this point in the FMP I was starting to burn out a bit. With the advice form my mentor I decided to work on something different, which was the presentation aspect of my work in realtime. One of the requirements for my handin is to present my character models in Unreal Engine with idle animation and lighting, as well as to take the opportunity to show off any particle systems, UIs and sound effects. I actually had a lot of fun doing this and it was a break that I needed for sure. 

I made a blueprint actor and added the skeletal meshes of my characters. I then added a spring arm and altered the camera blueprint to achieve a slightly shaky cam effect. I played around a lot with the settings and camera position until I got the effect I wanted.

I also added aspects like subs surface scattering to my character's skin and hair, and set up a series of props and particle systems, including my flame particle system I made a while back. 

The props that I made for the background were a stage truss asset and the stage itself. This gave the characters more context and made the scene a lot more interesting.  

I also added my own logo to give the characters a brand, for the fighting game idea that I had. I set up a UI widget to place the logo on screen, and added some royalty free music to set a mood.  

The presentation is still a work in progress but it was a nice change from the sculpting process and allowed me to experiment with new techniques for presenting in real-time.

For my final FMP character I will be making an 80s buisness woman. For my main facial inspo I started with Grace Jones as I think she has a very individual look, and I think she'd be a great match to the sharp sleek shape language I want for this character. However, as I continued with the early sculpt I received help and feedback from my industry mentor, and decided to use a blend of facial likenesses to really help me improve my anatomical observation. As usual I started with the blockout of the body. 

The head went through a lot of different stages. It was cool to see how she evolved as I received more advice from my mentor and other people in industry who helped me out.

I was advised to take a portrait into photoshop and did a quick draw-over to see where the shapes fold into each other.

Something my mentor helped me with was close observation of the human head from all angles using scans to compare my work against. This greatly increased the quality of my work.

I ensured I paid very close attention to how the planes of the face in the scan curved and tried to emulate this in my sculpt, whilst also paying attention to my reference.

Looking at how the light bounces off areas of the face at different angles was a great guide for ensuring that I had the correct anatomy. 

 
 The clothes that I blocked out in Marvelous Designer consisted of a jacket, shirt and skirt. The rest would be produced from scratch in zbrush, e.g. the jacket cuffs and popped shirt collar as these are stiffer objects that don't require cloth simulation.

The jacket required a lot of experimenting with sleeve width to get that triangular look. 

I also needed to ensure that the lapels remained flat and that the sleeves weren't too bunched up. The skirt would be dressed with a close fitting belt.

When sculpting on the skirt in Zbrush i tried out some methods I learnt from the talk we had by Jake Waddington, about easily applying curve brushes to entire loops. This greatly increased the speed of my sculpting.

My character's weapon of choice is her sharp cornered briefcase. To take a little break from sculpting I tackled this hardsurface object in 3Ds Max. I gathered a few reference images of 1980's briefcases to get a range of lock designs and shapes. I didn't want anything too bulky as I still wanted it to match the character's sleek and slender shape language.

In the next blog I will be returning to the character sculpt and going over my process!
 
  

I continued with my character's textures, starting with the eye. I watched some more tutorials and took in some feedback for how to push the realism of the eyeball. I learnt about the correct roughnes values, layers of the iris, and using image projection in the scelera for realistic tiny veins in the eye. I later changed the eye colour to blue to match my likeness reference.

Next I worked on the hair. This time I was determined to use Xgen. I looked at some tutorials online as well as got some help from peers and tutors. I also purchased Hazel Brown's Geralt hair breakdown on Artstation marketplace (Thanks for this Hazel!) to see how I could efficiently set up my hair files in Xgen.  Once I had enough reference material to help me, I made several hair collections. As the hair was in rollers I didn't need the typical amount of hair clumps as I would for loose hair, but I did need to think about the shapes of the clumps more. For example, how the tension of the hair in the roller affects the amount of tapering and noise level. I used a lot of turnaround reference images for this. 

I also set up a light at around 30 degrees and played with the intensity for the render.

I also made some transitional hairs for the edge of the hairline.

Once I had my cards I generated normals, roughness and AO. I then tested them in marmoset and was pleased with the results.

Placing the cards was a challenge due to the shape of the rollers. In hindsight I should have used splines to arrange them, but I was pleased with the results regardless. 

I went backwards and forwards to test the hair placement.

I also looked up on the marmoset website how to set up skin textures. This helped me to enhance the realism of my character. 

After some feedback from my tutors, I had a few things to fix. I needed to fix the size and shape of the fingers slightly, particularly the knuckles. 

