Development
(Q1 2024)
This project was my first time creating and rigging a character from scratch. It was developed over 5 weeks and completed within Blender and Substance Painter.
Week 1 - Concepting & Planning
Week 2 - Modeling
Week 3 - Unwrap & Texturing
Week 4 - Rigging & Skinning
Week 5 - Presentation & Animation
Fur
This project was the first time I ever used Blender's procedural fur system. The fur system was quite a big step for me, up until this point I've really only been experienced with "the basics" in terms of 3D work and making myself learn hair grooms and nodes was completely new territory. Additionally, the system had only been around for a year at this point so there wasn't a lot of resources online to assist when you ran into a unique problem, such as the entire hair system collapsing on itself if you stack your UVs.
One function the fur system currently lacks is the ability to simulate hair physics, luckily I was able to learn of a way to proxy the hair splines, parent the hair splines to the proxy, give the proxy a cloth simulation, and effectively replicate a hair physics system.
Skin
Another feature that was completely new to me at this time was 'Subsurface Scattering', though not as complicated to setup as the fur system, the results I received from learning it were remarkable. It made the simple skin texture I had go from a flat color to giving a much more realistic look to the skin, in the process slider below you can see just how much the of a difference there was before and after it's implementation.
Rigging
This character was my first time developing a real 'control rig' that wasn't controlled by FK bones alone. I was able to create an IK rig, work with drivers for the shoulder movement, create sliders for forming a fist, and make facial shape keys for animation.
Roadblocks
Admittingly there were/are some issues with the rig, when I weight painted the model I did so at too low of a subdivision level, this made the model much more difficult to work with. Another issue is that the drivers for the shoulders were intended to automatically broaden when the characters arms are positioned forward and, while it does work, I noticed later on that it causes a subtle shaking in the shoulder joint when animated in certain positions.
DK OKAY
I regret making this video but uh… it exists I guess..