Week 60 - Dynamic Subdivisions

Cyberpunk Purah design

One thing I've never tried before is hard surface modeling; this was a very fun experiment both in terms of design and practicality. Surprisingly, one of the easiest parts of this process was actually mapping out the different areas of the muscle structure based on how they'd interact with a fully flesh creature: mapping out wires and tubes on the muscular structure and looking at body fat maps to dictate where soft tissue, such as breasts, would be.

Although this was just a test, I'm tempted to expand it to a full half-body

I ended up using Rayan Fayard's Hard Surface Alphas to work this out, trying to assign specific functions to areas where it would make the most sense, such as fans on the highest plane of the body where air could escape.

Seraphine outfit and design

Back on my Marvelous Designer train, this time with a more open-ended character who isn't really involved in our game's story: Arwyn's sister, Seraphine.

Every time I make a character, I try and do something that I'm not quite sure how to do; for this one, it was lace, ribbons, and connecting everything with non-bulky belts.

I tried a few new workflow methods with this. I tried using a website I found a couple of years ago, Tailornova to help design the shirt, as it lets me pick the pieces of the garment like a modular kit, where I can swap out the sleeves/neckline/etc. and creates a pattern accordingly. Now normally you would have to pay for the pattern to use it, but since I'm doing digital fabric construction, all I need is a picture of the pattern, and I can import it into Marvelous Designer.

Another method was in the cleanup, after I've made the design in Marvelous and imported it into Zbrush I struggled to get the design cleanly imported where things connected properly for dynamic subdivision later. My mentor suggested keeping the settings relatively simple and cleaning them up later in Zbrush where I had much better control; import everything so each pattern piece is seperate and add no thickness.

Then in Zbrush isolate the different garments; in this case I separated it into the shirt, apron, ribbon, and skirt. Then, maintaining polygroups dynamesh the object together, because these are static references, I don't need the objects to be able to move and maintain their true physics. Regardless, I can then use dynamic subdivision to give it the proper thickness, since this maintains the polygroups and merged edges; it creates a much cleaner identity than using ZRemesher and exported thickness

I'm having a weird thing in MD where when looking up guides and tutorials, their meshes seem much higher resolution than mine, resulting in less detail being stored. Although I've looked up fixes, and it largely just says to raise the particle density, this seemed to have a negative impact on the garments, making them less dense. More testing is required.

Out of all the garments/reference designs I've made recently, I think this is one of my favorites, as it does a really good job of telling the story I need for Seraphine. She's really domestic, filling an older sister/motherly role to much of the other cast.

I imagine she came to the court later than most of the other siblings, in her teens, and was in a realm under heavy scrutiny of a king. Maybe she was hunted down for medicine/prophetic abilities, but she was able to hide, wearing the crown of a warped king as a moment of the life she fought to live.

Of course, as I finish this post I find that theres actually a SUPER helpful guide on exporting things from Marvelous; please check out Arti Sergeev's guide!

Ilisuvee sculpt

One thing I realized and investigated this week was the skill gap between sculpting for games and sculpting for figures and printing. I've recently been playing Blood of Dawnwalker with one of my friends, and I have become a fan of a company named Bulkamancer Sculpts, which not only created a Coen (MPC of Blood of Dawnwalker) but also several other statues for other video game artists.

But hold on! That's ZBrush! That's their rendering engine. This prompted a question for me: "How is this company doing such detailed posed sculpting, especially when the final product looks like this:

I talked with my mentor about this, and we landed on the idea it's more than likely the artist used a low starting topology (as seen in the WIP photo), dynamic subdivision, posable symmetry, and proxy pose to achieve the desired effect, focusing on the symmetric objects first before moving on to the non-symmetries so they can dynamesh as needed.

As such, I needed a practice dummy to try this out. Ilisuvee, a corrupted avatar of a goddess poisoned with hatred, is one of my favorite characters from our Curse of Strahd game, and now that I have a horse base and public-facing concept art, I can act on it.

Overall the process ran very smoothly; there were a few moments of losing the posed symmetry, but those were noticed relatively quickly and fixed. Additionally, at work of all places, I realized I might be shooting myself in the foot by largely ignoring dynameshing in favor of zremeshing to better maintain quads.

for the teeth I used a modified version of Yacine Brinis' IMM Teeth and wolf teeth as reference. A tool I did entirely forget about during this process was Zbrush's Slime Bridge tool for the spit connections in the jaw. I made this as a break from my main project, but If I get more time to work on it and create a more HD version, I would love to expand the concept with this in mind and create some funky connections.

