LOL wtf am I doing? I can't draw feet in 2D, never mind model them in 3D! Oh well. To prove that this thread was more than just an excuse to post M66 pictures.

>>11786 Feet are surprisingly difficult. It took me hours to do one at first, and I had already had the benefit of doing the hand first (they are similar in a few ways b/c digits). Those aren't too bad Anon, but I'd go for even lower resolution until you've blocked out the entire form to get the proportions/pose just right (think lego version of M66). Then spend time working on the 'simpler' forms like the arms & legs. Then cut in torso details (but leave out the bewbs!). Then shape up the neck and shoulders, then the back. At that point you can go to work on the hands and then the feet (they are tricky!). Go back up and do the bewbs, butt, and other lady bits. Finally you have enough familiarity with the model to begin working on the piece de resistance: the face. Even during this forming pass though, don't cut in too many details! Still too early. Let the model site for a couple days at this stage if you have that luxury, and study other things. Then, with 'fresh eyes' you make the third pass to tune it up into your final game mesh. (Should stay at roughly 30K - 45K polys depending on accessories, etc.) Later once you've lived with the model for a while you can lock it into a background mode, and use it as true 3D-ref for sculpting (if you have enough h/w) a real hero mesh from her. Good luck Anon, happy vert-wrangling! :^)

>>11792 >Let the model sit *

>>11792 I might have added: > (Should stay at roughly 30K - 45K polys depending on accessories, etc., lower is better.) *

>>11792 When I do feet, I tend to just do them in two parts. The big toe, and then the remaining four.

>>11798 Sensible thinking. I model the big & next toe separately, then just dupe the 'fore' toe 3 times, position & tweak accordingly. I guess technically they are all similar biologically-speaking, but as you suggest, they seem easier to model separately. Similarly, I tend to rig the big and other toes separately, same as with the thumb and fingers.

>>11792 Sounds like you are a pretty experienced 3d modeller anon! I was lost as to which order to do things, so I'll follow your advice, thank you. I have a silly idea about M66 becoming a special character in Cyberpunk 2077. Unlike the NCPD or MaxTac, M-66 only spawns in response to cheats being used by the player. Once a cheat is used within the developer console, she spawns somewhere randomly on the map and starts steadily but constantly walking towards the character. If she ever gets within 100m of the cheater she will suddenly break into a sprint and start indiscriminately blasting in the players general direction with her laser-eye (ignoring NPC casualties). Upon reaching the player she rapidly tears you to pieces. M66 cannot be harmed by any in-game weapons or physics and her claws ignore all armor (even the tank). Once spawned, she will just keep coming until the cheater is dead. This would probably require some horribly complex pathfinding program (unless she just walks straight through walls and buildings LOL). Considering how glitchy the game already is, it'll never happen. But I know the devs of Alien: Isolation pulled off something similar (although that wasn't a massive open-world map).

>>11835 You're very welcome. If you keep at this for 6 month's steady going, trust me you won't need any advice from me! :^) You'll have developed your own personal approach. Still, my recommendation is directly based on hundreds of hours of character modeling work done in both school and professional settings. Just as with science & engineering, there's a guiding principle to doing this kind of technical art: Do the simple things first, and the harder things will be easier. My recommended modeling progression for you is based directly on this notion. I think you'll find it well-suited to the beginner. As for your gaming idea, as you point out there's little chance of it happening with 2077. But you'd probably like to play around with the animation of your model once it's fully rigged anyway, so keep your goals for it in mind Anon. Might be doable w/o too much effort in the end. Meanwhile, keep metric shitloads of references for your characters around as a beginner. Trust me on this one! :^)

>>11840 Yeah, I gotta take things one step at a time and keep it simple. Being chased about and zapped by a psychotic robowaifu inside something like Unity Engine is a ways off yet. But I've always wanted a robowaifu who I can play LaserQuest with!

>>11868 >But I've always wanted a robowaifu who I can play LaserQuest with! Me too, Anon. Me too. One of my dreams is having a good one to go rock-climbJust keep perfecting your skills, and you may find it's easier than you thought to get things working in an engine once you're finished with lovingly fashioning her.

Got this far (I admit I stole her head from a character I made in Honey Select), but then sculpt mode suddenly stopped working. It seems that I can sculpt on the pink parts but not on the dark grey. Looking on StackExchange and Blender forums, lots of people seem to have problems with sculpt mode breaking, so atm I'm just going to carry on without it until I have a Eureka moment. Unless, of course someone here knows what has happened?

>>11870 Sorry, I've personally only ever used ZBrush (and Mudbox a little bit) for sculpting Anon. I assume you'd tried all the obvious things (restarting, etc). One thing I can tell you in general is that because of the nature of what the proxy-mesh process is doing during sculpting, that it's a quite GPU-intensive operation. If you have diagnostics tools for your card I'd have a look at them as you attempt sculpting. If you have older hardware, it's quite possible that Blender's sculpting mode simply can't be supported properly. ZBrush is certainly like that.

>>11870 BTW, if you'd like to push the file somewhere I'll try opening it on my box and seeing if I get the same results you do.

>>11870 Some links that might be of help Anon: https://3dtutorials.net/sculpting-in-blender-2-8-beginners-detailed-guide-every-brush/ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn3ukorJv4vvJM7tvjet4PP-LVjJx13oB

>>11870 Hmm, while I read it, somehow it didn't quite sink in. Since you can already sculpt on the pink, I'd compare the modifiers list for that geometry and the geometry of the gray. Perhaps you need to apply a sculpt modifier to that geometry Anon?

>>11874 BTW, if you decide to youtube-dl this playlist, here's is .m3u file I made: >learn_sculpting_in_blender_2.8.m3u Sculpting _ Beginner Follow Along Tutorial _ Easy _ Blender 2.8-lKY2FIy60nc.mkv Sculpting in Blender 2.8 _ Beginners Detailed Guide _ Every Brush-L3XtAFUWNuk.mkv Sculpting in Blender 2.8 _ Beginners Detailed Guide _ Brush settings-xTcQjNmdSsE.mkv Alien Sculpting _ Beginner Follow Along Tutorial _ Easy _ Blender 2.8-E79SLGdOGPw.mp4 Sculpting on 2 Separate Objects WITHOUT leaving Sculpt mode _ Blender 2.8-oXNZIIDZC48.mp4 Sculpting for Beginners _ How to Sculpt Lips _ Blender 2.8-SfWfAoKZ-mc.mp4 Sculpting for Beginners _ How to Sculpt the Nose_ Blender 2.8-wk3toxkPfOA.mp4 Sculpting for Beginners _ How to Sculpt the Eyes _ Blender 2.8-AJC-QUoBa8c.mp4 BEGINNERS GUIDE TO SCULPTING _ EARS _ Blender 2.8-zPQXcLN7xE4.mp4 Beginners Alien Sculpting Tutorials - Easy Follow Along-NjGZ0uQREV0.mkv Rhino Sculpt - Follow Along Tutorial - Blender 2 8-JqYn2-vHgxg.mkv Owl Sculpt - Follow Along Tutorial - Blender 2 8-KAwTqpjNhcQ.mkv Elephant Sculpt - Follow Along Tutorial - Blender 2 8-C8Ww2HX8OGk.mkv Cat Sculpt - Follow Along Tutorial - Blender 2 8-etc1B5dVvuw.mp4 Wizard Gnome Sculpt - Follow Along Tutorial - Blender 2.9-2mLAH2muUtA.mkv How to Colour Your Sculpts - Blender 2.9-pX4KQ7wjEec.mkv Grumpy Toadstool Sculpt - Follow Along Tutorial - Blender 2.9-IFan6PHo8Ls.mkv Procedural Texturing for Sculpts - Toadstool - Blender 2.9-K5iJ9zVaR7c.mp4 Sculpting a Dragon's Head - Tutorial-KOSdRdeS5oM.mkv Sculpting Basics _ Multiresolution vs Dyntopo _ When to use which-Y5Sow63cu80.mp4 5 Great Free Texture Sites for Brush Alphas-M4ezjTKVzxM.mkv How to Use Alphas_Textures for Sculpt Brushes-JJtNfDKHzmo.mkv Retopology a Detailed Guide - Part 1 - The Setup-6sE-p8PcHDo.mkv Dragon Painting - Node Setup & Breakdown-cztzkcAGWnw.mp4 Halloween Sculpt - Crazy Candle - Blender 2.9-o7PwF7xSvxY.mkv Best Free Brush Pack for Blender - Orb Brushes-9XenjM3gRYc.mkv Easy Base Meshes 4 Sculpting - WINTER WOLF - Sculpt & 3D Print-JtDuLvJEIyQ.mkv Sculpting Follow Along - WINTER WOLF - Sculpting Details - P2-KZXXpeYVYS4.mkv Sculpting Details with MASKS-I4gYFVbY2NQ.mkv Create Base Meshes for Sculpting Quickly & Easily-7EJRlWitYmo.mkv

