YO!
It's been longer than usual, due to the last update being so delayed. We're back on schedule and there's very good news; Cliff is near complete! Let's run down the process.
Last update, I drew over Cliff's face to try and properly nail his proportions and characteristics. I didn't know then how helpful this would be, but I know now and will definitely be incorporating this into my pipline going forward. After that stage of refinement was complete, I turned to Cliff's hair. I have never, ever enjoyed modelling hair, usually because I end up modelling in big clumps of geometry that look like more like rocks. On Homolupus I needed a new approach, and what I wanted most was to emulate JRPG shiny spikey hair in my models, because thats pure visual kei. I looked for reference for exactly how I wanted the hair to sit first, which ended up coming alot from David Young in D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die aswell as Raiden in MGR:R. This is when I also made a wonderful, life changing discovery about how these looks are achieved; the brilliance of Hair Cards. Hair Cards are the foundation of all modern hair/fur technology. A simple plane or collection of planes that, when duplicated and repositioned enough, form lush, textured human hair. Examples below;
So now I had to apply this to Cliff. I started with a random hair card template from Google Images just to act as a reference while modelling, and started building up a luscious head of polygonal hair for Cliff.
Not so terrible, and so much easier than trying to model it all with real geometry!The method'll be put to the test with Lang's longer hair and I'll still have to find an entirely new method for Naomi's sister locs, but that's a bridge I'll cross when I get to it. After being suprised by how simple that was, I moved on to clothes, and also continued to add new hair-cards for Cliffs furry coat and skirt. Most of his clothes are just extruded from his body, but I do (very luckily) have a Naked copy of him saved incase I ever want to redress him (or use his body as a template for other characters). I also put him into Mixamo jsut to make sure he didn't break, and he looks pretty cute not breaking (don't mind the colours)
And then he was done! Now it was time to UV Unwrap (also not so terrifying now that I've learned to find it therapeutic). I have unconventional UV'ing methods, but they still work for me.
In Substance Painter, I started texturing by laying down base colours picked from my reference/orthographic and then went in on the hair. This was honestly alot of fun, and I think the result has great depth and looks very ruffleable.
Those black edges around the hair are where it's supposed to be transparent, so you get good fluffy edges. When the hair was done, I applied materials to the clothes and accessories for a little extra detail and then with in on painting in the details of the face and clothes. He's got a perpetually funny expression like he's really scared of something, but I'm actually okay with that because he's ended up looking just like all his concept art and his orthographic, so it's very accurate. His pupils can't move because he doesnt have seperated eyeballs, and his mouth cant open either. This would be a waste of hours to implement, because his character icon/portrait will do the emoting for him. His texture style is very Simple and Clean, mainly because I actually don't know what kind of shader I'll use in the final game and I don't want to lose any too-meticulous details in the final rendering.
After going around and touching up, adding Height levels, stitiching his denim vest and giving him his sparkle, I checked that he looked alright under rendered lighting (I took him to the beach to see the ocean) and then exported his textures. This is where I had a crucial final step before Unity implementation; crunching textures. In order to replicate the PSX/2 style I've been going for, I need tobring those texture files down to atleast 512px. I did this in Photoshop, but in all honestly, I actually like the crunched textures less than the originals. Perhaps theres another method I cause use that doesn't leave polka-dots all over him. Can you tell the difference?
Now he's in Unity! He can glide and spin and interact like a little champ, but unfortuneately is still frozen in his T-pose. Next up is implementing Mixamo animations into Unity, so that our Cliff can idle, walk, run and crawl just like a real boy.
This week is the last week before going back to uni (GULP!!!) So it's full speed ahead on completing the Hospital Map! If I can get that done before the end of the week, I'll be on track to head into the next semester. On the horizon is implementing cutscenes, re-doing the inventory system, implementing the changing Cliff character sprites, and more... coming soon!
Ride on shooting star,
- Monkeydog
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