Tangled Up
After working on the face rig for the past few weeks, I've gotten less and less pleased with the way I did the main characters hair. One of my art directions for this series is that there is no fur or hair, and all of it is modeled. The fur on the angel's cape, for instance, is all textured in. For Kaelis's hair, my original idea was to model it all as one solid piece, in sort of a clay model kinda style. I wanted to avoid anime hair or anything like that. So I made the character's hair when I modeled her, but since she's wearing a helmet in the first 2 episodes I shelved it until now. Technically I still have another episode to make where she's still got her helmet, but I felt compelled to figure it out now.
Looking at the hair in unreal, I found it to be just sorta okay. It was acceptable for the style when lit and rendered, but it lacked a certain something. And if I was thinking that, then normal people will probably look upon it with disgust and ire. So, this weekend I went about redo the hair. At first I tried to make some textural changes to it in substance and unreal. I was able to make it look better, but still not what I wanted. Today I decided to start from scratch and created an entire new groom. While originally wanting to avoid anime hair, where it was broken into chunks, I found that the chunk method of hair works quite well, and there's a reason it's widely used. So, after a days worth of work I finally have a new hair sculpt for the character.
Old left, New right
Same, but opposite.
Looking at the hair in unreal, I found it to be just sorta okay. It was acceptable for the style when lit and rendered, but it lacked a certain something. And if I was thinking that, then normal people will probably look upon it with disgust and ire. So, this weekend I went about redo the hair. At first I tried to make some textural changes to it in substance and unreal. I was able to make it look better, but still not what I wanted. Today I decided to start from scratch and created an entire new groom. While originally wanting to avoid anime hair, where it was broken into chunks, I found that the chunk method of hair works quite well, and there's a reason it's widely used. So, after a days worth of work I finally have a new hair sculpt for the character.
Old left, New right
Same, but opposite.
Here are the results. I have to make some adjustments to the rig now, but soon it will be "complete", and I can get back to setting up Episode I for animation.