I suppose I should give a bit of context for Gena’s wings, based on the world they’re set in - they aren’t actually her wings, but extensions of the bracelet strands that are made possible by using Drex’s “essence”. The civilisation that created the bracelets intended them to be usable as weapons in combat, so the wings need to be maneuverable. In my original version of Gena, the wings looked/behaved more like cloth, which probably helped that idea, but I wanted to tie them to Drex much more closely this time around.
Anyway, here’s an image showing how the wings extend from the spine (this is a statue of the civilisation’s god). The first set of wings a person gets (one bracelet) extend from around the tailbone, and the second set (with two bracelets) extend from between the shoulder blades.
Made a basic temple and some plants to place around the scene to test the overlay effects, which I’ve adjusted yet again :rolleyes:
I haven’t yet finished Gena’s skinning or adjusted her pose - that will probably be next, if work doesn’t take too much of my time in the next few weeks.
(Please click for a clearer view, the compression is doing something strange to the embedded image)
Small update. I found a bit of time tonight to texture a few things, start a basic environment and lower Gena’s wing positions.
In changing the camera position I found that the z-depth pass doesn’t work well with transparent objects (Gena and Drex’s wings), so for now transparency in the materials is off and if I need it I can put the wings onto their own render layer and composite them in with transparency. Learning so much from this project!
I haven’t had much of a chance to work on this recently.
I skinned Gena’s bracelet strands (finally). After some consideration I edited parts of her body to help reflect the bracelet’s effects (eyes were blue and ears and fingers were normal, after attaching the bracelet her left side has a purple eye and lengthened ear and fingers).
I also edited the materials to give highlights more contrast, and softened some of the post process effects.
There was a problem with a single pixel line showing the background wherever Gena’s and Drex’s hair was behind their bodies. It took a while to figure out the problem - the anti-aliasing in the render was causing parts of the background colour to be mixed with the edge pixels on the bodies, and then the hair was being rendered after that (due to the way strand materials are treated) using the depth buffer (which doesn’t reflect the blending from the anti-aliasing). This caused the hair to look like it was being cut off a pixel from the body, and is noticeable in my previous image (I had moved the camera further away from them).
The outline effects being composited on top help hide the fact that the image is no longer rendered with anti-aliasing.
On the plus side, this was the actual cause of the problem with the outline looking broken on Gena and Drex’s transparent wings. But it appears I would still need to render any transparent objects on a separate layer, because currently any object seen through a transparent one doesn’t get an outline.
Particle hair, transparency, z-depth, anti-aliasing… turning out to be quite a hassle
Thanks Journeyman, I’ve ended up pouring a lot more time and effort into this than I thought I would, and it’s encouraging to hear that people like it. Unfortunately I won’t have much time available for a few weeks, have to do some paid work every so often :mad: :rolleyes:
yeah, same here, if only we had all the time in the world…
Ooh well, luckily us freelancers have more free time on or hands than the average person
(although it all depends on the jobs you get ;))
Good luck with what-ever job you get,
Wow! I like this a lot! Definitely looks like she’s got some character. Are you going to pose the face? Right now it’s just too neutral for a dragon girl and it’s the only thing letting it down IMO.
Thanks a bunch It’s funny how Drex looks automatically happy when I open his mouth and she looks so neutral, lol.
I’m planning on using shape keys (haven’t done morph targets in Blender before) as I’d love to take this far enough to do an animation with. Hopefully fingers crossed I’ll get a chance to work on this again next week. Slowly getting through all my other work :rolleyes:
So… It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to work on this, and I really missed it. I spent some time on it tonight and put together a little scene of Drex when he was young, walking with one of his parents.
As Drex was growing up both of his parents died at the hands of humans. Gena’s the closest thing he has to family now, poor thing! :no: This is just a distant memory…
Had another chance to work on this! A few weeks ago I was thinking about making Gena’s new leathery skin look less like an outfit and more like it was there because of the bracelet she put on.
I moved her wings up to her shoulder blades, making it more like the first bracelet only changed her body enough to accommodate the first set of wings, and if she were to put a bracelet on her right arm she’d get the leather-skin extending down the other side of her body.
I’d like to make the skin around the strands leathery looking as well, so it seems more like the strands are ingrained in her skin.
I also finally got around to giving her a haircut, which I think helps her look a bit more human
I think I’m getting to a point where I’m happy with Gena’s progress. It took a little while to decide whether I liked going all the way and shading part of her face to match her torso, but I feel it works well and makes it more obvious how closely she’s tied to Drex.
I found the time to put another little scene together, and really like how shiny Gena’s hair looks now. I might have to do the same to Drex and tame his hair rather than relying on hair dynamics
It’s funny how Drex looks automatically happy when I open his mouth and she looks so neutral, lol.