Week 58 - Marvelous Designer Deep Dives

 Monthly Challenge: Umbra

This month for one of my discord communities art challenges, we had to make something based on the word "umbra", google refers to this as "The dark center of a shadow" which.... is a complicated concept to express.

I decided to take a less literal approach to this topic and use it as an opportunity to design an alternative outfit for my character Purah, specifically for a fae-court inspired outfit. It could be more elegant and less tactical than her typical Reghed outfits, dipping a bit into Arwyn's designs.

I didnt have specific reference for this design, mainly just trying to practice drafting patterns and using the full range of tools within Marvelous Designer to make something unique. Purah's ice form is always, in some regard, inspired by World of Warcraft's Winterqueen from the Shadowlands expansion though.

Dream Court Pinterest Board: https://www.pinterest.com/Aidoneeus/dream-court/

One area I am having repeated trouble with is in regards to the weight of fabric being more or less than anticipated. I believe in this design I have seven different materials to design the fabric around, the primary dark blue, light blue, translucent blue, red, black trim, an elastic a gray channeling which I genuinely couldn't tell you what its use is for.

The dark blue primary fabric is meant to be a velvet and folds roughly how I anticipated but there's a problem where my mesh has a lot of faceting in how it falls and I fear this causes issues, especially in the sleeves with bunching. I did try and watch several videos in how to optimize and export meshes appropriately but so far cleaning the meshes up in zbrush has been super difficult.

 Character Sculpt: Aisling Sionna

My second character after working on Arwyn from last week, Aisling is Arwyn's wife in our game. This design was much less about learning how the mechanics of Marvelous Designer work and instead focusing on designing a character to give the right impression about their story.

Aisling is a tragic figure, in our game, Arwyn has disappeared for multiple months with no trace and the court that Aisling lives in is slowly dying with him gone. Her character revolves around being this somber figure who, intellectually, is more capable than Arwyn but doesnt have that higher calling as Arwyn does. 

For this design I was inspired by Chappell Roan's 2024 VMA red carpet look which features a dark wine sheer dress and very long green and gold coat. Although Roan's dress is sheer in the reference, I decided to treat it as normal cotton as the intention does not align with Aisling's personality.

One interesting part of this sculpt was translating Purah's base body into a different character. A big part of each character design has been focusing on the shape language of the characters and how the same information can be interpreted.

Purah is a triangle, she is sharp and dangerous, as such her design includes much sharper edges and anatomy. In her ice form she is a reconstructed vessel made of ice rather than flesh, therefore she doesn't need much fat. Aisling is the opposite, she lives an an idealic world, she is a circle, a caregiver, a teacher, a proxy mother, so softening out her form is required to properly convey that.

Aisling, left, and Purah, right

This was actually a much harder than expected to find reference, I ended up falling back to some of my books from my early undergrad sculpting and drawing classes, specifically "An Atlas of Anatomy for Artists" by Fritz Schider as it focused on very detailed realism drawings and helped annunciate some of the subtleties of flesh. People just really don't like making references for fat women and it sucks.

This was also one of the first times I got a real chance to sink into better hair creation, largely by using Renaud Galand's hair brush (and knowing how to use it). It helped create a much more natural build up of the hair, although I know the back still needs some adjustments.

Example of use here, this model will be talked about next week :P; A really big difference was due to switching between 'Once Z' and 'Continuous Z' in the Picker Tool, this essentially created two different modes to use the curve tools and cleaned up a lot of the problems I had with it

In her references I largely relied on a single large braid over her right shoulder, however this leaned into the modern phenomenon known as the "Dead Mom Hairstyle" which... was not entirely right? She was supposed to be somber and mature but the immediate implication that she was the tragic figure is what a lot of younger critiquers immediately took away from her design rather than her being a pillar of how much has changed around her.

Some of the feedback I got from her design leaned her more towards an Apothecary rather than a teacher, which was not intentional but not far off the mark. 

