Update on the latest project of Aurech in the Monomyth universe. The grooming part always stressed me out since that’s not something I’m too experienced with but I’m quite happy how things are turning out. Trying to use Xgen and rendering things out when it’s not crashing every 5 minutes.

I’ve been working in this over the course of few months in my free time. Loved the design Randy Bishop created and I’m rooting that this will be made into a short film.

I’m currently on the look development phase and that’s always where I feel I’m lacking so it’s the place where I often end up giving up as I don’t feel like it’s getting any better. So far I’m happy with how it’s turning out but it could change when I go into posing and final renders. Here’s a few in progress images, few from very early on to show the iterations. Textures are done with substance painter.

look development in progress, using Substance Painter and will move to Mari for the skin. Still undecided whether to sculpt the clothes or the keep then very clean and in theory get all the cloth folds in simulation but he will probably never be rigged.

Update on Egill, been doing plenty since last post, Texturing the body in Mari, Substance Painter for the cloth and prop. I’m not 100% sure what kind of lighting I will do in the final render but might try a few and see how it will look.

I’m happy with the eyes of the character, been experimenting with a very efficient way of making them, both model and texture and it’s probably something that I would now be able to do in 10 minutes.

The splotches on the cloth will make sense when I do the final render with textures, I am working on believable blood in Substance Painter as the plan is to have him drenched in blood. So far the tests are looking alright. For the body I’ve been testing a mix shader approach for it, so the only thing I need for the blood on the skin is a mask. I use the same mask to generate a displacement map.

This character is a quick sidestep from another one I had already started. I felt the clothes there were to complicated for me to start with learning Marvelous so I decided to make Egill Skallagrímsson, renowned for being a ruthless and violent viking. I don’t really have any idea where I’m going with this character, that is the design of hair and weapons but it’s a good exercise.

“First” render out of Maya using the Xgen. It’s been quite the back and forth and a lot of trial and error. Starting with guides,  scrapping that and switching to groomable splines, scrapping that to try Guides again and then settling with Groomable splines. I subscribed to Jesus Fernandes patreon which helped me a lot, especially with understanding clumps and the modifiers. I’ve yet to figure out how to create a decent color map for the fur, the colors I paint or texture with Mari are not really coming through so I’m just using a plain AiHair Shader for the moment.

I’ve been working on the texture and shaders. I’m using Mari for the body and so far have most of the maps needed. Will have to adjust the bump settings and figure out a better specular solution. Will hopefully start xgen soon and put up some fur renders.

I saw The Missing Link not too long ago and decided to try and create a similar character where I would have to try and do fur. I’m not quite there yet in the process but other things are coming along.

I usually start with zSpheres in Zbrush for new characters that will have to use a different basemesh.

Used Maya Quad Tool to retopo.