I was also told how to push my textures further, by adding staining to fabric and creasing to the toe area on the shoes.

I also created a cracking effect on the PVC belt, which slightly revealed the white elastic underneath.

I also played around with the makeup colour and blush colours.

Next was rigging. I weighted a 3Ds Max biped and animated it using an idle animation from marmoset. I then edited the animation so that her right hand would be resting on the barbell.

I'm super pleased with the final results, thanks to everyone for the help on this one!

I spent a long time on texturing to get it right. I really wanted it to be convincing. I started by texturing the skin, building up layers and playing around with blending modes and roughness values. 

I wanted her to have bright makeup but I didn't want it to occlude the details of the skin too much. This was a case of finding a good balance. 

I regularly checked my texturing in marmoset, to see if the values were correct and to make sure there were no weird seams showing up. The issue with normal maps seams was a big one for me as it was pointed out in my portfolio review, and I really didn't want to repeat the same mistake.

I ahd to ensure all of my maps were cohesive and consistent so it was well worth spending more time on them. 

I tried out image projection and combined image textures for the scelera and veins, and combining them with hand painted details just to push the details further. 

I did the same for the hair cap.

I added opacity to my alphas and I was really pleased with the bake results. 

I gathered a lot of reference for the clothing textures. I focused on the roughness and the texture grain of the lycra material.

However, I spoke to my mentor and received some great advice on how to really push the textures for the clothes further. I found out how to implement anchor points to mask out patterns and give myself a lot more control. I was also advised not to make the leopard print detail too dark as it would naturally get darker in shadowy areas anyway, and I didn't want to draw too much attention from the way the material folded and the sheen of the lycra. I opted to add a slightly raised velvety texture to the pattern to make it really contrast against the sheen of th lycra and it made my textures so much more interesting.

I was also taught how to build a convincing towel material and again how to use anchor points to mask out roughness areas and add in patches for visual varietyt.

Using this information I built all of my textures this way, always thinking about how I can make areas more interesting.

The final object I textured was the barbell. Again I did some backwards and forwards with the baking to get the best texel density possible. I looked closely at reference to get all the different grains and roughness values correct, and edge wear and surfaceblemishes. 

I did some more experimentation with the lighting and had a look at my first texture pass in full. I am happy with the work so far, but there is still a lot to do and to fix. I received more feedback from my tutors on how to push the textures further. This is what I will focus on in my next post. 

Next part was retopping, wih a bit of backwards and forwards between Zbrush and 3DsMax. The process was relatively straightfoward apart from the occasional editing I did to the highpoly. Most objects in the scene were symmetrical.

I unwrapped and packed the head, teeth, gums and hair cap onto the same UV sheet, ensuring that I normallised the size of the objects to get a better texel density.

To add to the realism of the model I made a waterline around the eyes.  

To make the joints deform better I added a crocodile mouth.

I did a basic retop of the hand and then added an open subdiv, and edited the loop count. 

I retopped the nails separately so I could get defined long nails.

I received a bit more feedback from one of my tutors, who suggested I make the wrinkles contrast a bit less in my model. I went back to edit this aspect.

Objects like the belt were linear in shape and didn't require a lot of polys to make the correct silhouette.

To retop the glasses I duplicated them and deleted the modifiers I had added to create the highpoly version previously. I unwrapped and packed them with the accessories on my model.

Finally once my character was retopped and unwrapped, I made the prop for her; a barbell. 

Welcome back to my blog. In this I will be showing my sculpt detailing process. Following feedback from my tutors I gathered a lot more reference for elderly skin and how it forms around the muscles and bones. I looked at loss of muscle mass in areas and where fat tends to gather. I adjusted the base forms in the lower subdivision levels and then onceI was happy with this, I started latyering skin alphas. 

At first I used a base noise for skin pores, and then added leathery skin textures in the appropriate areas of the skin and finally any folding and creasing that occured. For example, in the hand I found that the skin on top is a lot looser and tends to fold over in the areas between the tendons. 

In the arms I looked at sagging skin that tended to be very leathery and wrinkled where the skin was heavier. In contrast, the areas that clung to the muscles were slightly smoother and the grain of the skin wrinkles was less raised, and so I tried to apply these elements to my model. 

I got in the main folds first before adding the smaller wrinkles.

I used a custom brush to add some slight texture and get the base hair groups for the hair cap. I also played around with the size and positioning of the curlers. 

After another check with my tutors I was ready to retop the model.