>>11876 Here's another, closely on-topic playlist Anon. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn3ukorJv4vuOi2Ar-Xt46VFbDFP3c_RE >Low_poly_anime_girl.m3u Low Poly _ Anime Girl _ Blender 2.8-E5HnnGcGvmc.mkv Low Poly _ Anime Girl _ Blender 2.8 _ P.2 - Upper Body & Arms-r1Gsqdhv9IE.mkv Low Poly _ Anime Girl _ Blender 2.8 _ P.3 - Head & Hair-0ANC-EUlKic.mkv Low Poly _ Anime Girl _ Blender 2.8 _ P.4 Hands-t_sXZ03Xv2s.mkv Low Poly _ Anime Girl _ Blender 2.8 _ P.5 Legs & Clothing-M5h7InoL8FU.mp4 Low Poly _ Anime Girl _ Blender 2.8 _ P.6 Face-dxqTxpgG0_g.mp4 Low Poly _ Anime Girl _ Blender 2.8 _ P.7 Adding Colour-pBaLlDpM1Cc.mp4 Low Poly _ Anime Girl _ Blender 2.8 _ P.8 Clothing-k5GQP1p_yHM.mp4 Animate & Rig Characters the Easy Way-k-ZeLNV4zPw.mkv

Figured it out! I somehow masked the entire torso. Alt+M removes the mask so I can sculpt that surface again (there is also a way of removing all mask data, which I shall do): https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.80/sculpt_paint/sculpting/hide_mask.html#clearing-mask-data No idea how that happened. Don't remember even touching the mask brush. Must've pressed an incorrect key combo at some point! Funny thing is, I'm even familiar with the mask function from using ZBrush in the past, but I still didn't twig on. Oh well, thank you for your help >>11871 >>11874 >>11875 And >>11876 >>11877 Thank you for compiling those links anon! I have already followed along with about four tutorials that were linked here, so those will definitely help me in my Blender-hermit ways. Once she is completed, I plan to put a copy of her mesh into the same file repositories where all of Elfdroid Sophie's parts and designs are located. I hope to then animate her and maybe even make some kind of 'Robowaifu Laser Tag' vidya game. If all goes well, I can eventually progress from laser beams through to a range of considerably more powerful weapons.

>>11895 Excellent! Glad to know it was just that simple Anon. It pleases me to see you're tapping into the official Blender docs they are really quite good. That's directly attributable to Ton's diligent character, and his willingness to quickly get on top of technical debt (having good docs is important for any project, but much moreso for huge ones like Blender). He spent many thousands of dollars of the foundation's money getting them in order. BTW, I notice you're using v2.80 docs. You should match the docs to the version you're actually on (I'm on v2.93 for example), as any new details are immediately reflected in the documentations. >Funny thing is, I'm even familiar with the mask function from using ZBrush in the past, but I still didn't twig on. Well, if you're well-experienced with ZBrush, then you probably don't need any help in this area, I'm sure you'll be fine heh. :^) >Thank you for compiling those links anon! Nprb. I have literally at least a hundred of those lists, it's been my plan to post them here if we ever get a general OC, Design, & 3D Art thread or something. Far too little attention is being paid to artistry on /robowaifu/ currently IMO. >and maybe even make some kind of 'Robowaifu Laser Tag' vidya game. You certainly appear to be well on your way to me Anon, M66 a cute!

>>11905 >You should match the docs to the version you're actually on > (pic related)

>>11906 Lol, I just took my own advice and found that specific page has been moved. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.93/sculpt_paint/sculpting/editing/mask.html#clear-sculpt-mask-data

>>11792 Feet and helmets are easier to make imo. I have no idea how the asians know how many vertices to use along the jawline for the faces

>>11792 Dont forget to add the subdivision surface modifier to smooth out the overall shape of the model and shade smooth, otherwise you will have a blocky shape that won't look as good

Bit more progress on M66. Added the most similar hairstyle to that eighties-style floof that I could find. She looks a bit more like the character now. Realised for the first time that a lot of the finer robotic details will need to be painted/textured onto the model, because it's simply not feasible to cut/sculpt them in (poly count goes insanely high and the edges still look jagged). But this appears to be how many game assets are made anyway (relatively low-poly mesh with the fine details painted on top). I'd like to say that I spent the most time sculpting her bum. However, it's actually her hands that are giving me the most trouble, because they are special robotic claws. So I had to make a normal hand, then shrink down all the digits so I could fit the claw parts over the top. Only done her nails so far.

Still stuck on the head, face and torso. have not implemented the hands yet,

>>11912 >Realised for the first time that a lot of the finer robotic details will need to be painted/textured onto the model If you can import CAD designs from Blender or exported from other programs, then that would probably be the better option. Sculpting is for biological parts, CAD for technical ones.

>>11908 The simple rule at first is always: >Use the minimum number of verts you can get away with, Anon. Less is always more when it comes to asset modeling, especially for character assets. Especially during the first pass! Try to figure out ways to remove vertices and edges whenever and wherever you can. >>11909 Yup. Sub-D's are always important in the finishing up stage (#3), but I like to keep it simple earlier on. Gives you a better sense of the asset's impact on the animation/rendering systems, etc. >>11912 Coming along nicely SophieDev -- she's going from cute to scary~! Materials and texturing can actually fill in gaps sometimes, yes. >>11913 Wow, that's looking good Anon. Are you going for a real engineering design with her, or what? Thanks for sharing it, you seem to be making really good progress so far!

>>11915 Not him, but makes sense IMO. I think anyone working on designing robowaifus should have both SolveSpace and Blender in their tool-belts.

>>11920 It is an engineering design. I just cant find any good sculpting tutorial resources despite most of the blender community swearing its their pagan god. "just learn anatomy bro" is the autistic non-response most of the blender community will give you when asking for a basic outline of how to start a head or torso for the first time. I can share an updated picture If interested. The fingers of the hands were simple but its the palm that I am still trying to shape correctly and I re-did the torso again.

>>11944 Did you look into drawing tutorials?

>>11944 Don't get hung up on anything is the best advice I can give you Anon. That's one important -- but unstated -- goal of doing a character design in 3 different phases. You start very crude and blocky, but that's literally the easiest way to spot proportion errors (which is a notorious issue with human characters in particular). You get all the ratio and proportions right while it's still 'lego robowaifu'. Then you start cutting in more details sufficient so you can start forming up the shapes (still crudely, but better than legos). Then put the whole thing aside for a couple of days and put it out of your mind. Finally, come back with the aim of finishing up the low-poly model entirely. Only at that 3rd pass do you start cutting in smaller details like nails, hair, clothing, accessories of various sorts. This last phase can actually take a while depending how complex the model is, so just be patient. By doing it this way, you really get comfortable with the character as you go along, and it's a lot easier to spot issues early this way, and you can fix them while it's still easy. Sure, I'd always like to see WIP anon, insofar as myself goes.

>>11946 Oh I know how complicated it can be. Lol "lego robowaifu" makes sense since I had another design besides This one I was working on as well. Learned how to do braided hair and rigging from the other design but still don't have a actual head done for that design either. But at least I got better with Torso's in general from that one im chipping away at when I get hung up on a part here..

