Cyber Geisha (CLOSED) (CLOSED)

As I stated earlier, I didn't have an explicit plan going into the project. I did know a couple of key things going in. It was going to be a female character, japanese inspired and contain cherry blossoms.

As always, cube in the center ready to go!

Using polygon editing, I made several simple shapes to block out the character at this point just to get to proportions right.


With the basic shape blocked out I joined them together into a single object and remeshed it, so that there are no internal geometry.


Using the claystrips brush, I started sculpting out the major landmarks


Added more detail to the face, and added the place holder eyeballs.


Here I started using dynamic topology to add extra geometry for the detail work. The mask brush kept all the detail intact when I worked on other parts of the face.


Sculpted out the eyes, ears, and lips.


Started using the smooth brush more to refine the sculpt.


Sculpted out the more prominent muscle groups


Felt the hind area was lacking.


Made the butt proper for the contest. Also defined the back muscles.


Spent more time working on the front. Breasts and abdominal muscles.


The shoulders and neck area for me were too large so I scaled them down a bit.



I retopologized the sculpt at this point so that I could have a clean mesh to work with. The performance of 5 million polygons was also a pain. With a clean mesh I could also use the Multi res modifier.


And with the retopology finished. I had a good clean base mesh to work with.



I cranked the Multires modifier up a couple notches and went to work cutting in to the mesh. The plates were made following the flow of the mesh. Also here the color of the mesh changes as I made a copy of the mesh, in-case I need to go back. Through to WIP images the mesh color will change, so that's an explanation of why.


The front abdominal plates:


I added more detail, and mad a couple changes to some bigger sections.

Started work on the Elbow joint


Added cylinders where the arm sections would rotate around. More polygon editing for that Forearm piece.


With the basic shape of the joints made. I continued the sculpting the forearm and the area around joint, tying everything together.


Elbow work continued:


Sculpting out the shape of the hand.


Spent a little time adjusting the shape of the forearm:


This was a pretty neat trick I learned for making the fingers. The Cylinders, Spheres and Finger tips were instanced. So as I made a change to one part the others would copy that change.


That instancing is shown really well here:


I switched out the spheres for cylinders


The top of the hand also had instanced parts:


The end design of the finger parts:


I went through and resculpted the hand design:


The hand re-sculpt from underneath.

Here starts the work on the Knee joint. A lot of the same workflow of the Elbow joint. Starts with a basic shape made with polygon editing.


Very simple shapes:


The cylinders to show where the joints would pivot around.


Made the knee cap. Also sculpted the bottom of the thigh to work with the joint:


A look from behind. The blue lines are weighted for use with the Bevel modifier. I just noticed that I don't have any screenshots of the piece that sit under the kneecap, but its the same. Just some polygon editing and edge weighting for the Bevel modifier.


I added some more pieces, and adjusted the size of some so they would fit better when the joint was articulated:


Blocked out the general shape of the lower leg.


I added a Multires modifier and sculpted out the calf muscles and shin:


Here I was testing the bending motion of the joint. I just bent them around their individual origin points:


At the lower Multires level setting, I added a foot and heels. The changes would then also be made up through the levels to the sculpt.


I couldn't get the heel to look nice so it was removed. The foot and ankle was sculpted out:


Sculpted out the calf muscle and the top connection point to the knee joint:

Also sculpted more detail into the back.


With all the major pieces sclupted out, I went through and started the retopology.

Finger sections were up first:


Then the finger tips:


Hand retopology start:


The arm fully retopologized!


Back of the arm with the elbow joint:


Lower leg retopologized and UV Unwrapped(red lines are the seams). I forgot to talk about it earlier but the pink lines are creases. The Subdivision modifier will use those lines to keep a bent edge instead of smoothing it out.


Again, doing the face retopology.


I then started down her neck. Trying to keep the definition of her neck muscle.


Retopology continued. Pink crease lines to hold the corners.


Torso retopology done.


Backside:


Final retopology mesh. Kept all the detail and with a much lower polygon count. 12million to around 240,000 polygons.

