Progress Report 6/9/2023

Hello again, everyone! Here's what I got done this week:

• Finished the model's hair
• Reshaped the model's eyes a bit
• Modeled the cat ears
• Modeled the cat tail
• Modeled and fitted the tank top
• Modeled and fitted the short shorts
• Modeled and fitted 2 toe rings (plus extras)
• Modeled and fitted an anklet (plus an extra)
• Created a shapekey that squishes the boobs into the shirt and creates proper cleavage
• Created materials for the clothes and jewelry
• Created textures for the clothes -- namely the shorts

Productivity is tight! :D

Our cat girl is turning out wonderfully so far, and we're getting very close to her animation debut! The modelling and texturing are more or less done at this point, so all that's left to do is some rigging and, if it works, shaders to give her a 2D look. I already have the groundwork for the shaders (compliments of Lightning Boy Studio); it's just a matter of applying them to our cat girl and making them look good.

So like last time, if you wanna wait until the grand reveal, you should stop reading here. I hope you have a wonderful week and that Taco Bell is ever in your favor!

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Right, on to the visuals!

The first thing I did was change the eye shape a bit. The change ended up being somewhat minor, but I tried lots of different shapes and angles to see what would work and this is what I landed on. Subtle as it may be, I like it! ^_^

Moving on, we have the hair:

From the front, I made sure there were minor differences so it's not perfectly symmetrical. Again, minor changes that add up.

Side view, looking good! You know, this reminds me of a long, boring story about-... Alright, fine! I'll show it!

Ah, there it is! No tricks this time -- the back of the head is done and looking... well, hairy!

So, with the hair finished, I moved on to the next logical step:

The cat ears, complete with little tufts of white fur coming out of them!

You know, every time I look at these, I immediately think of Mimir's stories from God of War. I like to listen to podcasts while working, and those stories just happened to be what I listened to while making the cat ears. It was quite the relaxing experience!

But back to our model, we can't just have cat ears without...

A tail! It looks odd right now, but once we get it moving (and maybe once it has a nice shader on it), it'll look much more natural and cat-like!

So, with all the hairy bits done, I decided to move on to the clothes.

As you can see, they almost fit! Modelling the clothes was fairly simple. I just selected a bunch of vertices from the body in the rough shape of the clothes, duplicated them into their own objects, and reshaped them until they fit nicely. Fitting the clothes onto the model was the most time consuming part bar none. It was just a whole 'lotta detail checks and sculpting.

But no amount of sculpting in the world could fix this particular issue. In this case, I didn't need to fit the shirt around the breasts, but rather the breasts into the shirt. However, I didn't want to ruin the breasts just for this shirt; what if we do a nude scene with her one day?

Enter shape keys! These nifty little sliders allow me to change the shape of any mesh in a non-destructive manner! That is to say, I can go back to the original shape at any time by moving a slider from 1 to 0!

Just... Ignore what they look like under the shirt. I'm not sure what they're supposed to look like under there, but... with the shirt removed this just looks wrong.

But BOY does that cleavage look good! I'll have you know I spent a minute perfecting this part, but it was totally worth it!

Anyways, that's enough about the boobles. Let's talk jewelry.

You guys wanted ankle bracelets, and I can only hope this fits the bill! Originally I was going to make the anklet a ring of flat planes with a transparent texture of a drawn anklet, but... I realized that the poly count isn't gonna matter too much if we're not making games with her, you know?

Let's not forget the toe rings you guys ordered! On her right foot we have a simple silver ring...

...And on her left foot, we have a cute heart ring! I modeled all of these myself with the help of lots of references, and even more getting heavily distracted by the references. It's hard researching toe ring designs when you have a foot fetish...

Anyways, I'm really happy with how the jewelry came out! I must say, though, the toe rings in particular gave me lots of trouble. Fitting them around the toes should have been easy, but the toes are not perfectly round, as I found out. They're actually quite oval-shaped and... just very not circular.

Worse still, after I finally fitted them to the toes, I realized... I'm using subdivision in the final render! The toes are gonna be smoother and thinner! (See the difference between the silver ring foot and the heart ring foot.)  So, I ended up spending hours just trying to fit the darn things onto the toes -- and even remaking the rings again from scratch -- but it worked out in the end!

Right, so moving on, we come to the last thing I did this week:

I textured the clothes!

Well, more accurately, I textured the jean shorts. The tank top didn't really need any extra details added to it. It didn't look right when I tried -- and believe me, I tried!

While I like how the texture turned out, I do hope giving the model a 2D look with shaders will make them fit in more. As it stands right now, I get "Simpsons: HIt & Run" art style vibes from it, and I have no idea why. ^^;

Honorable Mentions:

The second anklet, cut down in its prime by Miles "The Marauder" Mouse when it asked him if he'd eat somewhere besides Taco Bell this week.

The third toe ring, MIA while investigating the sudden disappearance of its brother, the anklet.

While I do like the designs of both of these pieces of jewelry, I ultimately ditched them since they made the feet a little too accessorized, especially when compared to the upper body which has no accessories whatsoever (unless you include the cat ears and tail).

So, that's our cat girl so far! Now that we have the full design in front of us, what do you think of her? Be honest! Remember, this is our character, not just mine. :)

Phew! That was a lot of words! If you stuck around through the whole post, I offer my thanks and my apologies, simultaneously! I'm gonna go restore some of my energy with a mana potion (see: Mountain Dew Baja Blast) from my favorite place that rhymes with Baco Tell! I'll see you guys again next week!