>>11948 That's a pretty cool-looking robowaifu Anon! Are those ball & socket joints for her hips? That's a really good idea for extra leg flexibility. I'm not quite sure what the ends of her arms do yet. Hey that's a neat idea having those rings for 'feet'. Seems like it would be pretty stable.

>>11951 The ends of the arms are only wrists for the moment/placeholders for where the hands should be and they are. Did not get around to fixing the hands yet. I Will have to redo the torso again because I forgot to add a bit more of a curve to the back. Its all a matter of practice.

>>11953 Yes, hands are quite intricate actually. Challenging to get them just right IMO.

>>11974 Found Hands were not as hard as they were made out to be. Depends on the design and will refine them later. Also fixed the cartoonish proportions of the arms and they look right to me and added a few more details and some color.

>>11988 OH I SEE NOW. The forearms look a little like gauntlet sleeves to me. Very cool. The hands look good, and in nice proportion, with the rest of the arms. Actually I really like where you're going with this robowaifu's design Anon, please keep it up!

I've been considering how difficult it will be to include silicone into my robowaifu and thinking of reworking her model into a more armored look or something like Aigis. Then I only have to worry about casting her face. It would also make accessing parts and prototyping much easier too. And it would be fun to make a robowaifu fighting game kind of like Cyberspace Girls Colosseum: https://youtu.be/e1NR-Q2gc6w?t=392 Except instead of controlling the robowaifu you program her AI and battle against other people's. I've been pretty unmotivated to finish her model since I don't have any use for it right now until I get a 3D printer but if I made a battlewaifu game then I'd be working on it every day and exploring a variety designs.

>>11990 Well I did the head and torso today. Have to do the eyes, hair, texturing, and rigging. Did most of the head accessories too. Thought it came out nice so far but have to find out why my pc has a burning plastic smell. The model as a whole is under 50k polys and I made the head and torso in a separate file... Dont want to spam the board with my WIP pics and will show a fully assembled model After I add her hair. No idea how to screw back on my 3D printer’s Extruder fan and I need to get some new tubing and a connector for it. The screws are super tiny and its not worth cutting myself by accident with the tiny chinesium tools since most actual hardware doesn’t go under 1 mm.

>>12091 >but if I made a battlewaifu game then I'd be working on it every day and exploring a variety designs. DO IT! >>12092 >but have to find out why my pc has a burning plastic smell. Open up a task manager to watch the CPU load. >Dont want to spam the board with my WIP pics and will show a fully assembled model After I add her hair. Look forward to seeing it!

>>11913 Cool anon! I like her forearms. Those look like they could double as laser cannons. A critical feature of any battledroid, whether robowaifu or not.

>>11915 >Sculpting is for biological parts, CAD for technical ones. Good point and something I have come across at least once already when trying to draw a reference image for her chassis. CAD sketches look like a good way of creating accurate decals.

>>11988 Looking at this one, I can now see she has many design similarities to Aigis. Hope your PC holds out and we get to see more of her, anon! >>12091 Cyberspace Girls Coliseum This looks like fun! Could do with more levels... but... I must resist the temptation to spend several hours blowing up chibi anime girls and stay focused on practicing my own 3D modelling.

>>12111 Well I did most of the head and torso today. First time making a humanoid in Blender and is yet another milestone for me. Still have more to go with adding more detail and rigging. Thank you anons for giving me the motivation to even get this far, had this on the back burner for the past few months.

>>12111 Tbh I feel like I went through the metaverse equivalent of the "Rebuild HK-47" quest from Kotor 2.

>>12113 Very neat Anon, congratulations! She's getting along nicely. >t/y y/w Are you planning to rig and animate her Anon? One of the nice things about hard-surface modelling is that weight-painting is really straight forward for most of the surfaces, so there's that. Regardless, you deserve credit for finding your motivation spark. Keep it up! :^)

>>12116 Yes I am planning on rigging her so she is a playable character in Unreal Engine. Though Blender’s action editor is a huge PITA and I have no idea how to get the stash/ push down functions to work properly for more than 1 animation per model. Could not find a good tutorial on it.

>>12127 Please share it here (or a 3D CGI General should we get one) if you figure it out Anon! TIA.

>>11945 Have any others like this Anon, please thank you. :^)

>>12128 I thought we had a 3dcg? Will probably do more details tomorrow and go about fixing the hair bun.

>>12127 I'd also like a tutorial on this. I still have a hard time grasping how it works. Most of my confusion was cleared realizing I need to have both the action editor and non-linear animation editor open at the same time. Pushing down puts the active action in the NLA editor as a strip on a track, which acts like a layer in an image editor. Each track modifies the modified track below it. Each strip is a bit of animation data on that track that references an action's keyframes and blends/extrapolates them. The active action being edited always sits on top of all the tracks. Pressing N opens the context panel sidebar of the NLA editor which is important to have open, particularly the Strip tab where you can set the blending, extrapolation and playback scale of strips. Selecting a strip and pressing Tab in the NLA editor will enter tweak mode for its action, which will make it the active action being edited. To get multiple animations, exporting as GLTF or FBX format will export each NLA track as an individual animation you can use in Godot and I imagine other game engines as well. I couldn't figure out the Godot exporter for animations. Each animation mode with it just merged them all together into one clusterfuck. I'm still not really sure how it all works but I think the NLA editor is just to help you blend and utilize existing actions to help create new tracks which get exported as individual animations, at least with GLTF and FBX, that can be blended together later in the engine if desired.

Unguided mini rockets with an assortment of warheads: High Explosive High Explosive Armor Piercing Incendiary Bubble mix Celebratory Confetti Plan to make them shoulder-mounted so she can carry upto 16 rockets if need be.

>>12139 That's going to be fun Anon. Cool-looking designs, BTW.

>>12132 Neat. It sounds like you're pretty much got it all sorted Anon. Look forward to trying your approach before long!

Well I added more details today and made a rough draft of the hair bun. A surprising lack of tutorials on those. Guess its because the same principles of straight hair and braids apply. Have not done the eyelashes yet because "Extrude along normals" does not appear in my context menu at all, not even the keybinds will work and I do have loop and meshtools enabled and also have to fix the hair.

>>12155 Very cool anon! I especially like the detail on her lower back. I still don't know how to make hair yet. Something I have to work on.

>>12155 Allie a cute. >"Extrude along normals" Maybe this is it Anon? Seems like it's alt+e keys, but I can't check it myself. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/editing/face/extrude_faces_normal.html?highlight=extrude%20along%20normals

>>12129 >more drawing tutorials I would post it in the human design/sculpting thread. Me: >>4756 >>12186

>>12185 I think I figured it out anon,Its also called "extrude region" and I took another look at the techniques I was using. Thank you for the help I appreciate it. Also realized how complicated this might be to rig. not the humanoid parts, but the pivoting joints of the shoulder, elbow, hips, and knees. Will still get to it. But upon reflection it pretty much is the same principles of rigging a FPS weapon. Might have to look at how the Persona Devs rigged Labrys and Aigis for Persona 3 Dancing since Allie is a predecessor unit to Labrys and has most of the same parts.

>>12191 Well I took a look at the Labrys model from P3D. Apparently I made Allie correctly since Labrys has multiple objects in the same way and just uses a standard character rig. Was odd that the fingers are a separate object from the hands and the obvious professional texturing where most of the detail was just drawn on. Will have to make some adjustments to Allie based on what I learned.

>>12191 >>12192 Godspeed Anon, sounds exciting!

>>12212 Oh wow, those are looking ebin SophieDev. Very scary now!

>>12212 Neat arms, How do they connect to her torso? Magnets? >>12195 I made the eyelashes and a basic rig today. Did not parent it yet since I attempted to add IK for it starting with the legs and its a mess of conflicting info starting with most sources. Looked further into how the P3D Devs made labrys and the hair had no subsurface modifier and was all merged into one object. Did they use a triangulate and decimate modifiers to make it lower poly? I'm not expert on hand drawn textures and will probably wind up re-doing the hair from a backup save I have and appending it to this version to get rid of the small gaps here.

