AnimeChar - preview/WIP3 (NSFW)

Mapped and textured the model, among some other things. This 3d model is more or less complete at this time. I'm probably going to ramble a little bit here, but in case you don't care for that:

TLDR; for now the asset is done, but there's some kinks left to work out with regards to game import, since it's somewhat of an unique situation.


So on with the very long rambling about this thing. Since it's been some time and a lot of work, there's a decent amount to mention. I like to put my thoughts down for projects like these, not just for other people that may be interested, but for me as well, since it's a form of self critique and helps me remember mistakes I've made for the future.

• as mentioned last time, I initially put the model into FO4 APose and did a quick ingame test. Model is currently in said pose ... mostly. It was fitting quite ok until I got to the hands. I never noticed it but the vanilla body/rig has some very weird/incorrect finger proportions. While I did mostly get the hand how FO4 wants it, I refused to mangle it and basically doing it wrong on purpose to fit 100%. End result is that some of the fingers may not animate 100% correctly ingame ... I think. My quick ingame test was just that ... quick, to confirm basic motion. With more time and better skinining maybe the model as is can deform correctly, I dunno.

• next came mapping the model and texturing it. I split it into 9 texture sheets (2 for hair, hair ears, head, body, hands, outline, eyes, misc face features) to maintain good texel density. Even with that, it is actually not as sharp as I wanted. I was unable to have clean non-pixelated lines in the nipple area which was a bummer since I couldn't add some details I wanted. Nontheless it's probably good enough at regular viewing distances, I was actually zooming in much closer than these renders.

• the actual texturing, this took 4 days total I think. Textures are all pretty much entirely hand painted, with some exceptions in the body area. The hair was actually the biggest timesink, I think I spent close to 2 days on it, so literally half the total time. Honestly, if I'd have known beforehand what I was getting myself into, I think I would've modeled short hair LOL, as that would've been easier to deal with. Eh, then again nothing that was worthwhile came easy, so now at the end, I don't think I regret the choice, I think the long hair is very pretty on this character and worth the extra day or two it took.

• for texturing primary goal was to make this model as 2d-looking as possible, kinda like someone took a screenshot from an anime show, which I think I mostly succeeded. I started from top to bottom and things were going well for the head/hair and then I hit the body and it wasn't working out. Since texturing this is mostly painting, it kinda required 2d drawing skills that I didn't have. I did foresee this though, from the beginning I didn't trust my painting skills, which is why I spent a decent amount of time when modeling the body and made sure that the mesh had decent detailing and was capable of subdivision for a highpoly. So I did end up baking some helper maps and did the texturing for the body more procedural to get a starter shaded base and after handpainted additional details. While the results are decent, it is mismatched from the head/hair due to different texturing technique. The body is more akin to an 2d illustration with soft shadows and gradients rather than sharp flat shadows present on the hair. It's fine, there's going to be clothing on top anyway, so whatever, but not ideal or what I wanted.

• the hands were the last major component I textured and yeah, those are straight up sloppy af. At that point, I just wanted to finish so I moved very quickly. That may be something I may want to revist in the future and maybe update, but for now, they'll do.

• overall, for a first try at something like this, with pretty much zero experience in this type of asset, I like it, came out pretty nice, picked up and learned some new things and I enjoyed the journey. I definitely feel more accomplished having made this than the usual stuff I normally make, so it was very nice to have the opportunity to do it.

• right so, that was that for the 3d asset, now normally I'd import my stuff ingame, it would be very straightforward and it would be done and ready to release in a day or two. This has some additional issues in regards to game import and the biggest one is I don't know how to force a flat shaded mode with FO4's materials or if it's even possible. What gives this character its flat 2d look is said shading mode. Without it, this model looks quite a bit different. It's something that I thought would be possible, but there's no immediate obvious way to do it. There's some things I didn't try, but if I can't do it, which looks likely at this point, this model will be very different from the renders in this post and not in a good way.

• not only that, but unfortunately, it's not just the look that will be affected, but I may have to do additional work on it too. For example, you may have noticed that this character doesn't have eyeballs, it's just an empty white eye socket with a floating iris and even floating round highlights. This seems standard on these types of anime models from what I've seen and probably done for facial animation purposes, so I have done the same with mine, however that type of stuff only works in an unlit mode, since you can't tell depth due to lack of shading and shadowing. Without it you basically get shading and shadowing inside the eye socket darkening it resulting in quite obvious floating iris. Only way around it at that point is to just model a proper eyeball, since I don't just want to leave it looking bad ingame. Other issues will also arise, but long story short, this may need additional work, if I can't get the flat shading going and will look very different ingame unfortunately.

  
  Last thing, I will probably have a new poll for this tomorrow-ish in regards to what type of outfit this character will have. I have a couple of potential candidates and I figure now is the best time, while I work out the game import kinks, so keep an eye out for that, as voting period will be like the last time, very short.