Tails 3D Model - Personal Project

Easiest to put all my progress for the project here instead of scattered through the weeks. The aim is to take a character through the entire 3D pipelines, from modelling to texturing. And hopefully even rigging and animation next semester. Fairly simple character I love, so it stays enjoyable. Planning to model the detective outfit too as a little extra challenge with cloth physics (and that design doesn’t have a 3D model yet)

First step was fixing the holes in his ears. Phil helped. Mask the problem area, delete it, fill the bigger holes and dynamesh to make it squares instead of triangles. So I can continue modelling on top. Still dunno how they appeared, it was a problem when I converted the zspheres 



Then realised with new 3D references I’d modelled the tails in the wrong place. Duplicated the model and split the body, shoes and tails into three separate models so that I can easily access each part to model (might split the gloves too). Having the tails separate means it’s easier to rig too, and I can move their position. Split into two more distinct tails and had to thin them out toward the base


Wednesday 26th November 

Started building the shoes. Hard to get it to make sense with the references but I think the base shape is pretty close now 


Then moved on to fixing the head. Specifically the nose, the ears (ears I had to close a hole again and dynamesh a lot), and the fur. Slowly getting there

Worried that he still looks very lumpy? He’s supposed to be very smooth fairly low poly shapes, realistically he could have been blocked out in Maya

I just spent an HOUR perfectly sculpting all of the fur details on his face and chest, only to accidentally hit one button somewhere and reverted back to the previous save and accidentally erased all of that progress. All 700 steps. Ughhhhh I was so close to being done for the day! It was actually looking good!

Managed to redo the ears and fur. I’m very happy with how he’s looking! 



Thursday 27th November 

Figured out that it’s all the undo history (2200+ steps!!) that’s making the file SO slow to update. Phil showed me how to screen record in Teams so I can go to the very beginning of the history and show my sculpting progress for the assessment video, and then I’ll delete the histories afterward

Hands are so tricky to sculpt. Especially because I don’t have a proper reference in Zbrush so I’m eyeballing with game screenshots 

Won’t get the entire model done by assessment, because I only have Phil today and next week and it’ll take forever to do the retopology, uv and texturing, as well as the outfit too 

Got the main sculpt more or less complete! Parts are still looking a little lumpy (hands are still a bit off) but I can go back to it later and/or fix it during the retopology, since I don't plan to bake a lot of these high quality textures since he's supposed to be a smoother lower poly model

Might perhaps leave progress until next Thursday so I can actually focus on my other tasks, as I will need help with the retopology most likely. But I'm actually enjoying Zbrush now, I think I'm getting the hang of it!


















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