VIVI - TALES OF THE 8TH DESIGN (PART 3 - THE RIG AND SHADERS)

Welcome back to the crack den known as my blog on modelling Vivi. If you have not read the previous part, here are the links to that. To recap: I made a reference sheet with some design changes like haircuts, clothes, and shape. Then, I got out of my comfort zone and switched from Blender 2.79 (the last update to the old UI) to 4.2.1, slowly getting used to the new UI and some new features that I don't get from 2.79... Like edge creases and custom skyboxes that had it's own lighting.

PHASE TWO POINT FIVE: Other Updates.

The First Render. The model's then-current state after the events of Part 2. Pic above is just the thumbnail for the article.

By this point, I lightly updated the topology a little bit and inserted some shape keys. If you look at the strange floor texture, that's AI generated. I WON'T use it in the final piece, let alone use it on Vivi herself. These AI textures are there, temporarily. Skyboxes are human made, though.

:)

Some things I did add was simply add both a tongue & teeth model, remodel the hair to be asymmetrical, and some more shape keys. Also, I practically spent the day tooling around with these custom skyboxes and the shaders, which I decide to ditch the toon-shading with a more realistic one. The eyes only used the same texture as a specular one (I may have to replace it with a different one later on).

For the sake of showing everything else, I added clothes.

One temporary addition are literally clothes. I can't show her bare forever in this series. Took me a while to get these modelled properly.. THEN...

She's unpleased.

I added a tank top, updated the shaders, added more mouth shapes (for speaking), and a tacky choker just to mask off the seam between the head & body ('cuz I didn't merged them yet). Also in case you haven't noticed: I remodeled her ears. Originally it's meant to have a folded look, but decide to revert back to the V6 design but kept the muff fluff. By this point I got caught in a nasty little snag: I can't apply the mirror modifiers because it had shape keys. 

So here are my options: 

A) Get rid of the shape keys, apply the modifier, and painstakingly redo the whole thing again
B) Make separate models based off those shape keys (which will take FOREVER & waste resources)
C) Find a plugin that overrides that restriction.

Fortunately, I chose C and a friend in a Discord server recommend me that very Python script that could do that. Now I have it installed at the moment, but did not do the whole process yet. The next thing to do now is fuck around with the background some more (seriously, this shit's fun to me).

Vivi in a hotel bathroom themed background.

PHASE THREE: The Rig.

Now, FINALLY time to commit some rigs. Now on the last article, I already made the skeleton, let alone rigged them eyeballs. Before I get to the main body which is the main focus, I have to start off with the smaller bits (ears, hair, and tail).

Don't let your eyes deceive you, her neck isn't deformed, that's just the hair.

Now, the rigging here is pretty rough, notably her hair bangs looked like blue jerky. One problem is her earring, which I parent that with her top ear bone. However, if I did rotated that, the ear bends, but the earring desyncs which is somewhere in another part of her ear or just outside of it. I could do the simple thing and move said earring somewhere else and move the bones to be in sync of the ears...

The hair issue is quite easy: In the modifiers tab, just move the "Armature" to the top, and everything will smooth out. For the earring, I moved it higher up on the ear, parent the earring bone to the top ear bone, and re-weight paint it.

After I rigged the hair, the ears, tail, and even the tail - I get to work on the main canvas which is the full body. I know automatic weights would do the work, but I prefer the ways of weight painting the whole thing myself. Besides, automatic weights ain't perfect anyways, and some bones do need more attention than others. The end result below is the whole morning's work of me weight painting the ever-loving hell out of the whole body.

Test rig render. I didn't rigged her clothes at the moment.

Coincidentally, this is the similar pose I did for the V6 design. It's not intentional.

The rigging itself isn't perfect - The foot rig isn't that great, her left foot acts weird than her right, then her hands are messy to fiddle around, and the weight painting on her crotch area needs balancing so it doesn't look fucked up.

Weight paint woes of Viv's crotch being more exposed than her cheeks.

I didn't implement any breast physics yet, and the hair also doesn't have physics, but used a stiffer approach. I remember using a lattice method for the breasts and the hair I used something else, but involved pinning & how stiff the "cloth" is. I dunno if this version of Blender had those features still, but best I should know when I get to it.

Wiggle

The next thing I did is to implement an addon known as "Wiggle Bones," by Shteeve3d. This is a more simplified instant jiggle where you skip the tedious process of inserting empties, loose mesh, etc. This does all the work, and it's not perfect, but I keep it as is.

This one is just a voice sync test, utilizing the shape keys in conjunction of the jaw bone for mouth movement. The voice clip obviously doesn't fit with her character at all, but I need the excuse to put a Filthy Frank reference.

Now tune in next time where the next painful phase begins: The clothes. Pic below is the recent render where I mixed the summer & autumn casuals. Mesh & textures are incomplete, duh.