On this blog, I’ve mostly written about my NPR work so far. But the other reason I started it was to write about how things are going for me in general, too. It’s good to vent about things, or just process, so that’s what this post is for.

I’ve been quite annoyed at work recently. I work in a shop. Obviously, with the coronavirus pandemic, that’s made it more stressful than usual. During March and April, we probably had double or more our usual amount of customers coming in. That wouldn’t be so bad by itself, but since this lockdown, I’ve noticed more….Inconsiderate people. People who think the rules don’t apply to them, like signs saying not to enter and aisle because we’re working it – especially the bloody alcohol section – quite a few customers have blatantly ignored.

I get very frustrated with people like that; it’s like they think they and their…Petty wants are the only things that matter. They aren’t even buying anything important. I could understand at least, if they were bypassing the no entry barrier to get some toilet roll or basic food, but it’s not. It’s always the ones after their alcohol that think they’re more important. It’s making me quite cynical, unfortunately, as if I wasn’t enough already; I’ve really come to think that most people who live near the shop I work in are just alcoholics, and/or gambling addicts. Hell, according to the rumour mill, even one of the supervisors is an alcoholic.

Despite the pandemic, the lockdown, people have continued to come in several times a day to get their fix, buying multiple bottles of booze, or cans, or sets of scratchcards, cigarettes….Those people really make me dislike my job. I don’t want to help people continue their addictions. And I just really dislike having to serve people that think they’re more important than everyone else. Because of that, I’ve been developing more of an attitude recently; when a customer got angry at me for telling him to stand behind the line that marks a 2 metre distance, I just said “Whatever”. Not exactly great customer service, but I’ve really exhausted my patience for that kind of person.

We’ve also had a significant increase in threats towards staff members, and general shitty attitudes. I haven’t experienced much of that, though, at least directly to my face. I think it’s because they don’t see as a woman though, sigh; it’s the female members of staff who’ve been getting the most of it. Probably because they’re most likely cowardly men who feel more confident picking on them.

So work has been quite tiring recently because of all that. I have some time off soon, which I’m looking forward to. I hope I can use it well, as well as relax a bit. My colleagues are mostly good, at least; recently, I’ve been getting on well with one who I talk to about films and other media when we’re on shift together. He writes films and wants to work in that industry, so I can relate a lot with discussions about different things we look for in media, thoughts about generically popular stuff, etc.

On another note, I’ve recently been trying ZBrushCore. I got very frustrated with 3DCoat. I’ve been trying really hard, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a good enough surface quality. I upgraded my RAM, which helped get better performance, but it couldn’t let me get high enough to use voxel meshes at a high enough resolution to hide the jaggedness, so they’d never stand up to a close up. I realised, when it came down to it, the problem was the mesh type. It uses triangles, which are very hard to get a smooth surface with, and don’t crease well. So I thought I’d try Core; last time I checked it, it didn’t have Sculptris Pro, its version of dynamic topology, so I didn’t get it. I find ZBrush’s dynamesh-focused way of making a mesh very awkward…It feels unnatural to me to have to do the whole model at one fixed resolution, limiting how much you can detail it, having to do it all at once. I find it much more natural and convenient to just do what I want to whatever detail, without having to worry about resolution while I’m sculpting. Obviously, the final mesh needs to be even, but it’s so awkward having to think about topology while sculpting. It’s said to be easier because it forces you to focus on forms, primary, secondary, tertiary details in order, but I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.

Core is a lot cheaper than full ZBrush, which is sitting at like £900, basically. I’m quite enjoying it so far; it’s a lot easier to get a good, smooth mesh, though I’m having difficulty adapting my sculpting style. I’m used to using a flatten tool that levels area to block out a lot of shape, like slapping on a bit of clay and scraping off the excess to make a plane. Core doesn’t have that kind of brush, though it does have a somewhat similar brush, except it doesn’t level it.

I’ve been doing some sketching. Recently, I’ve been trying a more traditional style of sketching; just sculpting everything without thinking of it as something that needs to be ready to use on a retopologised model, like sculpting the eyes onto the mesh rather than giving it hollow eye sockets with separate eye objects.

They’re very bad, but to be fair, they’re sketches and I’ve been trying to get used to a new program. I found the navigation very difficult at first; I wasn’t used to the way ZBrush does it at all. Looking at them all now, though, I really need to vary my faces up. They all have the same cheekbone shape, and the way it makes that sort of 7 shape from the corner of the eye to the chin. And reference more, of course. The ears are only good on these because they’re a ZBrush asset, haha.

I’ve still got to totally get to grips with it, but I am finding it a bit easier now. When I have the money, I think I’ll buy it. I feel like I can make the mesh quality I need with this, since it generates quad meshes instead of forcing triangles on me. Although, I’ll still use 3DCoat for retopology, UVs, texture painting and normal mapping, since it’s good at those and Core has no such functionality.

Anyway, I’m trying to improve and get back on track with my sculpting. I want to get better and make more, and my watercolour shader is just waiting to be used.

