Renamon 2.0 WIP 2

Hi! Sorry for not showing anything sooner, but the cold that I catched, got a lot worse, sore throat, coughing and I lost my voice, which really impacted my energy to keep working. And then Easter came, and I went and spent the day with close and distant family relatives, which I hope all you had a fantastic Easter as well, without being sick like me hopefully. :P

But I'm beginning to get better, and while the coughing is still bad, I've regained some of my voice back so I'm getting back on track with the new Renamon model.

I've completely retopologised the whole character and UV mapped it! In case some of you don't know, UV's are basically the data that tells the software on how to apply a texture to a 3D mesh. This is done by cutting the character into several pieces, as if you wanted to lay down the character completely flat. We then paint on these UVs to create the various textures we need!

This is why she has is this weird checker pattern to her right now. This particular checker map helps us artists to see if there is any stretching occurring and if everything is more or less uniform. And while I think my UV skills need to still improve, she is pretty much good to go!

However, before I start painting her, I want to go ahead and start creating her Rig. A rig or an armature for those that don't know, is essentially a Skeleton that we use to control the character for animation.

Those green shapes are called "bones" and they serve to mimic real bones, muscles and even tendons. They have many powerful features and it can allow us to do very cartoony animations, with excessive squashing or stretching or very realistic animation.

In my case, since I'm aiming for a more realistic style of animation, I'm aiming for a rig that closely follows human anatomical bone and muscle structure to get the most realistic movement possible.

This is why, around her shoulder, you see many bones, the front ones are actually meant to represent the Pectorals while the ones on her back, represent her Scapula.
So, that when her arm rotates, the shoulder region will behave in a realistic fashion mimicking real human anatomy.

I also want to test some really cool ideas I have for her Vagina and Anus, which the next parts are going to be focusing on quite a bit. So I want to get the most realistic and "fleshy" feel to those regions. And creating a fleshy feel is one of the hardest things to get right in 3D, as everything just tends to look very hard and lifeless in this medium. And it's the job of every 3D Artist to breathe life into it!

So, I plan on finishing the full rig in the next upcoming days if not goes wrong, which it shouldn't. So, I hope you all have a fantastic day and I will see you again soon with another update!