With all the retopology done, I started on the Rigging process for the model! Usually I use ARP(Auto Rig Pro) for rigging my models, but this time I wanted to have a little more control.

At the end of the names I add a ".L" so that I only have to make one side and I can copy it over with the symmetrise button.


One thing I absolutely hate doing... Rigging hands is the actual worst. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

 
And that's done.


After the boring repetitive work of rigging a hand, I took a break from that and UV Unwrapped the mesh. Starting the texturing process.


UV Unwrapped head.


UV Unwrapped hand sections.


I just noticed another screenshot that I don't have. The UV unwrapped forearm and joints. But as you can expect, its just more of the same.

The model was imported into Substance Painter.

In hindsight, I should've Gone with a UDIM workflow instead of the separate textures sets that I ultimately went with. It would have saved a lot of time not having to set up the same materials over and over.

In this screenshot I was trying to paint the different material groups that would look aesthetically pleasing.


With the different material groups figured out I started painting on the little details. Connection points, panels seams and other little bits.

The back side.



Painting on cloth wrinkles


I erased the areas where cloth would be more stretched out. And the bits in the seams I left to make it look like the cloth was bunched up and tucked in.


I changed the color of the cloth to a nice crimson red and painted on metal fasteners for the cloth.


Painted on some light details.


Simple and clean eyeball texture. Glowing so that'd look cool in the render.


Painted on the seams for where the plates could come off for maintenance.


Added lighting to the Metal jawline piece.


This was a fun part. There was a couple of iterations on the look of the make up. Those eyebrows had the most iterations. I don't see how some women could paint those on daily, and they don't have the luxury of a mirror function. Props to them!

The make up added a lot of life to the model. and here was when I finally thought the project was going in a great direction.


Elbow Joint painting.


Knee and lower leg painting


Painting the hand and fingers


Texturing done! Backside:


And front:

I brought the textures back into blender and threw them into their materials. I did switch over to the rendered view to preview it, and it looked good!
Not gonna show the previews as I'd like to do a nice "Final Render" reveal!


Back to the making of the armature. Here I used bone constraints to have the "Eye.l" follow "EyeLeftTrack" using the Damped Track bone constraint.


The tracking bones were then parented to a single bone. And the eyes still track their targets


Added breast bones. In the end, I didn't even need them.


I had the rig done with all the bones that would be used in the deformation of the mesh.

More painting had to be done but not with textures. Weight painting the mesh! Red is were a given bone would have full control, and the cooler colors all the way to blue show less and less control.


The hips down to the foot were done being weight painted, so I did a bend test to make sure everything moved well together. Making changes as necessary if some mesh didn't deform properly.


Knee bending test continued:


Started painting the torso.



Another part that always sucks, weight painting the shoulder. Its a constant back and forth of moving the arm to check if the mesh behaves and painting. Super dull slow process.




Weight Painting the neck.


Weight painting forearm. The fore arm has 2 bones split halfway up. This allows for the rotating action of the hand.


Can't but help to do another joint bend test!


The palm had to be painted but the finger joints, sections, and tips were just straight parented to their respective bones.



Inverse Kinematics. Not as daunting as one would think it to be. The bones around the elbow joint had to be constrained on a couple of the axis, so that they only bent in a specific direction. This took some time to configure but it works sooo well. IK always makes posing easier!


Building the Leg IK.


Testing the Leg IK. Making sure the bending didn't go all wobbly.



Because I named everything with a .L at the end. All I had to do was erase the old right side and symmetrise the left over. The IK and other bone constraints went over as well!


I then tooks some time to go and add better handles to the bones, so I didn't have to keep the "in front" setting on for the bones.


Since I worked with ARP for so long. It affects how I made my handles.


I animated the hands closed into a fist and saved the action. This will allow me to bind the action to a bone so by just moving a bone I can close the hand. It'll save time in posing. for when the character grabs something.


And this bone that floats above the hand controls the movement of all fingers! So nice!

At first I was going to make a particle hairs system but that wouldn't be very robotic. So again we start with a cube.


Subdivide the mesh, and wrap it around the head.


Apply the modifier, and start sculpting out the shape of the hair!