I think I should make more posts like this, though. It’s good to just ramble about things sometimes, and talk about WIPs without feeling like I have to talk about some milestone.

Curly Hair With Curves

Today, I’m making a post that’s a bit more general. I don’t really have readers, but maybe someone will stumble across it and find it useful. Or if I forget how I did it.

I’ve been struggling with a character model’s hair for a few days, because it’s curly. They seem to be quite complicated to make seem right, and also be controllable. I was looking at this video for a method of making hair.

I like this method. It’s not as realistic as other methods – not as easily, at least – but it is very controllable. I don’t like particle hair much. It’s a pain, and it leaves too much out of my hands. I’m not interested in simulations, either. I need more room for style and departure from what’s strictly realistic.

Anyway, at the end of the video, it referenced and showed a model with curly hair, but didn’t say how to do it, so I’ve been experimenting trying to work out how to do it.

I came up with this.

With a version of my Psuedowatercolour V6 shader applied.

I’m quite satisfied with how these look, actually, at least as far as testing purposes go. I tried a few different strands with differently curlyness, though I didn’t reference as much as I should. Mainly this has just been to experiment. I made a similar hair shader to the one presented in that video, and adapted it to my shader by using it to make the hair alpha. I could also use the bump, but I didn’t feel like it at the time. I didn’t get it quite right, though, since I was modifying it to test other things, so only the very ends appear uneven, which I need to fix.

Here’s how this method works.

First, you need to to make a curve. In this case, I made one curve object with multiple pieces. They have to be offset from the centre something like this. That’s very important. The distance allows control over how wide the curls in the hair will be, so I didn’t want to go too overboard. I used multiple pieces for a bit more volume, though it does give less control overall.

Next, make a new curve, and use the original one as a Bevel Shape for it. That’ll extrude the original curve along this one. Then, for each point along the curve, use Ctrl_T to twist it. This is where the offset in the original curve comes in. Because it’s offset, it’s twisting it around the second curve. By setting the twist amount on each, or most, of the vertices to something high like 360 or more degrees, it creates a lot of curls.

Then lastly, I use a subdivision surface to smooth it out. This can make the polycount high, so I make sure to reduce the resolution of the original curve and hair curve so they’re not too dense in the first place. Another modifier like the Smooth modifier might do decently as well, but this can make it very smooth since it adds geometry. Plus, you can increase or decrease it easily according to how smooth you need it to look on-screen at any given time from just one menu, whereas curves would need you to alter the resolution on the original curve as well as the second one.

I’m fairly satisfied with the results I’m getting so far, so I think I’m going to try applying it to Nagi’s character model and see how it goes.

Watercolour V6

It’s been a while since my last post. I mean to update more often, but I don’t end up doing it enough.

Since my last one, I revised my shader a few times. I’ve finally got one that I’m finding to be a decent mix of stability and functionality. I haven’t changed too much from before; I’ve swapped out the procedurals for baked textures from them, though it doesn’t seem to make much difference. I also was annoyed with the way I was applying texture in the previous version all as one at the end. It makes more sense to texture the main and shadow colours before they’re ever seen. Other than that, it’s mostly the same.

I recently worked on a model of the Kaibacorp building for Millie. I decided I’d practice with it.

I applied the shader to it, and I’m quite satisfied with the results. It’s…..Not perfect, but better. It seems to work better on static objects than organic things like character models. It’s less tricky….Characters have a lot more than can trip you up, I find.

I rendered two versions. One in standard perspective. The second is using a fake perspective on top of the usual one, made with the Lattice modifier. Faking perspective is very important to give it a 2d touch, so I wanted to experiment with it a bit. I should use a Mesh Deform in future, I think, for greater control, but the Lattice is quite useful. It’s quick and easy, whereas a Mesh Deform takes time to calculate. For this kind of perspective, I think it’s quite helpful. I could probably have exaggerated it more.

I also tried applying it for an experiment to a character mesh I’ve been sculpting. I’m still struggling, unfortunately, with getting satisfactory, crisp character models. It’s the same problems….The eyes, the mouths, nails….Those small details. I could model them onto the retopo mesh and just not use a normal map, but it seems…..Reductive. I want to be able to capture those details, without having to have a huge polycount. There are some times when I might want to throw out the normal mapped detail, but I’d rather have it conveniently saved to a texture map the rest of the time. Lower poly meshes are easier to work with and perform better.

In this case, that’s a work in progress mesh of one of my D&D characters, Nagi, a half-orc wizard. I’ve had difficulty with the paper texture on grey colours; with my current settings, I found it was too dark, so I’ve recalibrated it. The way my shader applies paper texture and edge soak according to what colour is used couldn’t be called physically correct, I think. It’s certainly no simulation of real watercolour. I’m just going by what appears right, what looks and feels right based on what I’ve seen. I think that’s probably a better way to go about it, as far as art goes.

I want to work on the edge soak, though. It’s not very prominent there, and I’ve found at greater sizes it seems to just….Dissolve.

At any rate, I feel like I’m making progress. I want to be able to update more soon.