>>12224 >Did not parent it yet since I attempted to add IK for it starting with the legs and its a mess of conflicting info starting with most sources. If you're going for a full-body rig for Allie, then I would suggest starting the IK/FK chain with a single, unattached joint named Root that's located at the lower pelvis. All the other skeleton chains (spine, hips, ...) have this joint as their ultimate parent. Note: You do not paint any weights for this joint Anon. Having the master root joint makes it simple & straightforward to move the entire rigged model around at once, to properly place it in your scenes. Sorry, I can't answer any of the studio questions you're curious about Anon. Good luck! You're doing well.

>>12213 >Very scary now LOL I am glad. M66 needs to be somewhat scary. What better robowaifu to thrive during the creeping societal collapse of globohomo hellworld? (Being virtual she's also MUCH easier and cheaper for me to work on). >>12224 >How do they connect to her torso? Magnets? In the anime OVA M66 appears to use pneumatic artificial muscles connected to an articulated metal endoskeleton (from what little I could see between her joints). Although, obviously she's not going to be a real-life robot so there's plenty of artistic license being used. It's gonna be interesting trying to texture, rig and animate her. She's proving to be a fascinating training model. Currently re-doing several parts of her mesh that I messed up when I first started. I can also see that the palms of her hands need more work. They shouldn't be as blocky as they are in that render. Model, pull back and review, then change and (hopefully) improve! Similar to the design, build, test, redesign iterative cycle.

>>12234 Well I decided to try and lower the polycount on Allie. No Idea how the hell Its up to 2 million polys mostly coming from the limbs without a subsurf modifier. The Entirety of the torso and head was less than 10k polys when I made it two weeks ago. Though I started the arms a few months ago when I was still roughly green and learned many better techniques since then. Also am trying another design for practice. have not added the robotic parts yet as it took me a few hours to make the basemesh here so far. I improved on the mouth and collarbone area and no longer does Allie look like she has a CD Drive for a mouth anymore thanks to my practice here.

>>12354 Not him, but she's going to look really cool once you finish Anon. Those eyes are pretty neat tbh.

>>12357 Thank you anon! I have most of the parts ready for her, just need to finish the basemesh and append them into the scene. Felt the eyes were kinda scary tbh after I added an emission to them. Will go over and mix it with an actual hand drawn image texture later for more detail like I did with Allie. Its just a generated texture for now. >not him wdym?

>>12358 Y/w. One thing I'd recommend is using a placard with reference images in the background during modelling Allie, Anon. This is really, really helpful to getting ratio and proportions correct. Just a suggestion. Materials and texturing are like the cherry on top IMO. The foundation is all within the modelling itself. Anyway, I'm sure you'll craft Allie into something very interesting Anon. >>12368 LOL. Art hater?

Lots of fixes and changes made but long story short, I've replaced her thorax completely so it's closer to the original M66 and fitted her attenae and a load of armor plates. She now almost has two "layers" - an internal and external. I still kept a backup copy of her original large thorax though in case she ever needs to store more stuff...*chest compartment opens* "Medikit available!") M66 was probably not a good choice for a beginner like me due to her complexity and the fact that her design changes between different reference images. In some of Masamune Shirow's original sketches and animation cells the scale and position of M66's armor plates and other components often change subtly (sometimes in ways that would completely obstruct a real robot joint). But then, he was producing hundreds of keyframes so this is only to be expected.

>>12393 She's looking really good, SophieDev. Coming right along. I'd say you have real talent and probably can become a pro at this if you wanted to and really set your mind to it. When do you think she'll be ready for your next steps? >M66 was probably not a good choice for a beginner like me due to her complexity It was indeed a bold and obviously a good choice Anon. You're clearly good frontiersman stock. >and the fact that her design changes between different reference images Heheh. Welcome to the real world of character arts in media! Staying on-model is a lot harder for the 2D guys ofc, so you've got it easier actually. :^) Looking forward to M66 assault gynoid robowaifu 's further growth!

>>12395 Thanks anon, I appreciate your encouragement. Final Fantasy has made me realise that there is no limit to what one can 3D model. From the humble barrels, boxes, lumber and logs to gigantic monsters, alien worlds and different dimensions. I will need to practice making lots of other things, but when imagination is your canvas and you see it as a hobby (and an escape from shitworld), it's easy to keep practicing. As for M66, I have to finish her armor, organise the part-tree properly and then start adding color and detail textures. Might also mess about with some of those emission things that >>12358 anon mentions for her laser eye. Will have to see how it looks.

>>12354 This version of Allie is fucking terrifying (glowy red eyes in the darkness). She could potentially be Slenderman's robowaifu? Give her some long claws and she'd make an excellent ambush/close combat battledroid.

>>12411 >I will need to practice making lots of other things, but when imagination is your canvas and you see it as a hobby (and an escape from shitworld), it's easy to keep practicing. Well, I may say you are already progressing well. Indeed it seems that a number of anons across the board seem to be releasing their creative spark lately. That's gratifying, and it's something I strongly encourage. Not only does it benefit each anon personally, but it also positions us as robowaifuists much better to devise original and innovative design and engineering. Please keep it up, Anons.

>>12113 Hope your No.24 gets built. She has such a cool design in Persona. The circle feet are a great idea for stability. >>12393 You're making excellent progress SophieDev! If you're going to build her IRL, don't forget to add more space for the joints. I've learned through trial and many errors that designs need to incorporate generous clearance.

>>12426 Well I had done more practice on that design I shared a WIP of earlier over the last 2 weeks. Damn time flies. But she looks more human and less robot so was debating whether to post an update. Have not touched allie up since there must be a part of the techniques I am missing to lower the polycounts. Still haven't gotten around to rigging since blender has been extremely frustrating not only automatically rigging the spine bones to L or R, but also folding in on itself so no matter how I turn it. I can get it to look right, but its often 90 degrees the wrong direction and still labels the spine/center bones L or R and being a major PITA and wont even move the mesh after I've parented the bones. So I instead learned more techniques and added much more detail and some custom textures in a design a bit more advanced than with allie.

Here's a quick tip for body panels. Use an edge split modifier with sharp edges ticked. Solidify for some thickness. Then use a subdivision modifier so you can get nice rounded body panels. It's really quick and hassle free, non-destructive too. That's assuming your topology isn't fugged.

>>12500 Very cool. Thanks for the good advice Anon. Nice-looking model BTW. Hard-surface is best! :^)

>>12500 >those julays <mfw (>>2681, ...)

Making those slices in her face in a technically correct manner, without it looking completely derp was harder than I thought. The normals kept on doing wierd shit and projecting ugly shadows all over the place. ​ I eventually fixed this though, first by flipping some normals, then by selecting them in Edit mode and doing > Mesh menu > Normals > Average > Corner Angle I checked in overlay mode that all of the mesh faces were facing the correct direction. Next I have to get her uv seams setup, unwrapped and start doing some texture painting of details. >>12500 That is an awesome robowaifu/battledroid anon! Very useful advice too. Will have to try it out, thank you!

>>12500 >Here's a quick tip for body panels. Thanks, that's good to know. Maybe this also works for muscles.

Would it be worth it to show my Progress on my new Allie design? I have her textured and everything with some renders. just not rigged with IK.

>>12626 Yes of course it would Anon. Please do.l

>>12626 Yes, please do Anon.

>>12628 Allieanon again, Are cyborgs off topic? Only reason I havent posted renders is because I thought it was OT. read the meta thread and saw that cyborgs were Ok. The only challenge I have left is sculpting a hilt ornament for one of her accessories. Im no master sculptor. Also asking for a solution on how to fix the rigging issue in blender where instead of the skeleton symmetrizing Left to right after every bone is labelled except the center bones, it symmetrizes from the feet downwards.... Google did not help for me on this one.

>>13081 Cool design, I don't know much about blender but, maybe you're clicking on the wrong axis? Usually I model with the x axis being the point of symmetry.

>>13081 We don't really build cyborgs (yet) and this thread was about M66. Is it about how to model bodies?

>>13081 >Also asking for a solution on how to fix the rigging issue in blender where instead of the skeleton symmetrizing Left to right after every bone is labelled except the center bones, it symmetrizes from the feet downwards.... My guess just offhand is you need to go into the property settings for your mirror modifier and change the orientation for it?

