WIP day - "version 3.0.0"

Next wip batch is ready!
Summer sure has been busy for me.

First off!
Njorijanna v3 is here!

Why?

Well... Here is the full story and why.
Back in january after the Heimirblot artwork, Njorijannas multires was starting to show corruptions, this was due to too many mesh edits in the core model in the name of tweaks and improvements. The hours it takes to build a new multires is close to 3 digits. Its no simple task either.

Njorijanna was an old DAZ human female to begin with, and after years improving this model with new retopo and many other aspects, that I had covered in earlier wip posts. She still could not talk, I had heard of reallusion, and their character creator 3. Now, that is some good software, but it was soon to be replaced. So I decided to keep going with what I had until that released. And in april CC4 came out, I jumped on it and wanted to remake Njorijanna completly in there. This did not go exactly as I planed. The program was awesome, but still needed hours upon hours in blender for the real magic of Njorijanna to show itself.

So now Njorijanna is a CC4 based model with the luxury of having their wast shapekey expression table stored within her to be used to talk etc. This do need some tweaking, but it saves huge time and money to have it done this way. Its that or do it by hand or send it to another artist/company. Another bonus is that rokoko and reallusion works well together with their face mocap technology, which I hope to show off soon.

Next is the rocky road to rebuild Njorijanna to look like herself again.
Here is an insight into the checklists i work by.

6h - add more gemoetry from feet and arms
3h - uv maps
3-5D - multires sculpting
pores
creases
moles

3-30D - fix face
1h - bake new texture maps
1h - paint new color map
1H - vertex colors
6h - old meganode-shaders re-import
8-12h - body hair vellus
lenght map
denisity map

4h - re-bind secondary meshes - eyes, teeth, hair
3h - auto rig pro setup
12-20h - correction shapekeys (knees-thighs-belly-arms-shoulders-head-back-butt-genital-calf)
4h - physics

Here is the list of things that has been done and improved for realism.
- vellus hairs
- body figure
- eyebrows particle hair
- new shaders for lashes
- nails
- micro details in the mesh like fingerprints
- imroved eye shaders
- boob physics
- Vein maps

She still requires some minor tweaks to be fully.

Here I made a new vein map, the old one could not be used since the uvmaps between v2 and v3 was too great.

I made a vein map to the best of my abilites and by looking at ref material of fair skinned people.

Next was resculpting Njorijannas eyes.
Her eyes was good, but I had to put my improved abilites to the test, so after once again researching eyes I came to the conclusion that Njorijanna has "Upturned hooded eyes that are both deep set and close set" To easier understand what that means, please have a look here.

With more experience and understanding, I began to model them.

The eyes might look dead to some, but I have not yet bound the eyes to the ARP rig since the job involves a lot of fine meshs shapekey work in sync with all directions the eye can look.
So for now she looks straight forward only. But soon, she can smile and look around again.

Next up was the skull of Njorijanna.
It had some issues, partly due to my lack of understanding basic anatomy really.
But not anymore, not only have I aquired an book to read about this subject. But I have also gathered enough ref material to make it right this time.

And after the scull was adjusted, no thanks to CC4 might I add.

I began the fun part, that is fine sculpting her. First of was to understand the jawline and head position better. Many parts was way off from the earlier model I still had in my viewport of blender to reference with just out of curiousty. Here is some of the source material ref images I used. Since Njorijanna was a blonde, I had to make sure the ref material was too.

Other interesting this is also to look at famous faces in movies. Take this ref for example, while I might argue that Kirsten has a square face, let it stay unaltered.

One thing that has been an interesting reaction from many was Njorijannas JAW. So I was determined to keep it within the realm of posibility was to expand my own understand of it. I'm not going to link google ref read, since a simple pic will do the trick. 

Njorijanna was at a 120 degree angle before, and will stay that way too. It looks great and is a personal preference. The issue was that her mouth had some faulty lineups, that are now fixed.

Last part is the vellus hair explained.
It is such an important role for realism, and is much of the reason why things look fake in game, you just need that peachfuzz.

It takes time and dedication, a task that requires raw computer power once you up the numbers to the millions. which even my machine has some derping in handling.
Here is the finished vellus hair for the face and the re-imported hair spawned for her hair.

That wraps up the reason behind the delays, I have been working my ass of to lift her to the next level. She might not be complete yet, but hey, if you want help me out. Throw me a dm with feedback, or pm me on disc. Lets make her the best she can be.

I have a little sneak peak into next artwork if I go through with it. Any wild guesses?

Trust in Lust.
Thank you all.

-Alluringsteed.