Continuing My Character

I refined the design further - Making here more feminie and hopefully cooler.  She is a combination of Tibetan and Mongolian & hunts with a bird - Akin to Mongolian Hawk hunters but with a bit of the womanly-ness from Yana (and influences from my last post).

I had a stab at using Marvelouss Designer - and it is fantastic.  With this software you can create realistic clothing and folds which conform to the surface of your model (Or"Avatar").

Marvelous automatically creates UVs which can easily be edited-Here is a tilable diffuse of my carpet

Although it is fantastic (and used for the upcoming Metal Gear Game and Hobbit film) I won't be using it for this project.  I will incorporate it into future workflows for myself though - The clothes are transferable and so versatile it is silly not to.

An eye I made last night - 3DS Max viewport Render

I need good shit in my portfolio and and seriously considering breaking the limitations on this one for a "next gen LoD"  Where the texture budget is a lot higher, and possibly the tri-count, although less-so.

 For the nice looking eye it has an outer shell (cornea), which doubles the tri-count - this is purely for the spec flow - see how the highlight splits and goes around the outside as well as within the eye, conforming to the normals of the iris?  That's about 500 tris per eye, although I can trim the back of them.  Ideally I will turbo smooth it for a quality... is a 2048px texture on it at the mo too.  All texturing done in Photoshop with the help of nDo2 and multiple passes on the normal map.  Of yeah the iris pattern is simply noise with a zoom/radial blur and then colour and tone tweaking.  I think the border with the iris & sclera (white bit) is a bit much though and will take down a bit in the normals.

I got feedback of quite a few people on proportions on my base mesh to check she doesn't look ridiculous.  Feedback - boobs too high.

Tutorial for the eye

and I am following a character tutorial on "digital Tutors", which is over 8 hours long and covers many techniques and thought processes. For now I am further refining the design in 3D and 2D - Today I will be getting the clothing in the right place then defining the materials and colour scheme.

I have just made an executive decision to remove the skirt/hanging cloth for one chief reason - It's difficult to animate... AKA moving into cool poses.  Well, also it's easier to show off the female form without this restriction for this situation.

Just to clarify - everything in my projects are created from scratch - No pre-made base meshes or even mannequins

Starting my character

I had a bit of feedback about my blogs - "Does not show process or methodologies badly structured".  So I'm going to try and remedy that and show some process behind my current project.

Character projet : Must be female, realistically proportioned and ethnic (Asia, China, Africa, etc)

Step one: Get inspired, and get a feel for the subject.

I spent the weekend looking at ethnic documentaries, films and pictures.  Not only to understand the subject better, but also to find an idea I would like to develop.  I enjoy designing and problem solving so the sooner I start the better.

I have a bad habit of making designs that aren't really appealing to the masses, so I am going to go for more expected/traditional design route.  When I say that I mean her figure is going to have things like curves, flowing hair, rim-light, contrasting and interestng materials and patterns (which hopefully exagerate the nationality and role of the character, exagerated  facial features.  I also want a quick read for the solhouette and a bit of coolness thrown in on top.  So when my design have been straying from this I have been re-doing them.

Living on the plains where it is freezing hardens you up - Notice the layers of clothes around the waist and hanging down?  I like that - Is a bit of a homeless thing keeping bedding and shelter with you as you go

Notice the rosey red cheeks?  That's due to exposure to the cold elements, and maybe I should encorporate that

Here is a makeshift head I made cycling through my reference images using Adobe Bridge to get a feel for it

Looking at some variation in facial features

Trying out different outfits from the region (one on the right is Mulan in disguise)

refining an idea - A bit too comical here