Miss Claymore Act 3 - Still Alive, Still Breathing, Still Angry

CONTESTS/DANGEROUS CURVES RENDER CONTEST/GALLERY

Miss Claymore Act 3 - Still Alive Still Breathing Still Angry 3D Render, Digital Artwork by CapellaVN

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Miss Claymore Act 3 - Still Alive, Still Breathing, Still Angry

3D Render by CapellaVN

I spent so, so many days on this mask. If there's a real benevolent God in the sky, he knows I had enough fight in me to do this for at least another year. May I be stricken down by lightning right now if I'm lying.

I would've loved to have made more elaborate renders with more intricate composition and elements, but unfortunately, as of now, I have 8 minutes and 49 seconds to finish submitting my renders. I can only hope I did enough.

I might post my full process of how this mask came to be on X/Twitter. You guys are welcome to follow me there if you wanna read about that. I'd certainly appreciate having you around.

4 minutes... 43 seconds.

PROFILE

CapellaVNMon, Feb 16

Karma: 231

I've recently started learning Blender out of necessity for not easily found assets. I've been practicing a lot, and when I saw there was a contest going on, I knew I had to make something. I had time.

I talked about it in my second entry how I had the idea for a revolutionaire/insurgent kind of character. I work primarily as a game developer, not making a lot of money. 750$ is worth about 8 months of rent where I currently live, and I'd definitely welcome the opportunity to work on my Steam release uninterrupted. I knew right then and there I had to put everything I had into my entry, including my newly acquired Blender skills. I feel like art is at its peak when it's honest and a reflection of who's making it, so I wanted as much of my entry to be custom made as possible.

So, off I go to collect references for my idea. I still had time.

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Originally, the idea was for the character to have a gas mask, an elegant waistcoat + mini skirt with leather boots. Underneath, a leather harness, and multiple bandoliers holding several grenades and shotgun shells. She was to have a dragon tattoo on her right arm. Primary weapons are a katana and a sawn-off shotgun, with smoke grenades as a secondary.

The first step to get that idea off paper was to collect reference images, and that I did. I collected about 77 images total to get a feel for the texture of the different kinds of surfaces, and also to get ideas for the mask, which is something I knew was going to be a challenge. So far, I've mostly practiced soft-surface modeling, specifically clothing, so my knowledge of hard-surface is very limited. There was also the matter of texture painting, which I know zero about. But no matter -- I can learn. I still had time.

After putting together my reference board, I started doing a rough blockout on top of a genesis 8 female base mesh.
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I figured since I was working on nothing but clothing for three weeks straight, making it was going to be a piece of cake, so I, of course started with the mask, which I knew was going to take the longest.

I started with the basic underlying fabric around the character's face, which I would build the mask on top of. I then went ahead and started refining the jaw outline, not sure where I was going with it. I just knew I had to start from the jaw. I figured doing some experimenting by adding a bunch of lines around was going to make it look more "high tech" and inspire me. Clearly, I was right, because it dawned on me that after the rough block out, I should outline the entire mask at the same time and then work my way up with the finer details. For inspiration, I extruded a piece of metal from the mask that was supposed to be sort of a "connector", but looked more like a monster appendage coming out of the jaw, which I thought looked cool. After another hour of that, I went back to the internet to collect a few more reference photos from famous masks of fiction. Since I'm both a gamer and a game developer, that's the medium I drew from. I realized I should make sure the contour of my mask looks like skull bones, but outside... if that makes sense? I also realized mid-work that the most efficient way to progress was to segment the mask into different objects: Face, upper jaw, lower jaw, and chin. You can see the entire process in this image below.
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The mask alone took me two weeks straight of uninterrupted work. Thankfully, since I spent the weeks before that doing nothing but work in Blender, I had some familiarity going into it. Still... there were issues. Particularly, since I had no experience with texture painting, I had to grease my palms a little bit. I knew I wanted some decals on my mesh, and to do that, I installed an addon called Ucupaint so I could use alpha masks and normal map decals to get some details going. It was all rainbows while I was working on it, but when it came to baking, it got ugly. Ucupaint doesn't like when you have multiple materials on the same object, so I had to find another third party addon and do lots of black magic to make sure I was baking ALL of the materials into one texture, as redoing everything was out of the question. By that point, I was 48 hours in with the texture painting part, with only 4 hours of sleep (and the deadline clock staring me in the face). I've never been more stressed in my life, and I felt like I was going to die in a pool of my own vomit. As an artist, I can't say that's an unfamiliar feeling. I was unsure if I was going to lose all of my texture progress or not, but thankfully, I didn't. I finished the mask and moved on.

When it came to the clothing, I knew it was going to be simpler, especially with my new ADHD medication. With mere hours away from the deadline, I was anything but ready for what happened. It was fine, though. I still had time. I could make it.

At first, I was trying to solidify only the edges of my fabric to get the waistcoat to look thicker, but I was ending up with lots of intersecting faces. That's not good. I had to, instead, do something I've never done before, which is solidifying the entire mesh. I didn't want to do that because I work primarily with DAZ Studio, and I know dForce absolutely hates double-sided geometry, at least with my settings. However, with not much time to spare, I had no choice. I traded one problem (intersecting edges) for another, since right after, I could not get my Uv unwrapping to work regardless of seam placement. My textures looked HORRIBLE after that since I could not bake anything onto the mesh with no UVs to put textures in. I spent so long trying to get my UVs to work with the waistcoat, I had no time to even start working on the harness or textures for the skirt, or even custom morphs for the waistcoat to finish some of the ideas I had (like a bra under it that was actually a bandolier with lots of shotgun shells). Still, I couldn't even think of taking the time to try. I had to start working on the actual kit-bashing and final renders ASAP. I still had time. I could make it... right?

Can't say I had many problems with that last part, as I've had six years of experience with DAZ Studio and Photoshop. However, at that point, I was an hour away from the deadline so I had to juggle like five different parts of my process in three separate software all at the same time. At that point, I was physically incapable of thinking and was working only on instinct. I was unsure whether I was even going to be able to finish one render, but thankfully, with my recent developments on hardware optimization, I had enough time to render and compose three, which are the three of the four artworks I entered the contest with.

I was a little disappointed that I didn't have enough time to fully realize my vision and do all of my render ideas, but the end result of the mask alone is enough to put a smile on my face. And despite time constraints, the renders came out fine. It's kinda crazy to think about how even though these renders were simple and rough around the edges, they far exceed everything I was capable of a couple years ago. I mean, I only recently started getting treated for ADHD, which has been beating me up my entire life. And the biggest thing? I completed a project I started from beginning to end. That's not something a lot of game developers can often say. That's not something I can often say. Still, somehow, I had beaten the clock. I had no time, but at that point, I had made it.

Still.... those feelings linger. I wish I had the time to pour more of myself and my skills into my final renders. Lord only knows what's at stake here. I couldn't afford to give anything but my all. I can only hope it's enough.

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