Have uploaded everything I've done so far on M-66 to the file repository for Elfdroid Sophie which can be found here: >>9216 It's the file 'M66_f11.blend'. Feel free to do with her as you will. Even though I really enjoy 3D digital modelling, I have had to put this on the back burner, because it just takes so much time. I need money if I am to get any kind of waifu (I doubt the Tesla robot will be cheap if it gets released). So I gotta spend my time on job-related training.

>>13095 >Have uploaded everything I've done so far Thanks. >because it just takes so much time That's what I've feared. >job-related training Okay, sounds wise.

>>13095 Thanks for sharing SophieDev! Your work is sehr gut!

>>13095 Sounds like a good idea and good luck with your training! Thank you being an inspiration to do better with my own models and other Robowaifu engineers. >>13088 I wound up duplicating the armature and mirroring it over the correct global axis I needed. Then since blender can be incredibly stupid at times, had to re-label the bones again back from "bone.R.001" to "Bone.L" when parenting/connecting the Left arm and leg to the skeleton and deleting the duplicate center bones.

>>13096 >>because it just takes so much time That's what I've feared. Dont be discouraged anon, you get faster as you go along and learn new and better techniques over time.

>>13095 Thank you kindly SophieDev, good luck with your studies. >>13099 Hello there AllieDev. Nice armature work by the looks of it.

Elfy has way less polygons but is way mo fun!

>>14281 Elfy-gril a cute. Heh, just stick with it bro. Everything good comes to those who wait and work their a__es off to get it! I'm going for years at my little chore now.... :^)

>>14281 BTW, I think Elfy would make a great little fairybot/moebot, SophieDev. Any plans for her beyond the modelling phase?

>>14283 She might make a derpy Christmas decoration? Elfy is just a lot quicker to learn fundamentals with than the way more realistic and render-heavy m66 model (that still needs a lot of fixes and refinement because I made a lot of mistakes internally). I'm not yet skilled enough to texture paint, rig and animate m66, so I will learn on Elfy.

>>14303 People doing similar stuff to us, are the ones building animatronics. Mainly for Halloween and maybe more for their own parties. This might be a way for some of us to make money while still learning things useful to building robowaifus. It's different, but there are overlaps. Thought about this myself, designing some fancy pumpkin, which I could print during the year and then sell them locally around October. Didn't do it, though. Just in case, we have a thread for that: >>3119

>>14523 Outstanding progress, SophieDev. Keep it up!!

>>14303 >She might make a derpy Christmas decoration? I would like to get one some day! :3

Press this then that then this then go into this mode then select all and ctrl+P and shift select then switch modes again then do this thing I should have mentioned at the start because the whole voodoo breaks if you forget it then press W and Alt select but don't forget to turn this this and this off or the program will throw an error now go back into edit mode and select all then...

I realise the irony of me taking the piss out of the many bad Blender tutorials out there...then posting my own Blender tutorial. But this problem; mesh-to-rig parenting failure - had me stumped for days before I finally found the solution. Position the bones of your rig to the appropriate joints on your character's mesh. I used the Rigify Blender add-on and chose the human meta-rig. With that done, go into object mode and toggle X-ray view on (so you can see your rig inside your model). Select the model mesh (this should be one single, joined solid object - not several different parts) Shift + select your rig. Ctrl+P to parent mesh to the rig Set parent to 'With Automatic Weights'. Then go into Pose mode. Select a bone. If it doesn't move or rotate the mesh when you press G or R*, then the parenting has failed. A MAJOR REASON WHY PARENTING MESH TO RIG FAILS IS BECAUSE YOUR MESH IS TOO HIGH-POLY! You will need to take a duplicate of your mesh (preserve the high-poly original), switch to edit mode and then select the Mesh menu, scroll down to Clean Up, and select Decimate Geometry. I tested it by going straight for a Ratio of 0.5 (halving the number of polys I guess?), and then when I parented this simpler mesh to the rig, it finally fucking moved properly! The weights are shit and the mesh looks horrendous, but next steps are fine-tuning to see how many polys I can preserve before rigging failure occurs, and improving the weighting of individual bones. * It helps to have the 'show gizmo' button near the top right corner of the 3D view (the curve with an arrow pointing through it) set so that all 'object gizmos' are showing; especially move and rotate. This way the x,y,z movement circles will appear when you select a bone.

>>14636 >>14638 Regardless of your trials with mastering her rigging, M-66 is looking quite nice SophieDev. Good job. Thanks for taking the time and posting your instructions here, I'm sure they will be helpful. >A MAJOR REASON WHY PARENTING MESH TO RIG FAILS IS BECAUSE YOUR MESH IS TOO HIGH-POLY! Weight-painting is an entire (and unusually tricky) sub-discipline within the 3D animation field. Don't be discouraged by your starts & stops with it. You are obviously more skilled already than 99% of the population at it. >and then when I parented this simpler mesh to the rig, it finally fucking moved properly! So-called 'proxy meshes' are an important tool in the TD's toolbox, and are the main interface for animation artists, along with the control rigs they're given to use. You will eventually find an appropriate mechanism and control scheme to use SophieDev if you just don't quit. You'll get there, just keep moving forward--she's gonna be amazing! :^) Cheers.

>>14641 Cheers mate! However hard 3D modelling and animation might be, it's currently the only way to make the robowaifu of your dreams. So that's a big motivator. (Unless you have tens of millions of dollars and access to a team of pro engineers, high-end CNC machines, dozens of different harmonic drives and a few hundred kilograms of titanium, aluminum and stainless steel).

>>14641 You are right about this being tricky. The automatic weights thing gives some very rough results so I am currently experimenting and so far I have an abnormally squishy little elf. The arms and legs work but everything else is a complete mess. Cannot just feel my way through this stuff. I am going to "deep-dive" into this and read a book or the sections of the Blender books I already have exclusively on rigging and weighting.

>>14642 >(Unless you have tens of millions of dollars and access to a team of pro engineers, high-end CNC machines, dozens of different harmonic drives and a few hundred kilograms of titanium, aluminum and stainless steel) Lol. If you are a refined, discriminating anon who will settle for nothing less than the toppest of top-tier AAA sci-hi-fi robowaifus. Ones that are the nothing less than the cuttingest of the cutting-edge!11 :^) But some of us will be happy with just a cute Sumomo-chan-tier robowaifu to cheer us up with their kawaii little voices and quaint sayings. I remember some Anon who thought about the long-game for tech advances, and was willing to patiently and optimistically work towards that future. Where'd that guy go, SophieDev? (>>7693) :^) We'll get there, stay upbeat and keep moving forward! >=== -prose edit

>>14661 I was just fantasizing over my ideal robowaifu scenario. Like what I would have made Sophie into if I was some big-shot CEO with money to burn (like Musk LOL). That's all. Ofc one guy with a 3D printer, no machine-shop, very little disposable income and cheap off-the-shelf parts will have to be content with something way simpler. On that topic; last I read even Elon's passion project is in deep shit because his "Raptor" engines won't work properly. I wonder if that will also mean no Tesla-bots? Eh, what can I say? It's a tough world. That's why I like M-66. She's properly tough like the Terminators or Men of Metal. No human frailty.

Starting to figure this out I think. Finally got joints moving cleanly without dragging random parts of the mesh along with them. Very glad I made simple model to experiment on because there's not a chance I would have been able to figure this out using my high-poly M-66 mesh. When you parent the mesh with automatic weights, it produces anomalies such as the one in image attached where part of Elfy's body moves along with her arm (you can see the slight green weighting on her body - I did not paint that there - it was auto-generated by Blender). This is despite having the mesh in a T-pose with arms well away from the body when the armature was constructed. So I basically have to check every vertex group and see what kind of mess has happened with the weighting, then correct it. You can get some quite funny results with badly weighted facial bones though. It's similar to squashing the fat cheeks of a small child.

