This is my final blog post for this contest. Overall, I've been busy with polishing the textures, skin and hair style and shaders. The project could go in many different directions but I decided to keep it as simple as possible, for the sake of learning. I try to break down what I did to finish the last part of the project. You can check out the final presentation on my portfolio section.

To create the hair strand textures, I'm using xGen in Maya and baking everything out in xNormal. Here is the example of a more detailed workflow I always try to follow video link.

Hairstyle

Usually, I create a pack of hair chunks and use the Nonlinear Deform tools - on the section Deform. However, this time I've tried a slightly different workflow. Instead of using these shape deformers, I've used a plugin called GS CurveTools

Character Creation 3

You can choose a Hair shader in CC3, import your textures and tweak the parameters. 

For the lighting, I used a contrasty atmosphere that I found in the Content-Environment section, which imports already setup lighting as well. I slightly tweaked that until I was satisfied, turned on the GI setting on the Visual Tab and added some Post Effects to emphasis the overall mood.

iClone Turntable and Animation

I've been very lucky to find out that iClone has a female Animation Persona with dual guns that is free to use. Overall, I tried and used standard presets I found in the library with little bit of adjustment. Adding facial expression or adjusting the body animation can be done easily by checking through the Motion tab. 

Also, I've created multiple cameras and switched them by using the Switcher section on the timeline, you can find more detailed explanation on this tutorial from Reallusion. This way I was able to work on the short turntable animation by using just one project file. 

 Turntable preview

For the second animation, I decided to create two additional separated project files. The first one, where I created just a dancing animation scene and the second one, where she fires her guns. Final editing was created by using OpenShot video editor.

Dance

Openshot 

Before I start with adding more details and changes, I wanted to play around with Character Creator and iClone to test out how everything is working. Amazing to see how easy it is to get from this very early stage, already to the lookdev and enjoy pretty much an unbreakable back-and-forth method. Just by couple mouse clicks, everything is automatically imported into the Character Creator scene and it works the same if you want to import your stuff back to Zbrush. Also, automatic weight painting works very nice and easy. However, it doesn't work well with very long dresses or skirts. I think it won't be a huge problem to fix the weights if the skirt was up to the knee height, but in my case, I should probably weight paint my skirt manually in Maya.  

Important things to note: 

When I tried to re-import the meshes from Zbrush to CC, all my clothing and the rig were broken. I guess it's because I initially imported the base body mesh from CC to Zbrush with the default A pose. Unfortunately, I think that default A pose makes it difficult for me to sculpt and/or simulate clothing on it. The arms are too straight. The legs and finger are too close to each other. So, I applied UE4_A_pose that you can find in CC's content library. 

First thing first, if you want to GoZ another pose, you should probably use Layers in Zbrush. So, if you want to make any changes to the face and body later, you can always set back the default A_pose to re-import your character without breaking the rig. 

Conclusion

Looks like there are so much more things to explore and I'm excited to play around after finishing the modeling and texturing stages. My next goals would be, to work further on my characters face and clothing. Then apply the xyz textures and use substance painter for texturing the clothes etc. 

iClone animation test:

Hope you guys doing well! I'm participating a new challenge - 2020 CC Digital Human Contest. This is my work in progress. Never worked with this particular pipeline and I'm excited to try out a new workflow. Decided to give it a shot. 

Description: 

People call her - Black Arachne. She is a legendary huntress. Successfully liquidated the most challenging and secure targets. Some say, her mourning dress and a tender smile shows her enemy's, she still remembers everything. But who knows? Her true intentions remain hidden...

• Key features:
  Elegant Black mourning dress
  Dual revolvers  

After some clean up, I was tesing out the skin on Marmoset Toolbag. Will do some touch ups eventually when I'll have a bit more clear eyes. 

My next goal will be polishing the hair cause I'm not very sastisfied with how it's looking right now. The hair has somewhere around 20k tris, so I guess, I have some room to play around. 

FACE DETAILS

Decided to try out the multi channel face textures from Textures.xyz

I've projected the multi channel textures by using R3DS Zwrap  and baked them out with xNormal. Then, I've imported the displacement maps back to Zbrush and did a cleanup. 

I tried out Mari to cleanup the diffuse map and planning to polish it further in Substance Painter. 

Zwrap - projection looks pretty awesome!

RESHAPING THE SHIRT
Decided to step back to marvelous and re-simulate to create a bit more interesting folds for the shirt. After playing with it, I decided to adjust the pattern. I've noticed that I had several problems which made everything look a bit too messy:
- The garment in front and back of the shirt had different sizes.
- The shirt had unnecessary curved lines

Also I've learned the following tip:
- To make the clothes more lose or fitted adjust the patterns by using Shrinkage Weft and Wrap instead of resizing the pattern.   

Axe and sword work in progress

Continuing with detailing everything.

Not sure about fur planes in combination with her hair though. Let know what you think. :)

Quick base model made with Zbrush and Marvelous Designer

Personal study in progress.

Based on the concept art of Lena Astron.