Alita 3D - v2.0

[kamugin]

Sigh! We should contract Light & Magic to see this Alita model finished

[moooV]

No, we shouldn't!

I've done two big complete images two days ago - I'm still looking at them. They're not 100% ready yet - I just don't know how to get rid of the minor bugs.

Also, I like it's look - everything is in place now, even the hair. I'm just not showing it yet - it still needs a lot of polishing.


PS.
Stupid toxik, I've moved to nuke. Anyway, it's a lot more awesome thing than toxik.

[moooV]

Ok, I'm ready to show her from the front. It's still quite buggy, but it's the best effort I've given.

Alita 3d model, front view. As promised (it's quite high resolution):

frontso.jpg

PS.
The back one is not ready yet - it still needs a lot of fixing to do.

[kamugin]

Ok, I'm ready to show her from the front. It's still quite buggy, but it's the best effort I've given.

Now she got a body... and hair, but she still lacks a soul

[moooV]

I didn't expect to hear that.

I've spent so much time making it (about 4-6 hours a day for about a year), that I'm sick of it already. Don't tell me I didn't invest a soul.

[crazyankan]

It's something about the color of the face that ain't good

Reminds me of the chick from Grunge

But I love all the details on the body =)

[bugger]

I didn't expect to hear that.

I've spent so much time making it (about 4-6 hours a day for about a year), that I'm sick of it already. Don't tell me I didn't invest a soul.

I have been lurking and followed this for quite some time, great job on it. People may feel that she is in the uncanny valley, but I think a pose and a different lightning on her face should come a long way to fix that.

[kamugin]

I didn't expect to hear that.

I've spent so much time making it (about 4-6 hours a day for about a year), that I'm sick of it already. Don't tell me I didn't invest a soul.

Sorry for the jokes, tovarisch. You did a great job, I wouldn't be able to do the same. I don't know if this is easy for you to do and she isn't finished yet, but if later you would put her in a better pose and give her face an expression she will look more alive, this was the meaning inside my joke.

[hepar]

I wrote a big post with comments about damascus blade, but it was lost when i sent it. Damn.
(Also i always "thought" that imaginos body has pattern as a damascus blade in close, since it's made from it.)

Now. Don't you think that hair should have a little bit more volume? More like 80th style?

[moooV]

Face color:
I didn't like it - it looked too yellow for me, even Chinese yellow, so it's got color corrected into a bit paler during post-processing the image.

Pose:
It's just a generic pose, which the models are initially created - it's just convenient. You can even google "T-pose".
These (front and upcoming back) images are in that pose, just to show her initially. Of course, the pose will be changed afterwards (it's even animatable). However, I haven't done any mimics yet.


Hair:
It's done for technical reasons:

1) I don't have enough RAM to handle all the hair in volume. I've even barely managed to get it into 12 gigs.
To really show the volume there are many times more hair needed - each hair is transparent and nearly invisible, but they build up opacity due to the density. I've used about 320k hairs - twice as much than a real human has. It's fine.

Also, the volume is present there - I've given it extra 150k hairs. Their contribution is barely seen, but they are in place.

2) More hairs in volume can't be controlled as I want them to - they keep intersecting the face when they spread. It's not my fault - it's just the way the default hair plugin in max works - quite buggy, I've spent a lot of "great" time with it.
Of course, I've tried a lot of different hair plugins, but they all are incompatible with mental ray.

3) If you look at the manga - in LO she has less hair and it's a lot less volumetric than in the original BAA.

Anyway, I won't redo anything now - it's done already.

PS.
In the different pose/from the distance it will look significantly better.

PSPS.
Blade:
Don't bother. I'll redo the material.

[kamugin]

1) I don't have enough RAM to handle all the hair in volume. I've even barely managed to get it into 12 gigs.
To really show the volume there are many times more hair needed - each hair is transparent and nearly invisible, but they build up opacity due to the density. I've used about 320k hairs - twice as much than a real human has. It's fine.

Is it really necessary to do each and every hair thread? Isn't it too much perfectionism? Maybe you can do it like in 99,9% of animes, like an aggregate of wide curves joined in sharp angles or something similar to that.