"apothecary person, prob lives in the forest in a cottage. Colors make me think she'd be kinda bleak and gloomy but her expression is happy. So maybe she aint gloomy but she's def,, morose

sad sometimes lol. I can see her having a handful of mentees but no more than like 3"

This hits the notion that she is a somber figure, but it implies that her air of maturity reads more as a isolated person rather than someone in a maternal or head-of-house role. This character does enjoy gardening as a hobby, but the natural elements are getting too much importance in the grand scheme of the design. 

Halloween Horse

Admittedly, this is a very silly project, however one im excited to see progress.

This project is inspired by my workplace having a pumpkin painting contest, for the uninitiated, I've worked at Tractor Supply Company for 6 years as a Team Member/back-of-house staff. It is the most blue-collar-but-still-retail job I've ever seen. A lot of our clients are local ranchers and farmers, many dealing with the local cattle industry or show horses.

My boss signed me up for the pumpkin painting contest and I immediately knew I had to do something weird with this opportunity for chaos and my masters degree: enter horse.

This idea is inspired by a couple different things; its starting to get around (retail) Christmas time so we've started selling the 2026 Breyer Horse collection, Breyer is a collection of life-like horse models that range in every coat & breed colour to more fantastic fantasy designs. For the past several months I've been getting videos for custom horse models, mainly DeeJayBe Studios, for Breyer's convention: Breyerfest which includes custom independent artist submissions.

Something I'm constantly shocked by is how many industries exist where the tools we get from FIEA are applicable, but the lens for what people want to do is so narrow that they get overlooked.

However this isnt the only reason, I have a secondary desire to make a custom horse model that I can shape as needed and expand the design of. For example, in my dnd game there is a special focus on unicorns due to Arwyn, my unicorn cleric, and his herd of family members. There is a character in here named Lurue, the Queen of Unicorns who, without going super into detail, was captured, corrupted, and turned into Ilisuvee, a manifestation of hatred.

 I designed this character a couple months ago with Game Master approval, however I think having a visage of her, either full body or a bust, would be great practice.

As such, a base horse is needed! This is also a good time to practice my 3D printing skills and learn how to properly use my printer (also because Nick keeps asking me to make stuff.... hi Nick).

I started this process making a small test, focusing on how the details would print, refreshing my understanding of printing, and overall making mistakes so I can learn better.

Since this print came out correctly, I could move on to a new benchmark: Key-ing! something I'm vaguely aware of but never put into practice. I used Oasim Karmieh's IMM 3D Printing Keys to ensure I didn't mess up that much (DW I did regardless)

The problem with this print was my animalistic lack of patience, instead of --- y'know, waiting --- I squeezed all three parts of the print onto the same bed and thought things would go smoothly. This, combined with a print error, resulting in many of the braces not printing correctly or putting a large gash into the print, caused the first attempt to be a dud

The current plan, since my boss so graciously gifted me an extra week before we start, is to do the following:

1. print a benchy and ensure the printer itself is fine, 

2. If any errors, replace the printer resin with new resin purchased earlier this week

3. If all successful, print each piece of the horse on it's own print bed one at a time

In the meantime, I was gifted a Breyer model of my own (Blake) by an old boss of mine to study the musculature and style choices that Breyer follows regarding the mane, tail, and feathering...I cant have a bald horse after all.

Character Sculpt: Fall-Version Purah

The design for Purah that I've used previously is actually the first death version of her. Upon request of my buddy I started to sculpt a living version of her that was used for most of the campaign. The initial design of her was rooted in a question: would a character cast out on her own lean into her religious extremism or be softened and break free of it? Her original design is fall, will she fall to winter or spring? Unfortunately for us, that has already been spoiled.

Week 57 - Unicorn Cleric Sculpt & What It Means to Create

 Alright... It's time we ran it back.

Its been a minute since I've been here. At the end of April my mother passed away very suddenly during spring finals, I've spent the time since adjusting and learning to stand on my own feet. Learning what it means to love and to create something you're passionate about.

I feel this context is important, I don't know who reads this, but you don't need to be perfect all of the time. You can hate your work, your art, and even yourself but you owe it to your past and future self to keep fighting.

One of the people who helped me significantly is my friend Caden, I've mentioned him several times for critique or discussion. During one of our many, many, late night talks he said to me:

"Fighting for a reason is different than fighting over nothing. Fighting can mean you care"

Caden and I met as coworkers during tutoring, but Caden is also my Game Master for my 2025 D&D Curse of Strahd campaign. He has come to know me through my character, Arwyn, a Aasimar Cleric of the Dream Court, a magical place that controls the ebbs and flow of dreams throughout the different planes of existence. When I first wrote him, he was nothing more than a good man, a musician, who was being sent by his goddess into a world he did not know.

