I've recently been told on good authority by someone who's work I've admired for many years now that the best way to force yourself into texturing (as reluctant as you might ever be because of contraints like RAM issues that force you to wait forever for basic actions to complete) is to get into character modelling and to begin by reverse engineering a model or character you really like to keep you motivated instead of finding easy distractions or throwing your arms up in the air.
Once you wrap your head around the key concepts this way and see that it can all actually work, it tends to be much easier to jump in and do original work after seeing someone elses, especially when you can tweak and mess with it to figure out shaders and things like that.
That and I'm really
really sick of modelling machines and my phobia of character and texture work. Two birds with one stone damnit!
View attachment ai.imgur.com_d1mkHs.png Raw model: (obj converted from pmx)
View attachment ai.imgur.com_Rt2zks.png Raw texture: (original is tga)
I won't lie. I'm a huuuuge Vocaloid fan. And I've been wanting to learn how to make anime-style characters that don't look like complete shit for years, since I've been avoiding drawing characters like the plague because of my awful depth perception and sense of shade and contour in 2D work.
...So I'm going to start by working
backwards from
the model he made and texture files involved and re-building
Miku here. I'm going to start out by re-doing the topology of this model because she's made of nasty nasty tri's instead of beautiful flowing quads (likely starting with her face and hair) and re-UV'ing her, then trying to lay the textures on and experimenting with shaders to get the anime-look while avoiding the freaky/creepy-anime look that's annoyingly easy to re-create when you start making mistakes that totally ruins the illusion of moe!
It can exist, damnit!
Once I figure that out, I'll be trying to make something from scratch. I'd really like to make
Hanako since she's quite simple in terms of hair and other characteristics but can become more complex as you add detail. Plus she's kind of
super-adorable (SQUEE <3). And if I can nail that SAoY uniform in 3D, that's be nice too =3=
Wish me luck.
Whoever modelled this is an idiot. But the texturing is godly.
The topology looks like it started life as a laser-scan of a figurine and consequently doesn't follow IIE3 topology standards (it blends tris and quads in the early topology and screws up the edge loops for a lot of major parts) for UV'ing and animation which is a bit of a headache. There's a lot of nasty topology around the joints, so I think the figurine was disassembled, scanned then the creator tried to fix the topology manually but didn't do a very good job. Goddamn lazy Japanese modellers (srsly, they're known for blending tris and quads and not caring whether or not you can re-work the geometry later, meaning on EEEEVERY project a lot of shit has to be re-modelled -- which is basically how they cover their asses and get easy work).
I've tried going in and tweaking the topology but... To tell the truth, I think I'll just re-do the topology from scratch. The hair though, seems to be especially easy, so I think the artist likely went in and fixed it themselves. For that, I am really thankful for. The hair would have been a huge bitch to retop.
View attachment ai.imgur.com_om0zGl.png
View attachment ai.imgur.com_jTonhl.png
View attachment ai.imgur.com_geE7Yl.png
Still kind of cute, even without the textures, isn't she? Though the gourand shading looks a little creepy. Cel shading and textures are likely going to be the big deal here, since the original was textured beautifully.
Can't wait to figure it all out and start doing original stuff.
Not enough memory
Aagh! My computer basically dies when I load the textures. I don't have enough RAM for what it is I'm trying to do, so it really chugs and locks up when I try to render. I could do it if I didn't multitask with IRC and listen to music (to a limited degree) but I think I seriously think a RAM upgrade is muchly needed. Sigh.
I could get
16GB for $120 or much less so I'll be saving for that. Going to march on through and keep working, though.
Have managed to secure a source of new RAM. I won't be able to texture until I manage to actually get it but until then, I'm re-doing the topology. Faces in particular, are known in the 3D world as being one of the hardest parts to actually model because of the way the polygon counts all need to line-up neatly.
I consider myself an experienced hard-body (machine) modeller and this is my fourth attempt at modelling the face (the power died on my 3rd attempt ---
I love computers). The tools I've managed to find are brilliant for the task but yeah. This is pretty educational.
PHEW! Okay! Turns out there's a standard method for facial topology to follow, known as the Sampson Method, which is an established set of rings, which is apparently the 'optimal' method for faces with the maximum amount of detail for the minimum number of polygons that is immediately recognizable when UV'ing.
You're meant to start out with the outer-face and work your way in, using the outer face as a guide. Note the levels.
Here's a look at what I've managed to do (left: original. Right: new topology. Note the flow of the polygons and the simplicity and the fact I'm using tris which are better for animation and UV'ing for texturing).
View attachment ai.imgur.com_nZ8Dsl.png
Unfortunately I couldn't follow Sampson's Method for the mouth or it'd look different from that of the original model and I really liked the original. Still, I did what I could to tidy and neaten things up. There's a slight crook at the corner of the lips that needs adding in but otherwise, it looks good.
View attachment ai.imgur.com_fmptwl.png
