3D-Blender Blender Art - Show Us Your Blender Skill

[TranscendentThots]

She's starting to look like an actual character!



I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of Geometry Nodes hair cards. Now it's a game of chicken where I try to decide how dense I want to make the flyaways.

I'm considering changing from fibermesh eyebrows to more cartoony stylized mesh eyebrows. What do you guys think?

 

[TranscendentThots]

Hmmm.

Not sure if it's production-ready yet, but it's close enough that my time is yielding diminishing returns.

Time to switch gears and do a clothing pass.

 

[TranscendentThots]

Supersuit test. I don't even know if I neccessarily want to make a superhero thing, at this point, it's just bodysuits are the simplest form of clothing to make from scratch. (Just don't try to distribute them!)


I wanna say the most glaring weakness of the piece is probably body language? But in my heart of hearts, I know that's not the whole story. There's something else wrong with this image. Something lurking under the surface. Possibly stylistic, rather than technical. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I can feel it. Or sense its absence. Or something.

 

[Ghoseh]

eevee and what version of blender are you on?

 

[TranscendentThots]

eevee and what version of blender are you on?

3.5.0. I'm not using the special Geometry Nodes particle hair system that shipped with that version, though. I'm using my own custom Geometry Nodes setup for hair cards. (I'd rather fake my own hair and know I have options than take the default hair how it comes.)

 

[Ghoseh]

3.5.0. I'm not using the special Geometry Nodes particle hair system that shipped with that version, though. I'm using my own custom Geometry Nodes setup for hair cards. (I'd rather fake my own hair and know I have options than take the default hair how it comes.)

my only critique would be the hair just seems too shiny even for eevee standards. but maybe its just the HDRI your using

 

[TranscendentThots]

my only critique would be the hair just seems too shiny even for eevee standards. but maybe its just the HDRI your using

Hair shine is completely unaffected by the HDRI and other "real" lighting, (although I added a Value slider to tweak it for especially dark scenes where it can fight for attention with the eyes if left unchecked.) It's custom, in the shader. "Too much shine" is definitely part of what I'm going for with this project. That said, I've been working on softening and better blending the shine:


Is this better? And what else would you improve?

 

[TranscendentThots]

And now here it is with some color correction. Because nothing adds sex appeal like Bisexual Lighting. fun fact: I could have separated the red and the blue a little more sharply and gotten a surprisingly sweet sunset. Too bad I woke up this morning and chose smut.


Oh, whoops! I totally forgot to re-enable the suit after those closeups! Now the thread has nudity in it!

 

[TranscendentThots]

Okay last hair shine closeup for a while. It really helps to do the colored shine, then add the white shine over the top of it. That's one of those design rules I keep forgetting and then rediscovering.

I also made some other small tweaks which collectively make the overall shape a bit more coherent, especially near the bottom.

 

[HornySensei]

Okay last hair shine closeup for a while. It really helps to do the colored shine, then add the white shine over the top of it. That's one of those design rules I keep forgetting and then rediscovering.
View attachment 2614410
I also made some other small tweaks which collectively make the overall shape a bit more coherent, especially near the bottom.

looking good but the only thing that is bothering me a little bit is the scalp texture beneath the hair on the forehead, it doesn't quite blend with the hair cards in my opinion

 

[HornySensei]

Supersuit test. I don't even know if I neccessarily want to make a superhero thing, at this point, it's just bodysuits are the simplest form of clothing to make from scratch. (Just don't try to distribute them!)

View attachment 2614220
I wanna say the most glaring weakness of the piece is probably body language? But in my heart of hearts, I know that's not the whole story. There's something else wrong with this image. Something lurking under the surface. Possibly stylistic, rather than technical. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I can feel it. Or sense its absence. Or something.

And also what technique did you use to do the body suit?

 

[TranscendentThots]

And also what technique did you use to do the body suit?

Well, this isn't a tutorial, I was making it up as I went, but IIRC the basic workflow looked something like this:

• Duplicate the (already rigged) character mesh
• Delete unnecessary geometry (Head, feet) from suit mesh
• Reshape suit mesh to imply folds (less cleavage, less asscrack, no navel, no genitiles, reduce or eliminate nipple profile, depending on how ecchi of a final result you're going for.)
• Add a new Geometry Nodes modifier to the suit mesh and displace the geometry by a very small value multiplied by the geometry Normal. (Basically, a homebrew Displacement modifier. We're doing it in GeoNodes so we can add changes before and after it later. Think of the main horizontal line in Geometry Nodes as your own personal custom Modifier Stack.)
• Subsurf. (Again, directly in geoNodes so we can add nodes before and after it later.)
• Some sort of procedural Texture node to make the ribbing and panels. (I was using Brick, but Voronoi is also a great choice here.) Use the Position input to get your normals. (This was counterintuitive for me, at first, since I was more accustomed to working with Shader Nodes, but apparently in Geometry nodes you can just grab the raw Position input and any posing or animation you do later Just Works. It's not using the "real" world position of the mesh. It's using the domain of its default pose or something. This is why there's no way to get Generated coordinates in GeoNodes. You can Math them from the Position coordinates, which isn't possible in Materials since they are always evaluated "after" posing.)
• Use the Capture Attributes node to get the ribbing and panel textures, blur them in GeoNodes before passing them into the geometry Nodes Group Output, and name them in the Modifier Properties panel. Now you can use a low-res version of these textures in your Materials. (Rebuilding these procedural patterns directly in the Material Nodes would be preferable, especially for closeups or if you plan on using them for Displacement. But since there's no way to copy and paste nodes from Geometry to Materials, it's best to save this for last. It's a time-sink, and all that work will be thrown out if you change your mind later.)
• In Materials, use a Layer Weight node feeding into a bunch of math nodes to fake some stylized reflections. Ribbing attribute can be reused as an alpha to make the ribbing non-metalic. Basic Materials polish pass.