[Cailon]

Also, the volume is present there - I've given it extra 150k hairs. Their contribution is barely seen, but they are in place.

Spoiler:

Mustn't make a joke about their place and shaving. Mustn't make a joke about their place and shaving. Mustn't make a joke about their place and shaving.

I like her, given this default pose. I'm totally looking forward seeing her "in action".

@Hair:
I think it's not about more numbers, perhaps a little fluffier.
Although.... as I looked for recent examples of her A-shaped hair-do I saw that YK actually changed her hairdo again to what you modeled it like. Just the shape of the head and little extra volume...

Spoiler:

hair.png

[moooV]

Is it really necessary to do each and every hair thread? Isn't it too much perfectionism? Maybe you can do it like in 99,9% of animes, like an aggregate of wide curves joined in sharp angles or something similar to that.

There are serious reasons I've used that method. I'll even explain it, but, not to trash this topic up, I'll simply hide it into spoiler.

Although.... as I looked for recent examples of her A-shaped hair-do I saw that YK actually changed her hairdo again to what you modeled it like. Just the shape of the head and little extra volume...

A-shaped hair? Did you mean clustered? I've made it clustered already - look closer. Also, the explanation includes it.

What did you mean exactly?

Spoiler:

>>>Is it really necessary to do each and every hair thread?

Of course, I didn't create 500k hairs by hand on a hair-by-hair basis - that's just physically impossible (you will spend many years and go insane in the end, if you try). That's just obvious.

In reality it works like this:
1) You create guide hairs (I've used 125 of them) - they are generated for you.
2) You style them in any manner you wish
3) Any hair amount is generated in the volume between them, which is used in rendering. In my case it was about 500k.

Here's even a good illustration from the Hair and Fur manual:

il_wsm_hair_guide_styling_splines.gif

However, this isn't easy, even though it looks like it. It's a giant amount of pain in the ass, practically.

>>>like an aggregate of wide curves joined in sharp angles or something similar to that
>>>as I looked for recent examples of her A-shaped hair-do

If by shaping you mean clustering, then I've done it.

Here's even an image from the manual - in our case it's under number 3.

il_wsm_hair_multistrand_variation.jpg

Hairs from which everything else is derived:

hairguides.png

And the full hairdo (less than 1% of hairs is displayed in the viewport):

hairk.png

You can see that it's clustered (V-curved, A-shaped, whatever). Every 128 hairs, which are close enough to each other, spike together towards the tip. Also, you can distinctly see it in the rendered image. However, I wanted the root spread of each spike to be wider, but H&F's bug didn't let me do this. So, the spikes are thinner than I wanted.

Also, you can see sparse hairs marked with green, which fluff out of the main hair stream - these are the hairs meant to fill the volume (150k, yes).

>>> Maybe you can do it like in 99,9% of animes, like an aggregate of wide curves joined in sharp angles or something similar to that.
This can be done the cheap way, sure. There are even several cheap ways to do that with geometry instead of actual hairs.
Like these:
http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutori ... ndex5.html

300px-Birth_hair.jpg

And even like this (maybe it's what you've meant): http://durian.blender.org/news/sintel-model-update/

These methods aren't suitable for me at all - I need actual hair, because I'll need real physics simulated (wind, gravity, collisions with the body), I'll need the light to pass through the hair (you can even see that effect in my rendering, for example, at the top of her head), I need it to be as precise as possible.

That's why.

Anyway, don't bother.

Others, don't read the spoiler - too much unneeded explanations inside.

[Cailon]

A-shaped hair? Did you mean clustered? I've made it clustered already - look closer. Also, the explanation includes it.

What did you mean exactly?

Clustered? What? You're overestimating me, I don't think in those terms as I have no clue about CGI sculpting.^^
I meant hair-do, not hair. With her head in the middle, Afro-Alita's hair was shaped like an O around her head.
Later in BAA and first part of GLO they are more triangular (see picture).

Spoiler:

b.png

A.png

That's why I said A-shaped (or triangular-shaped), the shape of her whole appearance hair-wise. I couldn't come up with a better comparison.
However in recent chapters her hair was tighter around her head which I didn't notice until I wanted to show you that your CGI hair-do is wrong - and realized it's actually right (as the pics in my last post showed).