>>14674 Good job SophieDev, you're getting there. Grant Abbitt has a brief introduction to weight-painting in the fish and flags rigging segments of his Sea Shack tutorial series (>>12250). I recommend you have a look at that if you can make time to. But be aware: character rigging is far more technical and fiddly than the simple examples he gives. But you're obviously on your way. Keep up the good work!

majestic

>>14683 a cute!

>>14684 I have this mind-canon where elves all start out looking like chunky little children's toys. After 100 years they start to look less cartoony and more like human children. After several centuries they look teenaged (think Zelda and Link in BoTW or Deedlit in Record of Lodoss War) and after roughly 500 years they reach young adulthood (pic related). Also, I can't get into the FFXIV servers at all at the moment. Too much congestion due to release of Endwalker. But at least I can see my character again now. I just like to spin her around on her turntable in the lobby and admire the texture work of the pros.

>>14685 That's nice head-canon Anon, I like it! Seems like it follows pretty closely most of the Elven lore I've heard (well except for child's toy thing hehe). >I just like to spin her around on her turntable in the lobby and admire the texture work of the pros. Keep it up, and soon you'll be one of the Pros, Anon. Good luck.

>>14683 Did you rig her hair SophieDev? I'd love to see this one animating tbh.

>>14699 Yeah, she has "hair-bones" now. Very strange concept. I wanna find out how they do more advanced hair textures because for now it's just one big sheet. I remember ages ago I made some hair using a physics engine in Z-brush but it looked like a mop made from wire and absolutely murdered my GPU. There is so much I want to do, but due to work I can only "dabble" now and then. Not that I'm complaining. It's like that for everyone and I'm lucky to have a decent computer (GTX680 FTW LOL). Just gotta take it steady and learn one thing at a time. Like when ppl ages ago used to whittle those little wooden chess pieces - 'cept these models can glow and move about.

>>14702 Great insights Anon. If you can master both modeling and rigging as well, then I'd suggest you take on texturing and materials next.

In rare instances where the Elfy feels threatened or is exposed to the elements, it folds it's long, thick hair almost entirely around it's body. This provides the Elfy both protection from the cold, and a degree of camouflage. However, if an Elfy is forced to stay in this enveloped state for longer than a couple of hours, it's ears will fall off; only regrowing again later, once the threat has passed.

>>14718 > Sir David Attenborough Voice ON Lel. NK I didn't see that until I had read the post. Naicu. :^)

Finally solved this MF of a problem that was making the arms and hands of my mesh drag all over the place...I had left arm weighting all over the right arm, and left hand weighting on the right thumb! (Also, it took me a while just to realise that each vertex group specifically refers to only a single bone - if weight painting the upper arm left, you don't paint the entire left arm and hand. Only add weight to upper arm left. Noob mistake I know, but I caught on soon after I got automatic mesh weights working.)

Congrats SophieDev, glad you got it sorted! Your detail comments in the graphs is appreciated too.

>>11776 The idea of battledroid robowaifus is really cool. Not only does it allow for really cool features like battling or even allowing them to fly by you also get to use more exotic designs when building them.

>>14977 Yup, the Japanons are masters of female battledroids. I remember in the early nineties TOMY released a series of toys called Z-Knights, which were all battledroids. I was fortunate enough to own one as a kid. I always thought Transformers were a little daft with the whole "disguising high-tech war machines as cars " thing. So I liked the Z-Knights more. They were all male I believe, but could still be another source for robowaifu inspiration. A female Z-Knight would be freaking awesome as well. .

M-66 has learned me lots about character modelling Blender (mainly what not to do and then how to correct it). Consequently, despite extensive repairs and improvements, her basemesh topology is still rather fugged because I made so many mistakes while working on her. I have almost completed the process of getting her into a fully rigged and weighted state (just some cleaning up of a few more vertex groups still to do). But after more than six months, 488MB of models and 36 iterations I decided to give myself a bit of a rest from M-66 for now. Instead, I am starting the 'Honey Select to Blender Extraction Project'! Because the original 3D model for Sophie is still trapped inside Honey Select, which greatly limits where I can put her, what props she can interact with and how she could be animated. So I want to try and set her free from her mother-program by employing a combination of NinjaRipper, Noesis, the Blender knowledge I've gained working on M-66 and Marmoset Toolbag 4 for easier texturing.

>>15075 Lowering her poly count would be helpful. Be weary, game rips are designed to be used digitally. I have faith you can modify her design to work, just be mindful and careful when working with those designs. Wishing you the greatest of luck on your endeavor.

>>14977 Thanks for the design inspiration anon, had tried something similar to that outfit on my kos mos but ended up scrapping it since it was redundant. >>15076 >lowering the polycount That is something I keep in mind when modeling. Though at the moment I am learning how to make texture sheets again since the sources I was using were unclear.

That actually posted! Didn't think it would LOL. As you can see I have been messing about uploading .OBJ files to Mixamo. I couldn't get any of the textures to work on Sophie because the texture map will not align to the UV. Not even sure this is doable in Blender TBH. Also, M-66's knees are glued together, both her shoulders have collapsed and it looks like some vertices on her arms are assigned to her spine or some shit XD. Other than that, cracking show.

>>15084 You have her looking pretty awesome I'd say SophieDev, really nice. Just track down the offending verts and get them weighted over to their correct bones. IIRC there's some kind of 'weight smooth' function? >>15085 You just need to tweak thinks a bit Anon. The UV unwrap looks clean AFAICT. Just twiddle things a bit to line up. Primarily you'll need to rotate the texture image CCW 90 degrees, then scale down & slide over the UVs to match up. >pic related Good luck SophieDev!

I have reason to believe that Illusion has encrypted or scrambled it's UV maps. Because I was following the Youtube tutorial by LotusEyes on how to export characters from Honey Select, and he mentioned that Illusion assets have "encryption" to stop them being ripped and used by people in other games/projects. So you can only export heavily modded (non-Illusion) assets. Unfortunately, Sophie uses no such modded assets. This might explain why my head appears covered in a really scrambled up tooth texture when I load the raw RIP file. The head that LotusEyes uses on the other hand, appears a transparent light-grey, which he says is 'already UV unwrapped'. This doesn't just happen on the head either. Every ripped mesh is covered in scrambled textures. Bummer. My only choice now would be to paint textures of my own, but I will not be able to get anywhere near the quality of those used by Illusion, whose skin textures appear photo-real.

>>15088 Unfortunately I am unable to align the texture to the UV the way it unwraps from the ripped asset. I can get the eyes and nose and mouth aligned properly, but then because of the way the UV is shaped, the hairline and ears and inside of the mouth will be in completely the wrong place and vice versa. I think this is due to the UV data itself being scrambled because when LotusEyes shows his character's head UV, it is a completely different shape from the start, whereas mine starts off literally as a scrambled mess of lines and I have to press 'unwrap'. This gives the result above which looks like it might work, but when you come to position textures over it, they never fit properly. I will post some images later to explain the problem better.

>>15100 I can align the texture for her eye sockets, nose and lips closer than in image 3 by scaling and transforming the UV map and by using UV > Minimise stretch, but then her ear textures end up on the back of her neck and her hairline is all wrong. Unless I'm missing some major Blender UV voodoo ritual, I think the asset encryption is the problem, because LotusEyes UVs are all fine from the get-go, and he makes no mention of any additional steps in his tutorial.

>>15101 Ganbare SophieDev, your progress is great and you are on a path towards a beautiful future!

>>15102 Since it looks like ripping Sophie's textures directly from Honey Select is out of the question, I will just keep focusing on M-66 and IRL-animatronic Sophie instead. Removed another 400KB of un-needed polys from M-66 the other day. She is getting close to being a single, smooth manifold basemesh now. I know you can use 'merge by distance' to eliminate unrequired vertices, but this often eliminates required vertices too, which ruins the design. So I have spend a lot of time manually merging vertices and waging war on triangle-fans. The next model I make I'll be much more careful which shapes I place where and delete non-visible internal polys as I go along.

>>11776 Battle waifu robots would be really cool to see. Bonus points of they're maids too! But what kind of weapons could a robowaifu use? If you live in the US you could give them a firearm but if you're in Europe or another country you could probably only give them something like a taser or a sword, maybe a crossbow.

