Hi everyone, hope you're having a manageable day and week.

So, for this, I'm layering in some rust in places, still have more places to go.  Is it too much?  Maybe, but I can always scale that back.  I also took a first stab at the scar tissue across the right eye and the tip of the tentacle.  It is surprisingly difficult to find references of scar tissue on a cephalopod because they regenerate.  So, this is my best guess so far.  They also have copper-based blood, so their blood is blue!  Pretty neat!  I also did a first pass of subsurface scattering maps so it's not just an equal spread across the whole model.  Lots to hammer out, but one step at a time.

Hi everyone, hope you are having a manageable day.

So, I'm poking around in Xgen because I want to learn something new and also curious how this would fit into a character workflow.  In the past I've used hair cards, which was a great experience and I learned a lot from that.  But in my pursuit to recreate cool hairstyles, I thought I'd give Xgen a try and just see what happens.

After poking about a bit and watching tutorials, I wanted to try the workflow of extracting curves from geometry to then convert into guides.  I did just that, but for some reason when I then convert those curves to guides, the roots were in the wrong place.

What the heck was going on? I couldn't find the answer online, so I turned to some community groups.  Someone suggested to check which way the curves were pointing.  Such a simple thing to overlook. After a quick test, that was the problem!

So, to fix it, I just reversed the direction and voila!  Fixed.

Now time to get styling!

Hi everyone, hope you're having a manageable day!

A small update, just a small pass over breaking up the repeating textures, dialing in the look more.  Trying to vary the roughness across the model more, too.  Definitely working on aging things more, want to add more things like dirt and ripping up the cloak more.  Hopefully I can wrap this up soon and head into a new project.  Need to put this in the engine soon to see how well the textures are translating.

Hello! Another update on the good ol' mind flayer and dare I say, it's looking good.  Nailing down the octopus skin is taking a lot of work, but it's slowly coming together.  It's easy to find pictures of octopus in the ocean, but a mind flayer isn't in the ocean, so finding references of them out of the water is a little more difficult.  But, we find ways.  Also, since they can regenerate, it's difficult to find an octopus with a limb missing.  But there are plenty pictures of prepared to eat octopus, so that's been a great resource for me for the one lopped off tentacle tip.

Still plenty to figure out, so taking it one step at a time.

Hello everyone, been a while since I've posted an update to anything.  Life decided to happen, and when that happens, you go with it.

Anyway, decided to figure out Xgen and how that fits into a game dev pipeline.  I'm hoping it'll be faster and give me better results, so we'll see where that goes.  A project focused around that will be Ash Stratus, a wizard rogue tabaxi, which I thought would be a perfect project for understanding hair better.  I have a couple other ideas I want to explore with Ash as well, but we'll see how far I get.

Currently taking another run at my mind flayer project.  I wanted to create a full version for so long, and now I can do just that.  Still working on the textures but it is looking pretty cool.

Hello, hope you are alright.  I took a small break after my last project, but now I'm back!

Slapping together parts of the armor.

I'm not particularly happy with the poleyn and greaves, so I may redo those.  Not very stylized.  Need to exaggerate more.

Hello, everyone!  I hope your day is manageable.  I'm working on a new project, some crab armor concepted by artofkian.  I asked them if I could create a 3D version of their concept, and they agreed.  I just really liked the look of it and thought it was a cool idea to make armor based off of a crab!

I want to make this in 2 different ways: a stylized version as true to the concept art as I can get, and a version based on what I think the armor could be made of.  First, I'm going stylized.

References

I think going stylized would be a great challenge for me, to get more experience in hand painting textures, and to do something different.

Bits and Bobs so Far

Another challenge for myself is to build everything in Blender and to explore the new functionalities of Blender 3.0+.  Here I made some of the smaller and repetitive pieces from the concept or pieces I thought would be more flexible to build with curves.  But I think it's time for me to throw a body in there so I can have a proper reference for how the armor fits onto a body.

It's been a while since I posted, so thank you for your patience.

Lots of things added since my last update.

And how it looks all together.

Once I felt the textures were good enough, I went back to Zbrush and put Sandal into a pose using the Transpose Master plugin.  This was so much easier to use than to try and build a whole rig for something quick.  Then I used the cloth brushes to move around the overcoat, skirt, and hair.  I used the cloth brushes (mainly cloth pull) so I wouldn't distort too much and lose too much shape.

And then I'm experimenting with lighting setups and different viewing angles in Unreal Engine 4 as well as tweaking materials.  For the wings, I'm figuring out how to make the highlights look like they're reflecting a different color like in this reference of pearlized organza (source https://bentextiles.com/media/catalog/large/iridescent-pearl-organza/white.jpg).

My gut instinct is the fresnel node in Unreal, but the way it's currently set up is not producing the results I'm looking for, so a rethink is in order.  I'm sure I'll get it eventually, just need a think.

Now this is just the extra cherry on top, but maybe I could sneak in a dagger in her open hand to the side for that extra personality and flair.  We'll see.

I am so excited to finally enact the ideas I've had in my head for a while now with the overcoat. When researching different animals, flowers, and minerals that signified or were connected to death, dragonflies caught my eye.  They represent a visit from a deceased person, good luck, change and transformation, which I thought was very fitting for Sandal and the culture she was raised in.

Even though this is still a work in progress, I am so excited to see the beginning of something very cool.

This is me attempting to replicated metallic embroidery on a sheer fabric.  Not sure how successful it is, could definitely use some refinement, but I'm taking a short break on this to come back with clearer eyes.  Still plenty of other things to texture.  Advice is appreciated!

Been toiling away at the textures, but I think I've come to the point where I need to put the double-sided and transparent elements in.  Let's go!