[moooV]

>>>(as the pics in my last post showed)

They didn't show anything - they just aren't working, the links are broken. I've PM'd you to reupload them yesterday, but you haven't read it.

[^Ripper]

It looks great!

I think the problem is the neutral development stance and blank open mouth facial expression.
Giving her a good (fighting/defense) pose with a matching facial expression would do the trick.
Also the uncanny valley effect is a bitch.

[fargred]

Such a detailed elaboration! Every line of her body. Arrr, she's beautiful. But i think disposition of her foots is invalid - No one will stand like this, if only he's on gymnasium. I almost like this face, discussion about it goes to that, how much native casts of features everyone can find, comparing to that image, which took as "main" (YK himself drew Alita differently from time to time)

[kamugin]

I understood your explanation about what you want to achieve by doing the hair that way, or so I think. You want this model capable to be animated, isn't it?

What I quite not understand is your comments about not "trashing" this topic. So, you open a topic to show your progress. I bet most of the people here aren't familiar with computer aided design and 3D rendering, so you should expect all kinds of silly questions and comments. There are forums created by computer designers where you could get much more useful feedback.

The only thing I learned so far: when I'll ever make my own fanart of Alita, I'll use paper and pencil =P

[moooV]

By trashing I've meant that the technical details aren't interesting to anyone here, there are professional forums for that.

I bet most of the people here aren't familiar with computer aided design and 3D rendering

That's it exactly! They aren't interested in hearing the tech details. That's why I hide them into spoiler.

so you should expect all kinds of silly questions and comments

They're welcome!

[moooV]

I've fixed nearly everything in the back view - it took several times to re-render completely, that's why more than a week has passed since the front view.

Alita 3d model, back view. Anyway, here it is:

backstn.jpg

PS.

Giving her a good (fighting/defense) pose with a matching facial expression would do the trick.

I'll do that soon - it's a good deformation test also. However, there will be no mimics - I haven't even touched it yet.

[Cailon]

Butt cheeks of steel...^^ Maybe they look a little to tight, though. If you look at a random sexy girl's ass I've just googled, the upper change over to the back (lumbar spine area) isn't that abrupt.
Anyway, it looks very cool. Say, did you present your work in a CGI-forum yet? And what did they say over there? You need some praise from pro's for this

[moooV]

I've smoothed that up several times while I was modeling - let's take it for a pose/camera position bad trick.
Anyway, that's what I've ended up with - I won't redo it already.

What about CGI forums or whatever - I haven't presented it to anyone and didn't post it on special forums - I've done absolutely everything by myself with no help outside. The only thing I've done is PM'd bonedaddy once in March with an early thing to ask his professional opinion.

Maybe I'll do that again within several days - I haven't decided yet.

---------------------------------

Aaaah, I've forgot.

I've redone the blade materials and done some post-processing. Take a look:

bld002s.jpg

bld003s.jpg

bld004s.jpg

bld005s.jpg

[kamugin]

Her butt crack is way too deep, on the other hand there isn't any suggestion of a pussy whatsoever. It is a so unbalanced design =(

By the way, that skintight "outfit" shouldn't be blue?

[hepar]

Blade is quite good. Maybe it needs a slightly colour change, to make black metal even deeper (or even inverting colours)? And since the blade is made with rare elements it can actually have different color - violet (if i'm correct, Kishiro drew it violet).
Yet still this blade looks very small. It's hard to make it look bigger (since it's an oversized balisong at the first place), though with such resolution it's not that matter. I suddest you to not bother with it now, but review it when you start to make a a full composition.

PS: the last thing, <rus>внутри отверстий, на спинке и на самом-самом лезвии(как ты и сделал) дамасск чистый, без паттерна.</rus> Also i don't suggest to make pattern perpendicular to the cutting edge at the very end - it looks unnatural in a close-ups.

PPS:Try this avatar, btw:

5zmwqb.jpg

[kamugin]

PPS:Try this avatar, btw: http://i52.tinypic.com/5zmwqb.jpg

Ok, I'll admit that I don't know wtf is this doodle, but I've seen it elsewhere besides here. Someone could enlighten me, plz?