Workshop: Models progress Update

Here to report the status of the models I'm working on at the moment.

Nina Williams

As I finish some details with the body textures (Ignore the skin black areas the skin textures are still not finished)

Here are some extra outfits I will add aside of her official in game outfits, let me know what you think? are these "mature" enough? Any recommendations are welcome at this stage of development too of course.

Tifa Lockhart (headhack meshmod version)

This is an upcoming new version of Tifa Lockhart, more canonically aimed project, will include all her FFVII REMAKE outfits, in the future I will add her Rebirth outfits as well of course, but I also plan to add a couple of her Ever crisis outfits like the mermaid and life guard ones from there. Maybe the Christmas outfit too.

 Updated hair shaders probably the best hair shaders I made to the date lol

 Canonical details like the scar on her chest from the Nibelheim incident. (optional using UI menu)

parts that are originally cropped in the models like the stockings (no foot area in the original) and the black and white tops in her default model (black under shirt has no meshes bellow the white one originally) They are now full meshes

  Preserved original rigs of outfit parts as much as possible like suspenders and the original skirt rig. (manually ripped from the game and fit to the model to avoid missing data from daz porting)

Skin also is a big change for this model, and also future models as well.

The original 2.9.2 version skin was a bit too "rough" as I tried to complement Cycles lack of detail when rendering as the denoiser usually kills these skin details, but people using cycles usually don't care much about these details I found out.

As I find myself using eevee more often for my animations, and seeing how much EEVEE next improved the engine and will continue to do so for future versions, I decided to focus these details on the eevee side for the shading process.

Details will of course still be there, you can see skin pores if you get the camera close enough even. Just not as strongly as it did before for cycles.

 Face comparisons between her new headhack and the latest Tifa model with modifed daz port face wrap and sculpted.

Aerith and other updates

I've been adding manual corrections by sculpting shapes to make certain poses look more realistic and save time for animators and render creators. These obviously take time to make, and I don't want to use the DAZ correctives (JCMs aka Joints corrective shapes) because those are designed for DAZ crappy default rigs, I usually rig and correct the vertex weight painting myself so those are not the best matches for my work anyway unless I do a full daz port model in some cases.

 Here are some samples from my Aerith and Tifa models, these are for the spread legs, ignoring the unrealistic pose, the shapes react to the posing so the more you spread the legs the more the shapes will "correct" the areas of the body to deform in a more "realistic" proportion.

  Same for the bending over poses, I usually include 4 corrective shapes just for the hip areas, while daz ported models used with the Diffeo include about 10 to 12 (I think) corrective shapes for all joints, elbows, knees,wrists etc. Thankfully ARP added a few extra bone features for the joints so those are not really necessary, also the more drivers are included the more memory and laggy the model can become, so I try to avoid too many extra shapes if I can, even though I know people love the extra body proportions shapes, they can cost a big deal of memory and it'll take a tool and be harder to optimize, they're mainly the reasons daz ported models can be too laggy too. This is because you have to also add the body shapes to all outfits to avoid ugly clipping.

So yeah, every outfit also needs to include these correctives, now you realize why these models are taking longer to make lately ^^:

It's mostly my whims and attention to detail that makes me want to put these features in my models, I also have to go back and include these features on my older models

the corrective shapes are included on all my models that were released this year and in a few updated ones, my Tekken 8 models include them, Ashley Graham, Asuka Langley, and many other updated models already have them. I currently plan to add these to my 2B new model and also all my older FF female models.

If anyone is interested on how to make these corrective shapes I can record a tutorial for it. But be mindful I use paid add-ons for this process, specifically the Auto-rig pro full version add-on which currently costs 25$. 50$ with the remap, smart rigging and fbx export features.

[Auto-rig pro blendmarket store]

Black Cat model

The black cat model is a special case of a direct DAZ port to blender with customized shape and shaders, I plan to add custom body textures using other models and bake it into it similarly to how I did with my Tekken models using some 2K models definition normal maps will really help this "super hero" look

BTW I did this method with my Tifa model as well baking her normal textures from her Mermaid Ever Crisis model into my model's body and then edited and fixed the textures in gimp and photoshop.

Finally the Yukari model was just loaded into a blender project and I will start working on it for the future Yukari and Makoto project, so far I find this body ok, but I may go ahead and use a custom body shape similar to the Asuka Langley one, not sure yet.

Current Updates on development

• Ashley Graham: Need to update her knee rig currently causing bad clipping when posing

• Asuka Langley: Need to update body textures because of weird low definition artifacts

• Nayo: Need to add corrective shapes for body and outfits and current hair shaders.

• Yuffie: Need to add corrective shapes for body and outfits and current hair shaders.

• Jessie: Need to add corrective shapes for body and outfits and current hair shaders.

• Madam M: Need to add corrective shapes for body and outfits and current hair shaders.

• Harley Quinn pack: Need to add corrective shapes for body and outfits (currently only missing on Arkham Asylum and City versions before releasing)

• Hermione: Need to add corrective shapes for body and outfits, planning on adding new hairstyles and uniform meshes

• Male Shepard model (Mass Effect) will most likely be a commissioned daz port once I extract the ME legendary edition meshes as the skin textures seem to need to be colored and that process must be done before commissioning the port.

Extra Info about model projects:

Future Maps are on hold as I focus on as I focus on the main projects and releases.

I will not be releasing Wrestling characters models here anymore but I will keep on releasing 2K maps in the future.

The male pack model still requires an Asian male and another one (vampire or human monster model maybe?) before a full public release, on the mean time will release updates for them here this month.

All other side project models I mentioned in my monthly report are on hold until I finish these projects to speed up my workflow.

If you have any questions about any of the models mentioned here or even suggestions just let me know in the comments.

CHEERS!