Sculpt done. Nothing too impressive now, but trust in the process!


More retopology.....


Retopo done:


Starting work on the hair pins, again using instanced meshes so that I only have to work one thing.


Hair pins modelling continues.


Using poly editing to make some more hair decorations



Here I went into the Hair mesh and copied a bit of it. to make the bun band.


More hair pins with poly editing


Here the pins are instanced into there spots. The hair band from earlier can be seen here.


In the poly editing view, I picked some equally spaced apart lines, beveled them and sank them lower into the mesh. Applied a bevel crease line to keep shape when using a subdivision modifier.


The hair and the decorations are UV unwrapped. Ready for texturing!

Exported the Hair into substance painter.


Tried out a couple of patterns and materials for the different parts.


Painting some edges onto the model


Painted some flowers and flowing leaves to the hair band


Using Substance Painter's Projection brush to detail the model.




Added some lights and the Hair is done!

With the hair done, I had to start on the kimono.

Polygon editing, mirror modifier you've seen it a bunch of times now.


Kimono build continued


Once I got the basic shape down, I added a sash around the waist. Masked under that sash and sculpted the wrinkles and folds in that area.


I weight painted the vertices under the sash to pin during a cloth sim. Then ran a cloth sim to see how it would fare with the mesh of the character. All the parts that would touch the kimono I of course added a collision modifier.


With the kimono done, I started on the ribbon, and another wild cube appears.


Subdivision modifier and Solidify modifiers


Flat ribbon shape


Sculpted ribbon shape


The rope that goes around the sash, starts with a loop from the sash. Surprised its not starting as a cube? me too.


That loop I convert it into a curve and extrude outward some mesh.


I use some more curves to make the decorative knot


The decorative rope and knot have to be exported on it's own into SPainter.


Added a rope texture


I did a quick export of the rope texture back into blender to test the micro-displacement. I went back and forth a couple times to get the right values to make it work.


The scale of the waist rope meant I had to do the same song and dance as the knot. It was quicker but still annoying.


Changed the material look of the material to be more metallic. And called it good for the decorative rope.

I transferred the weights over from the character mesh to the kimono. I had to clean up the weight paints so that when the mesh moves it would looks so jagged-y.


Doing a bend test with the kimono.


Same for the ribbon, some cleaning, and a bend test.


The rope got the same treatment.



With the mesh skinned to the rig. I exported the kimono into Spainter.


Painted the sash with some flowers and leaves.


I wanted the kimono to look futuristic with a nice mesh pattern.


Painted more flowers and some seams. and that was it for the Kimono!


I had all the character and character attached stuff sorted out. So I started posing to fill the "Sexy" part of this contest. Went through many poses before stopping on this one. This pose also need a umbrella prop, so I started on that right away.


Worked with a instanced proxy to build the umbrella.


The supports under the cover were instanced copied 63 times around.



Added some decorative bits to the tips of the supports.


I brought the umbrella into SPainter, and textured it.



Final result of the texturing:

The final version of the umbrella was moved into position


I could start blocking out the final shot. Using the Golden ratio composition guide, I positioned the camera.


Using the Botaniq addon, I scattered out some grass onto the ground plane under the character.

 
What it looks like in camera:


To save on memory, I weight painted the distribution area for the grass. Trying to keep only what would be visible in the camera.




What it looks like in camera:


Also added some flowers


Couldn't be Japanese inspired without some cherry blossoms. It was here I was constantly in the rendered view to see how the light was behaving in the scene.


Moving trees around to find that perfect shot.


I also had trees that were out of frame for reflections and lighting reasons.


For the trees I decided to keep it left frame heavy. Only moving it to the right the farther back the tree is from the camera. Keeping it left side heavy


Added a couple rocks to the scene from my asset browser.


Spent time moving the rocks into a postition that I liked.


The final position of rocks that I liked. Trust me it looks better rendered.


A bird eye view of the placement of rock, trees, grass.



Added wall shrubs in the BG

Another cube.

This time it is for the spawning of dust!


I was originally going to go with cherry blossom petals, but thought it would be too much noise in the scene. The dust particles though were small enough to add to the vibe without taking attention from the main subject.


