#and it is looking really good

[haldenlith]

The Road to Giving Ardwynn [a] Head (Pt 1)

So I've been learning Blender, and while the Donut Tutorial was a nice introduction, I learn better with something to hyperfixate on, and I do love my dumb boy, Ardwynn.

Which led to me to make the decision to jump into the deep end and model his head/bust, and learning how to do it all along the way. And not just in a stylized style, but aiming more for realism. My guiding star is the level we see in the Destiny 2 cutscenes. In fact, Forsaken Uldren is my reference for how to approach a lot of Ardwynn's Awoken features, since they (by accident) have similar features.

I figured I'd share this with you guys in segments. (The Discord I'm in gets the annoyance joy of realtime complaining.) A Tumblr Exclusive, if you will.

For the record, I have almost no idea what the fuck I'm doing. I know what UV Maps and Texture Maps are, and what Alpha Maps are, and that's.... about it.

I'm sure it'll be fine. This can't be too complicated, right? Right?

Narrator voice: It's extremely complicated. I highly recommend working your way up to this, not jumping to it like I have.

For the record, this is a lot of cobbling information from Youtube tutorials together. These ones are the ones I can remember that I've had some success with so far. I'll probably mention more as I go/as I remember.

"Sculpt a Realistic Head in Blender" "Ultimate Guide to Realistic Eyes in Blender" "Handpainting Stylized Textures in Blender" "Using a Cage for Perfect Baking" "Face Retopology" (This is in Maya, not Blender, but the concept still applies)

Anyway, long post is long.

Thank goodness Blender lets you make new little windows inside the application, and open up images and stuff. I made a new boring reference sketch of Ardwynn's head just for this. Working from big shapes to fine details is... tough, because I have a tendency to go ZOOM into fine details. I tunnel vision real bad, so this is at least a good practice into NOT doing that.

Progress, but something feels off. Giving more Patrick Stewart, less Ardwynn. The sculpting tools are surprisingly easy to use, by the way. The real trick is knowing when to hit "Remesh".

Spoiler Alert: I don't. This is a problem that bites me in the ass later....

Mmmm, yes, it's all coming together. That looks more like my boy. The scar was easier to do than I expected, though I'm not sure how to approach his split lips, as the way his scar is, it stretches his mouth up, leaving a bit of it perpetually open. I'll just treat it like the eyes and just model a tiny cavity. It's not like anyone's going to see that. I can fix it later if it's an issue. A future me problem, if you will.

Are you seeing a trend here? Because if you're thinking "oh, they've already said they had problems down the line, and now this is another bit of foreshadowing", you're correct. Again, another spoiler alert: it was a future me problem.

I've learned from doing art for forever that focusing too long on one thing gives my brain some sort of creative fatigue. "When you start to hate or feel bored with something, work on something else in the picture" is probably the best advice I've ever gotten, and I'm applying it here, too. I decided to tackle how to model glowing eyes. At this point, I've grabbed Uldren/Crow's low-poly in-game mesh and picked it apart specifically to look at his eyes. I'd kill to get the high-poly cinematic one, but that's not available to the general public, so it'll have to do. I apply a little of what I learned and tada! Budget glowing eyes. They work for the purpose of learning Emission nodes and all that shit in the Shaders section of Blender. They're placeholders for now. I'll make better eyes later. And look! They fit! Mostly.

Do you smell that? More foreshadowing.

I mess around with more than basic flat color shaders for skin, and turn on Subsurface Scattering (SSS). Mm, yes, nice. I also made some teeth for the moment to see if the scar needs tweaking. It did, but overall things are shaping up nicely!

But Blender is starting to crash and run real slow. Weird.

I try out Texture Painting and it just isn't working, so as I start to get really frustrated, I decide to bounce back to the Compositing tab, remembering what I learned about it when doing The Donut Tutorial. Ah, yes, this will make his eyes glow very nicely. Though I'm not super satisfied with it. I move on to seeing if I can't start to decipher the mystery that is hair.

Blender still isn't doing too hot, and though the hair is a fun side-tangent, I'd like to have the skin done and dusted before I move on. With some googling, I find the most common suggestion is make a UV map. Okay. I try that and it's a mess. More googling and I find the common suggestion if you're using a high-poly sculpt is to "retopologize" it. Okay, so I look that up. Fun fact, the first video I follow along with is not what's linked. It's super basic and I found didn't really explain much when I had to redo the mesh.

Redo the mesh you say? Well, you see, I spent 8-9 hours building a low poly version of this bastard's head (with the Mirror modifier, don't worry), and I had an addon suggested to me: RetopoFlow. Curious, I got it, and tried to use it to speed up finishing the mesh up, because I was beyond over it. It was, by far, the most boring fucking process of this whole journey so far.

I, in my infinite lack of wisdom, did not, in fact, make a copy of my work. I somehow end up fucking up the mesh and trying to push too far ahead with it, meaning fixing the fuck-up is too far back to undo to. I also hit save, because I chronically save every five seconds due to paranoia of the program crashing. I lament, delete the mesh, start from scratch, but this time inside of RetopoFlow from the start, and with a new video to guide me. However, I notice a warning pop up from RF that the "mesh was too large (> 1m)". Confused, I check it. I also notice in the video the guy mentions needing a "lower poly version" of the sculpt to work with. "Let's go with 75K."

My sculpt can't be that big right?

