Zoe 2.0 - Facial Tweaks, Hair & Fur (Updated)

Guess who’s almost ready for animation again? With the two nom scenes of Encounter 3 P1 rendering, we had a bit of downtime to focus back on Zoe, and while Alex is still ironing out her rig, I had some time to extensively focus on doing her fur and hair.

With the shift in software, Zoe’s entire fur had to be remade from scratch. Even her old length maps had to be abandoned due to her new topology and UV layout, so there wasn’t anything that could be reused apart from some old renders that I used for reference. Nevertheless, I managed to get her fuzzy in just under two weeks, which is a lot faster than it took to fluffify Chloé. The biggest challenge was her hair, as I previously hadn’t used Yeti to do any longer hair before. I was never really happy with how her old hair looked, as I always imagined it to be a bit more punky-looking, so I used this opportunity to give her a completely new hairstyle that is much closer to her original idea.

The new hair was primarily inspired by female V’s hair from Cyberpunk. Originally the right side of her hairline was supposed to be fully shaven off, but Alex thought it looked meh, so it’s now covered by shorter hair. There were a couple of difficulties with her ears, as making the hair flow around them caused a bunch of issues with hair clipping through them. In the end I decided that it works best to have no hair under her ears, as this also shows her fluffy cheek clumps a little better. I tried my best to recreate the clumping positions of the old model. However, I thought they always looked a bit too sharp due on the old model, which was mainly due to the fur software’s limitations. With Yeti it was possible to make them flow into her non-clumpy hair a lot better, giving her a softer, more poofy look overall.

Note that I’m not fully done yet, as her tank top will still get fabric strands as well. For the next days I’ll focus on some additional texture work to bring her up to speed with Chloe, while Alex still touches up her rig. He’s already been working on a first animation test, which we’ve been using for internal testing until we’ll show it publicly.

Zoe in Encounter 3?

With Zoe getting finalized so soon, I’ve been planning to have her make an appearance in the current animation and start working on an additional sequence with her in the upcoming month. There was a scene I had tossed out of the script early on, which was supposed to happen right after Space Hero breaks down in the sandstorm. But with Zoe almost being ready for animation I’m now hoping to include it in the final/public release of Encounter 3 P1. This would also help a bit to get a nommy scene pretty early into the animation, as it would feature a decent bit of mawplay in its revised form. For patrons, there wouldn’t really be any changes in the release schedule, as next month there will be another animation update that will include both of the nommy scenes. I’m hoping to animate that additional scene with Zoe, while these scenes are still rendering to hopefully squeeze it into the final release of the first part.

Right now the first nommy scene is fully rendered! The second one probably still needs until the end of November to be fully rendered, so the next big animation update might be another month away. Either way, I’ll be posting the usual mid month update in two weeks to update you on the progress!

Edit - Hair update

Here's an update on her hair! I still want to stick with the side hair, but moved the line a bit closer to the center and made it a good bit longer and clumpier. This should hopefully be a better compromise between the new and old hair style.