What it looks like in frame. The effect is much more subtle in the rendered view.


What it looks like on a black BG.


Imported a VDB file to add depth to the scene.


I made sure that the volume was kept behind the character. It would lightly take away some detail from the BG and draw focus to the character.

With the background sorted, It was here that I started out this morning!

The final stretch, making the kimono look good.


As I was about run a cloth sim, I needed to move some mesh around, so that it wouldn't intersect itself during the sim.


The cloth sim done! Sill needs some refinement but works.



The deformation from the armature caused one side to stretch and the other to shrink, so I went into sculpt mode and corrected the shapes.


Did the same with the rope.



I then sculpted the wrinkles and folds of the sash. Making it deform accurately.


Went back to the kimono and applied the cloth sim. Added a Multires modifier and refined the sim. Adding or subtracting volume where needed.



The ribbon had bad time with the armature... so I proceeded to fix it.


And that's it for the kimono!



And that's it!

The final render and my entry into the contest!


I took out the flowers from the grass, it was a last minute decision. It added another color into the scene upsetting the balance. I just noticed that it took me 4 hours to type up this WIP stuff. My attention was split a bit as I was watching a movie while typing this. 191 screenshots were taken for this project. I missed a couple here and there, could've been over 200! Thank you if you took the time to read through to this!

Its nice to have so much time to work on a project. I was still stressed out of my mind but that is just my normal state of being. I do think of all my projects I have ever done. This is my favorite. Period. Also the first time I've finished up with a project without feeling like I compromised on something. Feels nice to go plus ULTRA!

Again thank you RenderHub and Foxy 3D for hosting this contest! <3

This is absolutely amazing.

Stunning, awe inspiring, fantastic.....
I will run out of words if I keep going. 

When i look at your final render my jaw drops, I just want to keep look at it. 

So beautiful. I'm just in awe. Perfect in every way. All the details you've created for the robot and the scene setup.

I started reading as you were posting, I will go through and read the rest when I have time. 

Well done mate. 
So impressive. 

I'm gonna call this one as the winner unless some one else creates from scratch a mind blowing entry lol. 

Plus Ultra
Not gonna wish you luck, you've got mad  skills

Thank you for sharing your WIP.

Have a wonderful Day and enjoy a well earned rest.

I'm in awe! The amount of work you've put into this is simply astounding. The theme, the small details, and the finished render are all fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to share your process. I'm blown away by how good this is. Wishing you all the best!

Bravo! I really enjoyed watching the process of building your robot. I hope I can surprise people too. But my robot is not ready yet) I wish you good luck! =)

Wow.

Im blown away. The effort alone to explain your process was Herculean. Thank you for sharing how you put together this masterpiece. Im inspired.

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First off, Wow doesn't even come close to how awesome your work is! This is a Professional level, Masterclass creation. This should be first place, period. I love this! 

I know that I don't even have a chance, as this really should be first place. Period. Truly incredible work. Good luck, but in my mind, this piece just won the whole contest. You created a masterpiece from a cube. That's just amazing! Thank you for sharing the WIP, it was very cool to read through it. Good luck, but you don't need it.  

This is truly amazing. Made from scratch and the details... absolutely love this.

The fact that this was made from scratch and is amazingly done...this image should win .

Absolutely amazing! If this isn't original I don't know what is. I guess lunch will be on you when you win! lol. Kudos!

Congratulations on the job. Well deserved

Congratulations! You truly deserve it. =)

Amazing work, love the process, well deserved it is an epic piece of art. Great, great Job. 

Congratulations!!! This was one of my favorites. The amount of work and detail is amazing!!! If you ever put this model for sale for Daz Studio I would definitely buy it. I hope you do since I'm always looking for good robots models.

Congrats! Amazing work of art.

Congrats on 1st place
Well done.

Congratulations on taking FIRST PLACE in the contest! Great work.  
Someone will be in contact with you soon regarding the prizes. 

Thanks for participating in the contest.  

You nailed it! Congrats on taking first place! Very well deserved! 

Beautiful work!!!  Congratulations on winning first place!