Aha. Ha ha. Hm. Ahem.

So I might've hit "Remesh" too many times. I learned why Blender was crashing and having issues, needless to say. I learned how to use the Decimate modifier to... not be at 5M faces/vertices. I have to literally just walk away for it to work, because it took Blender 30 minutes to do, but it did work. Eventually I get to retopo'ing it, this time with a much more organized and nice looking topology. Huzzah! But I lose out on details this way. Oh? I need something called a "normals" map? I learn what that is, but again so many of these videos seem to neglect to mention important information, like how it works and why you're not supposed to have the high-poly mesh showing through the low-poly. I... spent a while working on an issue thanks to lack of information. I eventually make a cage and try baking a new Normals map this time, with much better results exceeeeeeept.

The split in the lip is the new problem to bite Future Me. No pictures for this portion, because I didn't take any screenshots for this. I eventually had to go in and carefully redo the topography of the low-poly mesh around the lip scar area and make it open. I also had to cut it open on the high-poly sculpt. After that, the Normals FINALLY baked right and stopped giving me some very weirdly textured lips.

Finally, I was able to move on. I made a UV map, made a shiny new texture for Ardwynn's skin and face... It was going good.

But that wasn't the end of my problems. When I finally made new eyes, which looked very cool...

Something about the properly sized eyeball no longer worked in the eye sockets I made, and not in a little way, as little fixes never looked quite right. I did manage to fix it, but that meant I had to retopo the eye area, and update the UV and the Normals, and fix the texture because it no longer really looked good. (On the plus side, I painted more details into it, so that worked out.)

I'm really happy with the eyes, though. Bless whoever put close-ups of Uldren's eyes in Forsaken cutscenes. They helped immensely.

The skin wasn't fully sorted out, as I needed to do a few more detail items, but I decided to bounce to something else for a bit after fixing all of that. I needed a break. I took my knowledge from mucking around with hair earlier to start working on eyelashes and eyebrows, to make Ardwynn look a little less odd. I had some success, but hm, they still seemed way too thick. Time to consult Youtube.

(I stumbled upon a video on eye tracking and went ahead and set that up, just to make eye positioning easier later. It's not perfect, but it is easier than trying to position the eyes manually.)

Found a tutorial, by the same guy I went to for figuring out the proper shape of the eyes. Buuuut I also took the time to deal with the weird light leak and SSS issue I was having around the eyes. The pitfalls of glowing eyes on a model, I guess. And now I'm at the "fighting with the eyebrow" stage. I'll probably have to hit up a tutorial for that, too, since it looks less like an eyebrow and more like someone glued a piece of a shag rug to his face.

Also I see more issues that need fixing. This time with the ears. Ugh, this feels like it's neverending... 😩

I'll come back later with more progress in a separate post. Fall classes have started, so my free time to fight work with this is about to diminish considerably.

[thesociallyanxioussociopath]

Something something, living rent free in my mind and such, anyway I love them.

[churroach]

Full of Desires

[frankierotwinkdeath]

Y’all want Taylor Swift to be gay so bad but you won’t even write femslash about her

[spurgie-cousin]

This is such a good, succinct way of describing the illusion of choice many fundamentalist women and men have when it comes to life paths.

[egophiliac]

gargoyle Mal is everything I've ever dreamed of and more. his little raincoat! his umbrella! I hope he really does have big ol' stompy rainboots to splash around in puddles in. I hope they have little faces on them.

(Twst please give me Malleus having a rainy day adventure, this is everything I need right now)

[threefeline]

Like we literally have a sliver of a chance at getting Blue Georgia and Blue North Carolina in this years election and genuinely it feels like people are just willing to throw that out. Hell, even Texas over the past 20 years has had a BIG shift in voting habits.

The last 20 years in Texas ^^^

Georgia ^^^

And fucking NORTH CAROLINA. Look at how close this margin is. This is absolutely batshit insane to me. They are now basically swing states.

Please

Register to Vote

[mroddmod]

everyone be quiet i'm manifesting

[yourangle-yuordevil]

That time in ancient Greece when Aziraphale needed a speedy horse and accidentally invented the pegasus

VS.

Whatever Crowley had going on in medieval times

[hansoeii]

I probably won't finish this piece any time soon, but I wanted to share the unfinished version with you anyways!

[demaparbat-hp]

He truly did.

[nouverx]

*proceeds to drink the whole bottle*

Yeah Alastor you're gonna be loved and appreciated wether you want it or not :)

[hattersarts]

im already at the south downs cottage guys, catch up

[its-your-mind]

[sanguine-squid]

look at my biology headcanons boy

[rogerdeakinsdp]

CINEMA'S BEST SWEATERS — Part 1 (Part 2)

Basic Instinct (1992) · Let's Make Love (1960) · Scream (1996) · The Big Lebowski (1998) · Lucky Number Slevin (2006) · A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) · The Holiday (2006) · The Devil Wears Prada (2006) · While You Were Sleeping (1995) · Home Alone (1990) · Good Will Hunting (1997) · 21 (2008) · Sweet November (2001) · Knives Out (2019) · How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) · Ocean's 8 (2018) · The Matrix (1999) · Mystic Pizza (1988) · Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) · Clueless (1995) · House of Gucci (2021) · The Lighthouse (2019) · When Harry Met Sally... (1989) · Awake (2007)