Week 18

Before anything else I quickly went back to the hands as I didn't like the way they were turning out, so I re-watched the Body modelling tips for blender video that 2 AM made and skipped to the part where he showed his model's hand. I kept looking back and forth to find on why his were a bit better, in the end I came to the conclusion that his hand was a lot more slender, and had more detail for instance he added in knuckles as well as Ulna bone bump which made the hands look better. His arms were more slender then my characters arms, so I made them a bit more slender and I thickened the palm a bit as well, as it was a bit flat. However I found that his hands were too big for my liking, the fingers were also too long, so I didn't follow his design exactly because there are some parts of 2 AM's model that I didn't like the look of, I thought some parts looked off on his model, so that's where I went my own direction and made them look the way I wanted to.

I forgot to mention but I also used this video by 'Just Tis Arts'(36) to get the arm details looking better, like the tendons and the knuckles on the hand, it also helped with getting the over all shape of the hand looking the way I want it to. I did also go back and look at other VR Chat Models to see on how their hands look, and it reassured me that my characters hands are fine.  

This Week I thought I would shake it up a bit and look at a different Youtuber on how to make the hair, mostly due to I like how this Youtubers hair turned out compared to 2 AM's hair tutorial. The Youtuber I will be following is called Darcy (37), and they made an amazing tutorial on how to make hair, what I have learned is that it is very easy to make the strands of Hair because you make a shape with edges and then get it to follow a spline which will make the strand of hair, the hard part is stylising it to make it look good, however this is also what is easy about it, unlike the body or the face if there is something that isn't right on the model it is very noticeable and cant make the whole model look bad, so you have to make sure the topology is perfect for the entire model, so this is why I am happy about the hair being individual piece because if one strand of hair is looking out of place or looks off then you could delete it and try again with no repercussions or hide the part that looks off with another strand of hair. Basically there is a lot of freedom with making the hair.

To Start off I create a Plane and then delete only the face, so that I am left with a square of edges, I then delete one of the edges and on the opposite side of the edge I deleted I scale it down a bit so I get a trapeze like shape which will be the shape of the Hair Strands. Some people use a triangle shape to create a hair strand which will save in polys but I think it doesn't look as good so I will just continue with the trapeze shape, I could also add more verts to the trapeze shape to get a smoother more curvy hair strand, however the down fall of adding another vert is it making more polygons in the future, which could lead to some performance issues. The hardest part about 3D Modelling is you have to balance Detail and optimization, always thinking if you can save polys but keep the detail. There is a way to bake high poly detail on low poly models but this doesn't always work and can sometimes look worst then using a few extra polys. Anyway back on track.

Then I make a path for the shape to follow, by pressing Shift + A go to the curve menu and click on path.

Then with the Path we go to the data tab on the right side of the screen, it should be a little green Arch Icon. From there go to the Geometry Tab and change the Round box to Object in the Bevel option, once on the Object box use the Eyedropper tool and select the trapeze shape which will get me the first stand of Hair.

After that I then shaped the path a bit in edit mode to make it look more like hair and I used the mirror modifier for symmetry. I edited the bottom and top vert of the path to scale it down so that the ends weren't square. Something with using Paths is that you cant just press S to scale the ends down for some reason instead you have to press Alt + S to scale down the path shape. The Faces were also facing the wrong way so I had to rotate them the right way, and just like pressing S doesn't scale the path faces, pressing R doesn't rotate the faces. It took me a while but I found out that the Key bind to rotate the faces was by pressing Ctrl + T. I also added annotations on where the hair should be so it is easier to know where to place the Hair pieces.

Next I Duplicated the strand of Hair twice, by pressing shift D twice. I then edited the strands of hair to different sizes as well as re-positioned them to make them look the way I want them to, I also twisted them to make it look more unique.

The Hair style I am trying to achieve comes from an anime I really like called 'Rising of the Shield Hero', the character I am using for a reference is called Raphtalia.

Next I added in the fridge I did change it up a bit when it came to the fringe area, so instead of my character having bangs they have a fringe instead, I don't know any other way on how to explain it, so I will just have to show you.

When it comes to VR Chat Avatars they normally have options for your Avatar that lets you change certain parts of it, so I added in a new part of the fringe that covers one of the eyes, so that it was more like the character that I had designed. When it comes to in game I can make it a togglable option so that if I don't want that hair style I can change it.

Next I added some hair to the side of the head, which I duplicated from the first piece of hair I made and edited it a bit to make it look unique.

Then I changed it up a bit and used a different shape for the path instead which was more of a circle shape. For the next part of the hair I made a really long piece which goes down to the chest area, I also made a really cool Hair split at the end which I had to detach from the rest of the hair, I also detached it  so that I could add in Hair beads to make it look better. With that hair piece done I have done about half of the head, and in my opinion the hardest part, due to the front part of the head having a lot of detail, when it comes to the back of the head I find it is easier due to it mostly being long strands of hair and not as much detail.

  

 Reference

36 - Blender tutorial, hand sculpting for beginners, how to sculpt hands with explanations (2021) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmaZ_Cp4Q4k (Accessed: 12 March 2024).

37 - How I make hair for vrchat | blender tutorial / speed modelling (2023) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPpOVxdeZPE (Accessed: 11 March 2024).