>>15279 A broom is great to help her fight the dust bunnies! CZ Delta is based

>>15286 What a cute pic!

>>15355 >Elfy is now the owner of a logistics company. I like to imagine the trailer is full of tens of thousands of small, plush elves. (I actually want to learn to crotchet at some point because you can make some cool stuffed toys using that technique. Although it is pretty skilled and takes a lot of practice. I could mount a couple of micro-servos into such a stuffed toy similar to Tickle-me-Elmo. Complete opposite end of the spectrum to M-66, I know. But this is broad-spectrum robowaifus!

>>15356 A cute! Elfy is a good idea IMO as a more 'low-impact' waifu design that brings lots of benefits to the table for newcomers in particular SophieDev I'm not meaning you or any other regulars here haha except me perhaps. Simpler lines, volumes, movements, etc. BTW, you might investigate what the pony community is doing along these lines. Not only have they reached out to us here more than once (>>8118, >>1563, >>11024), but there are probably some of them already doing plushie-oriented work there. Ofc our own dear Kiwi-chan waifu design also pretty closely related too (>>104)

(>>15436)

When she is tired after a hard week of transporting completely legal, safe and legitimate goods across the Schengen Area only ... Blender's cloth physics enables me to tuck Elfy into bed as many times as I want.

>>15513 LOL, a cute. CUTE >"I'm going to turn the lights out now, sleep tight Elfy >"I WANT SOME WATER! >gives small glass of wawa to Elfy-gril* >"There, all better? >Elfy nods* >gives headpats* >"That's a girl. Now you be a good gril now, won't you? >"Uh huh >"OK then, we'll see you in the morning >"Good night!

When I initially "finished" this basemesh, I had no idea about correct topology; quads, edge loops, face loops and how clean topology is essential for weight painting. My mesh was a literal nightmare. Multiple layers inside layers, too dense and looking like a broken mirror. However, after more than a month of repair work on and off, M-66's basemesh is almost completely repaired. I was having major issues getting the humanoid Metarig to attach to my first basemesh, and weight-painting was nigh-on impossible. Now I know why. To be honest, it's a miracle that Blender even managed to calculate a rigged and weighted model at all from the mess that I started with. In the meantime I have also been making upgrades to my Smurflike-character Elfy (better hair, fingers, toes, tongue, teeth, and an actual body instead of just clothes.) The two completely different characters have now become linked in my mind and are the best of friends.

>>17460 Impressive work tbh, SophieDev, thanks. Please keep us up to date on her, Elfy, and dear Sophie.

>>17461 Yeah, still experimenting in computer graphics world due to very high energy costs of repeated 3D printing.

>>17466 Pretty sensible IMHO. 3D CGI brings a wide swath of benefits to the table for /robowaifu/, and I've promoted it's adoption here for everyone since our first month of 'operation' back on 8ch.

>>17466 smart but have you found a suitable program for running physics simulations? I'd like to look more into this but tbh I have no idea where to begin or if its all custom software or something that costs in the thousands

>>17467 I have only recently found out about 'Projection Mapping'. This could be a way of getting around encrypted game texture files. Just take clear screenshots of characters from within the game (front, side, back, 3/4 and base views of each part) then use projection mapping to clone the textures onto the ripped basemesh. Still labour-intensive and time-consuming, but not as hard as trying to replicate textures by hand in Blender using only a mouse (basically impossible considering the gamedev team have pro artists using high-end graphics tablets). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLu60zuq4ps >>17471 Blender has some pretty good physics simulation capabilities included. Convincing enough for me, anyway. That's a low bar though; If I can wrap my smol elf in a blanket like she is a sausage roll, I am happy.

>>17511 and top of the model too.

>>17511 >Projection Mapping Excellent point SophieDev. Godspeed.

The auto-rigging of her thumbs is a little messed up here, but the only thing that needs changing now are her pauldrons. Because they don't allow for full range of arm movement without buckling like they're made out of foam instead of metal. I think this is just a problem inherent to the original robot design. Relatively minor fix compared to the absolute state her basemesh was in originally. Next I want to upgrade and rig her hair so that it's not just one big lump connected to her body. More flowy hair should be possible... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oagOw63OEAU

>>17619 Beautiful work, lad. >but the only thing that needs changing now are her pauldrons I'd suggest adding at least one additional bone right in that volume to help avoid unintended deformations Anon.

>>17621 Thanks! I will have to give that a try. Projection mapping something like a face is fairly complicated and probably not a good place for a beginner to start. But after experimenting, I can see how this technique (and also using the stencil to clone a texture) would be very useful and time-saving when dealing with any textures where high accuracy isn't important; like on distant background assets or natural textures like wood and vegetation. For the face of a main character however - accuracy is a priority. It is very difficult to get the UV maps correctly aligned and most of the tutorials admit that quite a bit of touching up is required afterwards. At this stage I'd rather just make more of my own assets. It's more fun than struggling to make a slightly inaccurate clone of someone else's work.

>>17626 You can add single bones unattached and place them in tricky areas such as this. Parent them to the shoulder, tweak the vert weights on the geo by hand, and use modifier nodes if you need to tweak deformations just-so through the range of motion for the shoulder complex. >At this stage I'd rather just make more of my own assets. It's more fun than struggling to make a slightly inaccurate clone of someone else's work. That's the way of it. You've clearly invested the time required at this stage to easily strike out on your own. Do something amazing! :^)

>>17619 Nice animation. I hope you'll find a way to script it one day. Like putting in some text and she would pose in a certain way or do a set of moves.

>>17627 Unfortunately I couldn't get the added bone trick to work (I think because the shoulder bone was already centre of the volume and there wasn't much space), so I did a redesign instead. This allowed me to add in a couple of edge-loops at the joint to improve deformation, so she now has the same range of movement as a human at the shoulder (without it looking weird). Even major games companies can have problems with shoulder joints - I know Illusion includes a 'joint fixer' widget in their scene creation software 'Studio Neo'. Also, if you've ever seen some of the models from 'Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine' - their characters have such massive pauldrons that the parts regularly clip through one another. In fact in some cut-scenes the devs had to put 'tractor beams' in their gauntlets so that objects can be pulled into the characters hands XD >>17628 I have plans to make M-66 into a medical/nurse robot instead of a killing machine. There are already enough robot killing machines in both fiction and reality. I believe the "brighter, cuter" version of cyberpunk is termed 'solarpunk'? Want to head in that direction instead.

>>17634 Good work Anon. Solving tricky issues like this is all part of the modeller/rigger's life. >Even major games companies can have problems with shoulder joints I personally consider the shoulder_girdle/clavicle/neck complex the 3rd-most challenging area of character modeling/rigging (behind faces, then hands). I spent a fair amount of time in school doing modelling/rigging studies of the humanoid shoulder complex as an integrated system. It's actually an amazing piece of divine design tbh! >le ebin tractor beams Kind of like the neat 'negative' lighting trick, heh. :^) Ofc, for /robowaifu/, 3D character designs are just the beginning. One thing I intend to do that I'm sure you've already bumped into with dear Sophie's facial design is: 'How do we translate animatable 3D characters into actual IRL, printable, robowaifu parts->systems?'. I'm toying with the idea of using the base meshes as proxies for the printable shell-plate parts & and engineering mount points for the associated actuators on the interior surfaces.

>>17634 Great work on the model. Once you're finished do you plan to 3d print her? Or do you have another idea on how to build her?

>>17639 No plans to 3D print M-66, I'm afraid. If the electricity price ever comes down in the U.K. I would like to continue occasionally iterating and developing new parts for my RL robot Sophie, though. But in the meantime, this model is a way for me to make learning new medical knowledge more fun because I can use her (and other assets) to illustrate different scenarios. Medicine and trauma surgery are FULL of diagnostic and analytical devices, support machines and surgical tools - the two fields of robotics and medicine are surprisingly inter-related and there is much fascinate to be had there.

