BIG Project Status - Lovely Character (Patreon)

Attention - This is a very long post!!

Hello All, I have been very busy the past 3 weeks on this colossus project. Knowing that I only have limited time - roughly 2 days a week to pour my soul into any activity of creation in nature. 

I honestly was not satisfied to post an WIP or an in the making as I know for a fact what I want to achieve and how to achieve it, it's the worry that you might not see the end or close to end result therefore might not understand why this is taking longer then usual is what worries me. Alaas I believe I have some good results to show which made me very happy to share with you!

So where to start?

Shadow Baking 1 / 2 / 3 : If you remember these posts, then kudos for you for you for sticking this long  🤣... I do tell bad jokes I know!

So, I always wanted to make toon based shaded figures. There is something about it that I just do not understand more or less will drive me to have it, so this was a quest for something I never ever done before and how to achieve that said goal and share the results with you in the grand scheme of things with VaM flavored beauties.

This image always fascinated me:

I just had to get this lady inside VaM, so sparked a journey of learning a lot of new things to get close to my end goal. 

The problem was there and then, is doing something like this will take a very VERY long time. But all things have to start form somewhere and it sure did with trying to figure out how to properly bake a figure. This more or less is how or why I made my own UDIM's

Afterword's I had to go and make a very high poly figure for the process to work properly as the following 2 images:

After a lot of learning to do in Substance while also trying to release the Qadr Futa Plus working on the environment (It will rock your soul trust me, just have to be patient lol) I produced some good results that I could call acceptable:

I was very ecstatic to start working on this new technique to build the foundations of what to come, but reality hit me like a 1 ton wrecking ball when I discovered a problem I could not resolve when I started to work on the textures: Can you see it?

I'll give you a closer look:

Honestly this was very veeeery frustrating to deal with, as the main problem in substances painter, this was not existing/showing: As seen in the next example...

And in VaM well.... Another example 🤬

So I had to give up on this for a while until I think out of the box for another solution, which actually prompted me to revisit the way I did the whole baking thing in  the first place. Then I discovered after reading the Documentation Yes, documentation.... That there are issues related to Super Sampling that might occur with the wrong parameters. Thus prompting me to redo the whole thing all over again. To better results that is 😀

The image above does fix MOST of the artifacts, but the idea was testing the new method and it works, so it was more or less a matter of time for me to figure out the correct parameters.

Surprise Note: That face is for a beauty that I have worked on as a hobby, her name is Manara and she is a Blood Elf.

She is pretty much still a WIP, but yeah. These are the things that I like to get close to perfection before showing them off. So expect her in the pipeline soon too 🥰

Okay where was I... Yes, the logical next step was to work on the color tone, this actually prompted me to question weather to go for a normal Draenei or a Light Forged, which I eventually decided to go for Light Forged because I just di a purple lady recently 😂.

So more or less then is where to start? So I had to go with color scheme plus Clothing/Tattoos as texture:

As a visual person, I have to see it to believe it, and honestly... It did not work for me:

But I parked it to complete another set piece to work out in this huge puzzle, which is the tail. So I opened ZBrush and whipped something out:

Then the rigging in blender which I did 4 times, I'll spare you the details but it's related to Bones translating into Unity.

Then Texturing in Substance:

And saw how it looked in Unity and was happy 

But had to test the tail action in Unity first. 

So obviously, the next logical step was to more or less work on the morphs and improvements. 

Honestly it is very hard to work on Morphs for samples that are obscenely low res in nature (Caugh.. WOW Characters) thus prompting a huge deal of imagination in play here.

Also cannot use Smut as basically that is also imaginative work plus I have kids around so no go.. lol

Reference used: More or less all references are like this low poly and low res sadly.

The work started on morph and improvements.

I also did a new Iris Morph to fix the black dot issue when making the whole eye basically a solid color, then applied hunting eye reflection.

I stopped here for a second to redo the Textures and remove the stupid tattoos/symbols from the original texture while at it as this might more or less become a clothing job yay...

Pretty much the morphs are constantly changed and tweaked, there were TONS of problems with the face as the gums would leave the area and show a backface outside of the mouth and the teeth clipping through the lips etc... So much work as back and forth from ZBrush to DaZ as you have to realign the rigging too as well. Very painful...

Alaas, after a huge time sink in morph related problem solving, I managed to remove the tattoos to start looking into how she would look Vanilla: 

For now, I was satisfied with how the skin tone looked so I shifted my attention into the Horn making:

Then I was like, why not import it as clothing? It kind of worked, please do tell if you want it as a CUA to have more control over Size and Placement.

Then I took a brake and dressed her up to see the potential and started to take notes on what to change.

So the logical next step was the clothing as Symbols and also creation of Sigil and Tentacles? The ear thingy they have... 

The results are what you see in the first screenshot of the Post it self.

This is not over yet though, as I'm experimenting with tail related animations and scripts, I was honestly very tiered of tails always exploding and have minimal interactions inside VaM, what if tails will be part of the person? Wraps around her legs and moves away for sex and what's not. So a huge learning curve there which might prompts some patience as I am code oblivious. Also the Sigil in her forehead, I want it to be transparent and pulses with light , that's another mountain to climb and let me show you how this works currently.

Ever heard the term "I have no clue what I'm doing?" That's pretty much what I'm doing right now with the whole Sigil shader thing lol, I just add stuff and read documentation to see if it changes the overall look. 

I also need to provide some details to her forehead and some other tweaks on morphs, the quest for perfection never ends.

Regardless, I'm sure I can make it work given enough time and effort. Also felt like sharing this progress as usually by this time I have something released, but this lady is killing me and I have to make her work because why not? 🥰

Thank you for going through this huge ass post, and being patient and understanding, please provide suggestions as usual and do not hesitate to contact me