You should be able to google most of these steps. Let me know if you get stuck or if I skipped anything.

 

[TranscendentThots]

looking good but the only thing that is bothering me a little bit is the scalp texture beneath the hair on the forehead, it doesn't quite blend with the hair cards in my opinion

When you spend 5 seconds Overlaying your skullcap with pure white at 50% opacity to add an abstract corallary to all the hair shines, followed by 20 minutes of making comps for peer review. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



I hope this is closer to matching? There's really no way to make a sphere light the same way as a bunch of fake tubes on sheets, but I did my best.

 

[jackmancactus]

 

[jackmancactus]

Here are some tips and tricks I suggest. Note: I'm an amateur too and I exclusively use Cycles, so you may or may not find these useful

- The "Cinematic Lighting" course by Gleb Alexandrov (60$) :

You must be registered to see the links

IMO, it's a must-have, many many tips and tricks for both Eevee & Cycles. If the course is too pricey for you, Gleb shared some parts in his Youtube channel :

You must be registered to see the links

I got that the other day. Haven't finished it yet but so far it's really good. It was on sale for 45 (I think) when I got it, so I imagine it will go down again at some point.

 

[HornySensei]

Well, this isn't a tutorial, I was making it up as I went, but IIRC the basic workflow looked something like this:

• Duplicate the (already rigged) character mesh
• Delete unnecessary geometry (Head, feet) from suit mesh
• Reshape suit mesh to imply folds (less cleavage, less asscrack, no navel, no genitiles, reduce or eliminate nipple profile, depending on how ecchi of a final result you're going for.)
• Add a new Geometry Nodes modifier to the suit mesh and displace the geometry by a very small value multiplied by the geometry Normal. (Basically, a homebrew Displacement modifier. We're doing it in GeoNodes so we can add changes before and after it later. Think of the main horizontal line in Geometry Nodes as your own personal custom Modifier Stack.)
• Subsurf. (Again, directly in geoNodes so we can add nodes before and after it later.)
• Some sort of procedural Texture node to make the ribbing and panels. (I was using Brick, but Voronoi is also a great choice here.) Use the Position input to get your normals. (This was counterintuitive for me, at first, since I was more accustomed to working with Shader Nodes, but apparently in Geometry nodes you can just grab the raw Position input and any posing or animation you do later Just Works. It's not using the "real" world position of the mesh. It's using the domain of its default pose or something. This is why there's no way to get Generated coordinates in GeoNodes. You can Math them from the Position coordinates, which isn't possible in Materials since they are always evaluated "after" posing.)
• Use the Capture Attributes node to get the ribbing and panel textures, blur them in GeoNodes before passing them into the geometry Nodes Group Output, and name them in the Modifier Properties panel. Now you can use a low-res version of these textures in your Materials. (Rebuilding these procedural patterns directly in the Material Nodes would be preferable, especially for closeups or if you plan on using them for Displacement. But since there's no way to copy and paste nodes from Geometry to Materials, it's best to save this for last. It's a time-sink, and all that work will be thrown out if you change your mind later.)
• In Materials, use a Layer Weight node feeding into a bunch of math nodes to fake some stylized reflections. Ribbing attribute can be reused as an alpha to make the ribbing non-metalic. Basic Materials polish pass.

You should be able to google most of these steps. Let me know if you get stuck or if I skipped anything.

Thanks for the explanation brother, I'll check that out the next time I need to do something similar. In the past I always did this kind of thing manually without using geometry nodes (mainly because it didn't exist back then) thank goodness things are getting easier.

 

[HornySensei]

When you spend 5 seconds Overlaying your skullcap with pure white at 50% opacity to add an abstract corallary to all the hair shines, followed by 20 minutes of making comps for peer review. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

View attachment 2615561

I hope this is closer to matching? There's really no way to make a sphere light the same way as a bunch of fake tubes on sheets, but I did my best.

Much better now

 

[TranscendentThots]

Really managed to polish the makeup and hair shading today. I feel like the face and head are finally "popping."



Thoughts? I was secretly shooting for Sakimi-chan, but right now it's giving "Honey Select but with better hands."

 

[TranscendentThots]

Did some compositing stuff, still entirely in blender, that's frankly so quirky and bespoke, it may not be sustainable over the course of a whole project. That said, at least it looks a lot more like a 2DCG video game now.


The surface (art term, not 3D term) isn't quite where I want it, but I'm running out of ideas for how to improve it. Now more than ever, I need the community's feedback. How do I boost it from "competent mobile game ad lying about there being a princess" to "mid-tier pinup collection?"

 

[TranscendentThots]

Moar bewbz, less fake skin reflections.

Okay now I really am out of ideas. How do I push it the next 20%?