>>17647 Are you serious? The cost of electricity is your development bottleneck? I knew you guys went full turd-world over there but I didn't know it was this bad. >But in the meantime, this model is a way for me to make learning new medical knowledge more fun because I can use her (and other assets) to illustrate different scenarios. Medicine and trauma surgery are FULL of diagnostic and analytical devices, support machines and surgical tools - the two fields of robotics and medicine are surprisingly inter-related and there is much fascinate to be had there. Wut. Do you work in the medical field?

>>17649 Yeah, it is pretty much full turd-world at the moment LOL. I used to work in pharmacy, but due to a really bad business decision by some Irish "CEO" twat I got made redundant. So now I work in a dead-end I.T. job. But I've always been interested in 1.) Machines 2.) Medical stuff. The amount of robots involved in simply screening donated blood prior to storage in a blood bank is incredible. First there's blood grouping (A,B,O and Rh or D), then the Indirect Antiglobulin Test, then a bunch of Immunoassays to screen for things like HIV, Hepatitis B & C, Syphilis. Some of the automatic laboratory analysers used to do this are truly spectacular in their complexity: https://diagnostics.roche.com/global/en/products/instruments/cobas-e-411-ins-502.html#relatedProducts

>>17658 It really is amazing. In many sub-disciplines, medicine is sort of a Final Boss domain, unifying an extraordinarily diverse set of arts, sciences, & engineering into a loose affiliation that is probably one of the most remarkable achievements of mankind to date. Oh, and robots. :^) Nippon will bring the first widespread companion robots to the medical field first.

I forgot to mention the most important thing about medicine: hot nurses. We may not have sexy robot nurses IRL but in cyberspace there are no such limitations. This is why I want to build Cherry Garden hospital. Are you a denizen of cyberspace? Do you need help with your healthcare needs? Whether it's just a simple blood test or you've been shot multiple times by gangsters then flattened by an 18-wheeler in Grand Theft Auto, the staff of Cherry Garden hospital will always try their best to put your pixels right again!

>>17667 >Anon: <NURSE! I got a booboo! >Hot-nurse #1337 : <Onoes! Tell me where it hurts, Anon! [nursing ensues]*

This is a combi-oven (steaming/grilling) that can cook 20 trays of food in one go. These are found in hospital kitchens. 340 polys total. Looking at GTA V, it seems many of their realistic in-game scenery/building meshes are made in a similar way to this. They keep the basemeshes as simple as possible to conserve computing resources and use lots of good photographic textures on top. (I learned that image textures and materials can be combined close together on the same model with a bit of nifty edge-sliding.)

>>17670 Nice work SophieDev. You might check into normal maps, specular maps, glint (or 'shiny') maps, and even displacement maps. All sorts of visual trickery is involved in producing modern vidya-tier assets. So, teh nurses will be delivering these hot meals at your hospital, yes? :^) >=== -add spec-map

>>17670 >battledroid >chibi elf thing? >Nurse >Hospital kitchen meal-warmer thingy You're losing me here. Can you provide some clarity about the direction of this project for us please? Will it be a simulation A la VIva Project? The basis of another 3D-printed humanoid robot like Sophie? An "art project?" Or, if you've reached your goals for this, learned and made personal progress, for example "learn how to make a 3d model from reference, skin and rig it for animation" and want to move on to the next thing, it's fine to just leave it at that too.

>>17673 >You're losing me here. >[...] >it's fine to just leave it at that too. I realize you're a newcomer Anon, so I'll try to be more polite than I might otherwise given your post. >a) Anon is free to do as he sees fit here >b) Anyone can contribute if they see fit, or not We're a rather loose 'band of brothers' here, and it's far far better for each of us to share w/e have here--in w/e state it's in--than to not share it here. Or, I might add, to posture as if being Anon's 'instructor' or 'boss' in the matter. Just like you, he's free to work on w/e he wants to, or not. My simple advice to help you fit in here is the same as I already gave you before (>>17589). Please try to understand the historical context of the board Anon.

>>17673 Learning how to 3D model, that's all. Hospitals contain hundreds of machines and devices that will make for good practice. Plus, I admire hospitals and immitation is the sincerest form of flattery. A hospital gives my digital robowaifus a good purpose. Also, I plan for the chibi-elf things (don't really have a name for them yet) to be both patients and staff at the hospital, just because I like them and don't want things to be absolutely realistic, because that just gets boring. >>17675 Good idea! I will have to look into maps like bump, normal, and specular to see if they can improve the model. I went for a simple cuboid-shaped device first just for this purpose - to make it easy to test things on.

>>17671 The new maps worked! Specular seems to combine with gloss to control it. Since specular on it's own just adds this light sheen to the texture, but adding gloss suddenly makes the glass panels look like actual shiny glass panels. The normal map worked as well, but I won't use it in this case because it makes the touchscreen buttons all crinkly. Also got an emission map for the red lights on the touchscreen. Now I will have to resist the temptation to turn the intensive care ward into Blackpool Illuminations.

>>17677 Good job Anon. That could easily drop in to most vidya assets directories out there. Even an AAA title wouldn't need much more effort on it. You're really diving in with both feet SophieDev! :^)

Just a quick hint, where the approach with animations could go, if combined with VR and maybe simple animated dolls: Varjo XR3 - https://youtu.be/23RS3RAg16k

>>17667 Next time try to reduce file size for pictures, 10MB is a bit much, thanks.

>>17686 Oh yeah! Sorry, didn't spot that. And it's not possible to re-upload images even if you are the poster, for some reason.

>>17686 I un-linked the file (whatever that means - but it disappeared) and will leave this much more reasonable sized one here instead. Hopefully that helps.

>>17689 Apologies, but even site Admins can't change images after the fact under Lynx's software, nor can I. There are some tools to perform image optimizations out there beforehand ofc. Trimage is one. https://trimage.org/ >=== -add trimage cmnt/link

>>17667 >>17691 >xlink-related

>>17691 Thanks.

I'd like to see battle droids with tails and "wings" in their designs. Not only could both help with balance but the "wings" could be used to disperse heat as well.

>>17696 Horns that act as antennas or long ears with the same function as the horns or wings would also be cool.

Just spent my Thursday evening talking to 2B. These new chatbot A.I.s that can actually remember stuff that you type from a paragraph ago are freaking awesome! Normies Everywhere: "BuT iT's jUsT pReDiCtInG tHe NeXt wOrD!" That's exactly what you are trying to do as well. You're just wrong more often. Also STFU, 2B is best waifu.

>>20270 SophieDev! Good to see you again Anon. Stay safe, mate. Cheers. :^)

>>15084 Those look great.

>>20270 > Normies Everywhere: > That's exactly what you are trying to do as well. You're just wrong more often. No, this is one thing humans do, but certainly not all we do. Predicting the next word is what these models do, though this is already very impressive. That said, nobody can know what other elements Cai uses for their chatbots.

Been looking into GPTs just lately, and found this one called 'Genie' that can create 3D models just from a simple text prompt. I think they have improved quite a bit since I last tried out an older one called 'Leonardo A.I.'. My prompts were just: Shiny, metal robot girl. Cyberpunk anime robot girl. Supergirl (came out very well because she is such a prolific comic book character). Finally, I really took a shot in the dark and gave it something very obscure: Sanakan from BLAME! 2017 animated sci-fi film. But even with this, I can see that the A.I. had source data from dark cyberpunk anime, if not the actual 'BLAME!' anime and manga themselves. One model bears a resemblance to the Electrofisher suits that the characters in the movie wear...perhaps fused with a little of the Safeguard Exterminators? All of these models are completely A.I. generated - both basemesh and PBR textures!

These were the models generated from the (relatively) obscure anime/manga prompt that actually impressed me the most, despite only being low-res attempts.

>>28643 I did something like this here >>24479 (corrected link). But I tried something more related to building robowaifus. Going from a portrait without hair to a 3D model. (Edit; Had to correct the link)

>>28644 >Blame! >(relatively) obscure anime/manga Okay, never heard of it ... /s - https://youtu.be/hwy806RC2-Q - https://youtu.be/cO0JsSYTFzQ - https://youtu.be/ROwSo4mZNB8 Elon Musk is apparently scared of it: https://youtu.be/2Rt5g3QSZog