Blog Post #9 Adventure Awaits
F. 11/8/2024
I started modeling the gothic carvings in Alice’s stone upper arm. I do not enjoy modeling, but for this, at least, it’s easier than sculpting. Here’s what I have so far.
It’s the night between Thursday and Friday— on the Friday side of midnight.
Later.
I watched this tutorial on creating stylized hair in Blender. It seems pretty simple— or, at least, much simpler than realistic hair.
I’m watching this tutorial on making any type of stylized hair. One question that I’ve had for a while about Blender in general was the hotkey for Mirroring. It’s Cntrl + M.
Shift + T to twist. Alt + S to scale.
Later.
I modeled the Boolean cutout for the faces of the upper arm, but for some reason when I activate the Boolean modifier, it’s doing this (below), instead of cutting the shape out.
Later.
I thought that maybe I misremembered how to Boolean, so I refreshed my memory with this tutorial. However, whenever I try to switch the operand from object to collection, Blender freezes, and then subsequently crashes.
Also this morning I tried getting back into Hyper Light Drifter (2016), but my saved game is a decent portion in, and the enemies are therefore more challenging— I’ve forgotten the gameplay strategies/skills. I think I’m going to start a new game— just start from fresh. I wanted to play it again because I’m inspired by the art style of the characters. For Crossed Stars, when Aster (the captain) is outside of the ship, I don’t want the characters to look chibi— like standard RPG Maker— or taller— like Stardew Valley— so I think I’m going to design custom sprites with a similar art direction as Hyper Light Drifter.
Blender is still frozen.
found the Bool Tool addon alternative to the Boolean modifier. Something is horrendously wrong; it’s only cutting out part of the influencer— and part of it is actually adding to the base mesh.
Sa. 11/9/2024
I reworked Rachel for our presentation at the expo tomorrow (today?).
I based my edits on Ezra’s input. Now I need to finish up our expo slideshow.
Later.
The expo was great! Could’ve used more vegan food options (I got pretty hungry), but still, great!
There was one booth for Indiepocalypse, a video game curation business. Andrew at the booth had these little cassette tape cases with artwork and everything— containing USB drives with, on average, ten games each on them! It was a dope idea.
Later.
I watched Arcane (S.2, Pt. 1). I’m not sure what the difference was, but it didn’t carry as much of a punch as when I first watched season 1.
Su. 11/10/2024
I worked on the stylized hair option for both my Organic Modeling class and my Seminar MC, Alice. I worked about 4 hours (1am-5am)— and boy! Even stylized hair takes a long time. It’s cool, though— now whenever I go to get a haircut, I can model what I want the result to look like.
I’m basing the hairstyle on Damiano David’s, circa Loneliest. I’m following this tutorial.
I’m going to bring my laptop to class today, to work on this further when we have time to work on this assignment.
M. 11/11/2024
In class, Ezra took a look at the hair work (shown above), and informed me that it would be completely useless for game design. The polygons are so dense. So, he walked me through using hair cards.
It is taking multiple tries to get them set up correctly. First, I didn’t copy the Bezier curves with the cards. Then, the curves we unaligned with the cards. Now, I need to make smaller curves to fit the shorter hair textures (on the right).
T. 11/12/2024 - W. 11/13/2024
Let’s see. I reworked the Algonale/Alice model, I sculpted the crucifix arm— including gothic-inspired designs and International Phonetic Alphabet symbols— I sculpted the clothes, and I painted it all in ZBrush.
I presented my progress (and hair prep) in Seminar. I’m going to have to re-texture in Substance Painter, obviously, but I wanted something showy to present. The half-cape is dope. The giant gingko leaf pauldrons are whimsical. The hand-carved crucifix designs are eldritch. I’m going to put embroidered designs on the vest, lace the two halves together in Blender, and create the shoelaces, in Blender, as well. The yellow piping will be more golden-threaded and brocaded.
For the hair, I’m going for a medium length on the sides and back, with braids going from the temples back to the back of the head, and choppy, uneven bangs like Powder from Arcane Season 1. Oh! And he’ll have the tattoos on the back of his neck.
Alice is going to be the Epilogue-reincarnated form of Algonale, from The Mongrel Sings, my writing project. He is inspired by the question: What would Margane from Tabletop Champions be like as a child? And what went wrong? Now I know where to take this character.
Later.
I got some answers to my questions in the presentation today. For close-to-scalp braids, I can use hair cards. For floppy braids, I can either model and bake, or use the Braidify addon in Blender. I’ll try both.
I will also implement roughness variation to create more satisfying visuals.
