So, while I'm doing all of the assets for Chapter 06, I thought I'd give a little rundown as to how characters are made.
This is where I usually start, sculpting. Here, I'll start with a lump of virtual clay, and sculpt it to look like the character I want. Because I'm working with lower poly stuff, I usually don't need to get all of my details perfect here, as most of those will be added via textures (because I'm a dirty cheater).
I usually only sculpt the bust, and then proceed to box modeling for the rest of the body. Depending on the character, I may sculpt the torso as well, but I pretty much never bother with sculpting the lower half of the body like the legs or boots. I'll also never sculpt the hands. Why? Because I'm a lazy cheater who reuses hands between all models, heh.
Depending on the complexity of the bust, this could take anywhere from thirty minutes for a simple background mook, to a couple hours for a more important main character.
I thought you would use a pre-made (posable) figure and tweak the features until they fit your imagination. This method here would give you a nice model but an inanimate one, isn't it?
Also, is there a way to mirror one side of a face over to the other side? Otherwise I would never be able to make a face symmetrical and apparently that's very important, tiny differences and you may end up in the uncanny valley or somehing.
Yup! While sculpting, there's an option to automagically mirror everything you're doing on one side over to the other. Makes things a lot easier. It's also possible to turn it off if you've got an asymmetrical feature, like a deep scar one one side.
And yeah, this one is inanimate. You could animate it, but it would be an incredible pain to do, and not really worth the effort.
Also, yeah, I make everything from the ground up. No pre-made stuff, as I'd much rather be able to do everything myself. While using pre-made figures might save some initial work, I find that it's easier to just make the characters how I want them right from the start, rather than trying to modify an existing one. For others, that might be easier, but different things work for different folks.
WoW! I didn't expect that that much preparation is done at that point.
(Some time ago I tried to replicate the body of a character that was done in Poser by someone on dA in Blender. I spend a few hours with a character generator and got nowhere, the differences were too visible. Since then I have given up on such things, at least until I retire.)
BMR on Mon, 17th Feb, 2020
[edit] [delete]
This is where I usually start, sculpting. Here, I'll start with a lump of virtual clay, and sculpt it to look like the character I want. Because I'm working with lower poly stuff, I usually don't need to get all of my details perfect here, as most of those will be added via textures (because I'm a dirty cheater).
I usually only sculpt the bust, and then proceed to box modeling for the rest of the body. Depending on the character, I may sculpt the torso as well, but I pretty much never bother with sculpting the lower half of the body like the legs or boots. I'll also never sculpt the hands. Why? Because I'm a lazy cheater who reuses hands between all models, heh.
Depending on the complexity of the bust, this could take anywhere from thirty minutes for a simple background mook, to a couple hours for a more important main character.
Tomorrow, retopology!