Arwyn is not a good man anymore.

Throughout the story progression, Arwyn has had to come to reality that he is a flawed, sometimes cowardly or selfish, man. Arwyn has made me realize things about myself. He has helped me through this dark period in my life. You don't count the days rotting, or the time the sun has come and gone, even the meals stopped being counted. You counted the days until Kc could rest and Arwyn could take over, if only for a few hours.

In my two month break from any significant game dev work, and at the encouragement of faculty, I focused on illustration, anything to keep me creative and working. In two months I created 53 pieces of unique art, Arwyn was always amongst the most popular subject. During this time I focused heavily on rebuilding my fundamentals of art and targeting where I struggled. I did a lot of anatomy studies and different rendering practices to improve. Different methods. Different ideas. Consistently.

Now, being back at FIEA, I turn back to Arwyn, being reminded of all that Purah was to me and how I can once again, be better. Now, lets get into it;

To understand why I did this project, we first need to identify some problems with the Purah model I made;

1. Her legs are straight down rather than bending back in a digitigrade fashion
2. I wasn't set on clothing designs which caused me to go through many iterations and have to create everything in Zbrush
3. General green-ness to Zbrush caused many mesh errors, such as her head/body being seperate and frequent dynamesh errors on her antlers.
4. Posing her was, to put frankly, a gigantic pain in the ass because of reason 3 and near impossible.

I will admit, the speed Arwyn's sculpt was assisted with re-using several older projects that were abandoned or sketches, such as the digitigrade legs from week 40, that are actually made for a sketch of Kindred from League of Legends. These focused largely on the muscle groups so I could add fat/hair where necessary depending on the model being made.

Here is Purah's model with them adapted to her torso. You can see how the muscles are blended out but still retain enough information to be readable. This is the base version of Arwyn that would be modified.

Additionally, I went back to week 35 and nabbed his head that I sculpted as a demo for one of my students. Still one of my favorites.

Combining the two projects was a bit harder than anticipated as I wanted Arwyn to be physically much larger than Purah both in height and width while remaining proportional to his legs, he is 6'5-7ft (before horn) in our game and Purah is 6'2 (before antlers)

Overall he has wider shoulders and larger arms, a different style of hoof (deer vs horse), and is significantly taller. Please note I'm using the final version of his body for this comparisons because I took the pictures after.

Awesome! That theoretically solves #1 and #3, #4 we should be okay for, but that's not something I'll know yet, so what about #2?

Let me introduce you to: Marvelous Designer, aka my new best friend until the end of time. "Why wasn't I using this for Purah?" you might ask... I'll let my best friend Colby explain for me:

Thank you Colby.... I'll remember this.

Anyway, after pressing many buttons and creating terrible abominations to fashion kind, I was able to create a pattern for his typical adventuring gear - yes this is what he wears while facing the Horrors™, fae unicorn man, after all -- by using a proxy model of his body. I didn't worry about the hair in this as I presumed the longer strands would get in the way rather than helping.

The irony in this is that I actually do have three professionally created and illustrated outfits for Arwyn that I like to put him in, however spite is a powerful motivator and all of my friends demand to have a reference for this one specifically. Please note I'm using the final version of his outfit for this because I took the pictures after.

By the end of day 1, this was my current progress and we were several weeks ahead of progress compared to Purah with harvesting previous projects and Marvelous Designer.

From here, my progress becomes a bit harder to track as I slept and did a second pass on his body and clothes. A lot of this time was spent simplifying shapes, adding accessories and gear, and tweaking small parts of the design I wanted to see changes on. At the current point, everything still needs at least one or two touch ups, but I wanted to get significant critique before jumping into the finer details of things.

References:

As a side quest, I also wanted to learn more about how far I could push Marvelous Designer and have since been using Purah's model to make dresses for some of the other characters I would eventually like to make. For a redo of Purah's model, I designed a dark fairy-court style dress for one of my discord communities under the prompt 'Umbra'

I learned a lot through this mini-project, mainly how puckering and internal lines can be used in MD. I'm hoping to get this all rendered out by next week for a proper showcase :)