Hero Model; May Sakamoto

Boot Building

    The boots were the only part of this besides the chain that required I build it from the ground up. The rest of the clothes were built from body extrudes. It was split into two connected groups: the sole and the boot itself. I started from the sole and built upwards but because they're heels, I had to adjust the foot pose for reference.

Final Hair Process

    To improve the highlight, I had to separate it from the AL map into its own as a HDRI. This was then applied to the hair, treating it as a sphere to create the final effect.                          

Final Hair Render

Eye Building 1

    For the eyes, I reverse engineered the way eyes are built in "Xenoblade 3". Using hero models ripped by the "World Tree Research" Discord, I deconstructed the process for creating the parallax, layered look. To abridge the process, it was to layer multiple convex, translucent and semi-luminescent cards over the eye, with concave pupils.  

Eye Building 2

    The cards I created form the shadow, 2 types of highlights (the white shine and the green/purple iris highlights) and the iris lines. During card creation, I did a concept sketch of the style I was aiming for. The screenshot is the eyes from "Xenoblade 3" in-game. 

Eye Final

   Final draft of the eyes. If I were to add to this, I would add something akin to the blue reflective highlight shown in the previous Xenoblade screenshot, as the large bright curve of color layered over the shadow card really sells the glossy look.

Rough Demonstration

       Rough demonstration of the addition mentioned previously in the left eye, created because of my own curiosity. Ideally this would be applied to a build that had this in mind during creation, as it seems better suited for a larger iris. 

Substance Attempt

       Initially, I tried Substance Painter to get good PBR drafts for all object maps. I learned it was not particularly suited for stylized character work and scrapped all AL maps but the boots and chain, however I kept the roughness maps for all clothes but the belt. Substance was good at generating AO maps for all objects and I later modified and implemented them into all AL maps. (AO specific versions of the maps went unused as Blender does not have a traditional AO map system to my knowledge.) 

Hand AL

         The Al map for the hand is something I'm particularly proud of as the palm's crease was entirely done in the AL.  

Shirt Graphic

    Initially, I tried to put a shrink-wrapped card over the shirt for the graphic so placing it where it would stretch naturally would be easier. Clipping while posing required me go back and apply the texture to the shirt's AL map with a stencil tool, using the original draft as reference.

Expressions

       The pre-built facial shape keys were a great template to use in creating a wide range of expressions after modification. I had to manually create the eyebrow, eyelid, eyelash and eye shape keys.

Clipping Complications

        While Rigging and Weight Painting, I encountered plenty of clipping issues with the body to the clothes. Initially, I tried to remedy this by tweaking the weights for hours on end. Only after the final render did I realize that culling the hidden parts was the better option, as after the clothes' models were set, the parts of the body under were no longer needed. If I had realized this sooner I could have saved so much time and frustration, however it was a valuable learning experience in optimization.

Final Turnaround