Wax on wax off

I've been working on the environment for my 3rd Living Dead Girl. I'm done with about 90% of the modelling in Maya (yes I've made the switch to Maya for modelling - I'm still rendering in Max though); just one or two more things left to model. This candle stand is the first asset that I've textured and done some test rendering on with VRay in Max. I haven't put too much effort into this as it'll most likely be in the background; none-the-less I'm quite happy with the results.

I'll be moving onto more of the environment texturing and sculpting later in the day.

Until then...

G

A small update

If you right-click on the image and select open image in new tab/window it should open a larger 1600px version.

It's been a while since I've updated my blog - I've been quite busy with freelance work over the past months, so I haven't had too much time to work on my personal work. Fortunately, I've had a bit of time over the past month or so to do some work on my Living Dead Girl (number 3). It's mostly involved redoing the hair for her (which I'm still working on). I've also been able to render it properly with VRay since Hair-Farm now seems to fully support it. I've redone the cloth as well as textured it properly now.

I'm quite happy with the way she's turning out. The lighting is still very much a work in progress (though I do like the direction it's taking); along with quite a few other things that I'll touch up once I start putting the scene together - I'll hopefully start modelling an environment for her this coming week.

More to come...

G

More cloth...

Nothing too new - one with lace trimmings and one without. Mostly just some adjustments to the placement of the cloth - mostly how it covers the breasts more now. Though I'm not so happy about the way the cloth interacts with the nipples (it's more visible in the version without the lace). So I'll probably adjust that a bit.

It's still using a basic shader with a few tweaks which looks better than the shader from my previous post. The lace is also pretty flat at the moment as it has no bump applied. I'll still be playing with the shaders later on. There are still no textures aside from the lace and a rough bump material for over all coverage. This will change once I've sorted out the UV's etc.

G

Dressing her up...

I wasn't going to post this because the robe/cloth is still a very early work in progress, but I thought that I need to post something.

Anyway, just a quick render of where this character is heading; sans hair (I'll probably end up redoing more of the hair (that I posted earlier) than I intended as my idea or using morph targets with Hair-Farm didn't quite go as planned unfortunately).

The cloth still needs a lot of work:
- The way it's draped needs some attention as well as I want less of her breasts exposed
- I still need to add in seams, etc.
- The shader is also very temporary and there isn't a texture yet so that'll need addressing soon. I'll probably be adding lace trimming and some other delicate stuff.

I like where the lighting is heading as well - obviously it's just a quick test (her right eye looks rather weird at the moment). I still need to start working on the environment (here I come Maya). I've also created a small accessory for her, but will add that in at a later stage.

All that and some extra gooeyness...

G

Posing

It's all been going a bit too slow as I've been stuck in a bit of a rut and have also been a bit lazy. Anyway.... I've finished the ZSphere posing and now I'm cleaning up the pose deformation and getting the muscle definition sorted out to match the pose. I've just started on her upper torso. Once that cleaning up is done, it's on to the expression. Shouldn't take too much time to get that all done then I can start setting up the final scene. I've also been testing some VRay shaders, but more on that later.

I'm also about halfway with the clothing. I'll post some updates on that soon.

G

She's hairy...

I started working on the hair a couple of weeks ago. I decided to splash out and buy Hair farm which I'm really happy with. The only real downside for me at the moment is that it doesn't fully support V-Ray (yet).  You can still render the hair with V-Ray but you need to use Max's default lights for the hair to render correctly. These images were rendered using a combination of Max's omni light's and V-Ray lights.

I'm pretty happy with the results so far. It's taken a reasonable amount of experimentation with modelling the hair to get the results that I want, but now that I (think I) know what's going on it should be pretty straight forward for any other hair that I do.

This is by no means the final hair as I'll have to change it to accommodate the final posed figure and garments. I'll quite possibly be changing the colour of the hair as well as tweaking the final hair shaders.

(These images are also a week or two old.)

More to come...

G

More render tests...

I posted these to my deviantArt account a few days ago -  thought I should share them here as well.

Another one of many test renders that I've been doing (I'm enjoying V-Ray). The image on the right is rendered with GI and 2 lights (+ one for the eye highlight). The one on the left is the same but with no GI. Neither are using V-Ray Environment.

I'm mostly done with the sculpting (still might tweak one or two things here and there) and texturing - the bump map still has one or two areas that are inverted (the eyebrows which will be removed when I do the grooming and one or two moles, etc.).

I should be starting the hair and clothing for her soon, meaning that she'll actually start to look like a character.

G