Wow! Great job and workflow! Can’t wait to see it finished!
On the suit - are you using a mask modifier on the body of the character so that you will be able to pose similar to Blenderella?I really like the sculpted feel of the parts there, very good work overall.
Danke @Odin, lothar, & Bruno!
@Craig, I totally forgot that the mask option even existed, thanks for reminding me! I actually had two meshes (one with just the head and the other with the rest of the her body, which was probably wasting SSD space). I was considering retopoing the entire undersuit instead of just keeping it as a multires but then I kinda liked the rugged worn in look a bit better (with less smooth edges inside the seems and everything). I’ll probably end up having similar but separate rigs for when she’s not in the suit and when she is.
So I added some socket/pass-throughs on her shoulders to hold the massive pauldrons she’ll eventually have. Idk how it looks since I’ve been working on this too long. I might make them flatter if it’s messing too much with her silhouette.
The most work I did though was on the shader and textures. I added some grit to the roughness of the body armor (a few scrapes, it’s not painted metal so the diffuse is only slightly influenced). I added three maps for diffuse/glossy color and roughness. I switched it up so that the most blue parts are more latexish, the midsection has a winter jacket type scatter on it, and the dark areas are rubbery. There’s a different fine pattern on all three matts, which I hope isn’t too obvious and cliche (I might tone them back a little or add more noise and wear later depending on how it looks on the render). My biggest worry though at this point is color coordination with the actual suit, since the bright blue jumpsuit was normally covered up entirely in the games with the exception of Fusion and the suit normally features a bright orange or yellow… however I could go for a more purplish look:
I also varied the lighting. I threw in an LA cityscape HDRI for more reflection on the suit itself. I think it helps demonstrate how the mats might look embedded in an actual lit environment vs a test bed studio setup like I had before (more color variation and warmth).
Next I’ll finally be concept sculpting the suit itself. I’m thinking of doing some variations just to get a better idea of what looks good in combination with the undersuit. Any critiques so far? I changed up the render angles this time for funzies:
This looks great!
This is looking really nice. My comments would be: It’s starting to remind me more of the original perfect dark with the color scheme and the suit than Metroid. I’m aware that this is not the final look of the suit though. Another thing I noticed is the abdomen area and the spinal cord don’t like quite right yet. For me anyway, maybe other people have a different opinion on this. The lighter blue looks like it is loose cloth instead of a structure that is part of a snug fitting suit.
I would imagine building this a bit like how a wetsuit would fit. As a diver, you tend to go for a wetsuit that is really snug (not as snug as to constrict the neck or bodyparts, but in the water everything loosens up anyway) and you could just patch mecha parts on it from there, with a purpose though. The spine since it is such an important feature of a power (under)suit would probably have a shape that more closely resembles some kind of external spine/frame/chain structure. Maybe extend the shoulder structure along the spine to the hipbone?
Please don’t take this the wrong way. You’re obviously very skilled, far more skilled than I am. Just trying to give some helping feedback.
I could see that.
Thanks @Xero and @thelowlander for the feedback. As I’ve said the midsection isn’t the same material as the rest of the undersuit. It’s meant to be more similar to a winter jacket, kind of lumpy and nylon/polyster instead of latex like the rest of the suit. This allows it to be more flexible and insulated. Also it probably has thicker innards than the rest of the undersuit since it won’t be as protected by metal armor to allow more bending over etc (think like a bulletproof vest type material). Visually it’s meant to be a breakup to the glossier portions of the suit. I hope it comes off that way without too much explaining. If not I can tighten it up so it doesn’t look too out of place with the rest of the suit.
I switched around the colors on the latex portion for a different variant; the left is the original color scheme, the right is the new one. I kinda prefer the new scheme just because it looks more similar to the original concept of Samus’s undersuit and it has better contrast with adjacent colors (also the silhouette is a bit stronger). What do you guys think though?
And yeah it does kind of look like Perfect Dark, though I’ve never played that game before.
I like more the right side version, you could made a version with the colors on neck (on his armor) of the Left version, combine with the all body of the right version?
Your work is amazing. So much realism in the character’s expression. There is one tiny thing though, could you increase a bit the angle between the focus lines of the eyes. It looks to me that are a bit crossover. Or that is intentionally?
Hi Fusobotic,
How did you make the hair, how did you fold them. I’ve never had a try to complexe hair design in Blender and your model is pretty impressive generaly speaking and also in this very area.
@joseperez Thanks for the feedback I’ll see what I can do about that.
@Moigradeanu Thank you very much! I’m not quite sure what you mean though. Are you saying she has a bit of a cross eye? That might just be the camera angle or the lens material IOR value, it should look correct once I have the eyes rigged. Or do you mean the crease above the eye?
@pieriko I might put up the blend file once I’m done. I learned most of what I know about hair grooming from Kent Trammell and reference images. Just use several different hair layers with different settings and make sure you have enough segments for it to look smooth. The shader is the part that gave me the most headaches, but I have a screenshot of that on the thread already. And remember that you can hide hair layers and edit individually by selecting the hair strand in segment mode. Always keep reference handy as well, I had maybe 20-25 different images, half giving me ideas about the shape and the other half showing the color I was going for.
I’m still working on the suit concept sculpt. It takes a bit of time, and I might do several versions to get feedback. What I have doesn’t really look presentable yet, but I’ll get it up eventually. Updates will be a little less frequent because I’m headed back to school after a lovely winter break. Thanks!
Hi fusobotic,
I’ll have a check to segment editing, never done this before.
Thanks for the trick.
thats exacly what i meant. she looks like she has a bit of a cross eye…
Sorry it’s taking a bit, first week of the semester and all that. Here’s what I came up with for the first suit sculpt. I’m not too thrilled with it, so I’ll be sculpting a few more to get feedback on.
These will be a lot more messy since I’m only using them for reference for final hard surface models (which will have cleaner geometry for UVing etc).
Looking good so far, these will serve the purpose very well I bet
Hi!
I’m just curious, did you finish the project?
I plan to eventually finish it. I actually did a more refined concept painting for it last summer: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qNmEn
At the moment though I’ve been developing a Ghost in the Shell Major Motoko redesign which is more up to speed with my current workflow: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204859031231000&set=gm.2136589846625030&type=3&theater&ifg=1
I feel like after completing that I’ll have the experience I need to develop Samus properly.
