Wings are more or less done. I say “more or less” because I was spending a very long time obsessing about the edges of the wing membranes, and then figured I should just make sure they’re thick enough to retopo around and not obsess about that kind of thing too much. So I did that for the two inner membranes (I obsessed over the two outer ones before making this realisation) and made sure the wing fingers were more or less symmetrical on either side and easily visible to retopo over.

It was a long way down. He didn’t have to use his wings. There was no point. There was nothing in him. He was nothing. It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. Za’haran shifted closer to the edge, automatically curling his feet against the wall n preparation for a takeoff. Dive or just pin drop? It didn’t matter. The result would be the same. A terrible mess, just like his life. He didn’t matter.

Felt like posting a quick screenie as I haven’t done a public wip for a while (there’s a couple on Patreon that are well before this stage). Still have to do his wings, hands, feet and tail but am pretty happy with how he turned out. Because I’m nearing completion I’m getting that post-completion anxiety of IS IT GOOD ENOUGH? HAVE I MISSED ANYTHING? AM I GOING TO HATE IT AS SOON AS I CALL IT DONE?

It’s moving at a frightening pace for me as I’m used to doing everything with excruciating slowness. I love bsurfaces. It is quite literally the thing that had me giving Blender a go again at that point (previously my Blender attempts were for a couple of weeks once or twice a year, end of last year was a last ditch “this thing is cool so why not let’s try it again” and that’s when I got it).

More Lightwave and Blender comparison I was having a bad day yesterday and irritated because I couldn’t figure out Blender stuff quickly (on the bright side, thanks to Lightwave I at least have an idea of what I’m looking up) and told JJ that Blender was frustrating me and it was tempting to jump back into Lightwave but I didn’t want to give up yet because Blender had some stuff that Lightwave didn’t have like lattice deformation.

And as I said “done” and took and saved the screenshot, I went and made the knees less prominent. Roughly a month (~4 weeks) rather than one year which is much more betterer. And now to Blender to retopo, add the tail blade (well kind of a paddle in his case) and the wing membranes, and texture and rig. This might be the first one I do in Blender as I haven’t done any more work on Twilight since finishing the subdivision. I don’t think it will mind too much. I am being optimistic thinking everything will just fall into place nicely and work, but I am really glad I can fall back to Lightwave if things get too maddening.

I had thought maybe I shouldn’t post any more 3d stuff til I got to render stage, but then I optimistically decided that some people might like seeing the build in progress, and those that don’t can just ignore them til there’s something pretty. So here’s a shot of the mostly completed face with the wireframe turned on so show off how well Sculptris retopos the mesh and the dynamic topography (the dense spots on the arms are accidental touches).

Well, the mesh borked so terribly that I figured I would probably spend about as much time fixing it as I would starting over, so I started over. Well I was wrong. The last version of the horns took me about 8 months all up. I don’t want to know how long I would have taken to eventually fix the mesh as I know I spent a good week or so experimenting. Starting over this version took me…

Though I’m sure I’ll find more things to clean up and refine while I’m doing the rest of the body. Anyway I tried to reflect nature somewhat with some horizontal bands like what’s found in kudu (what I based Red’s horns off): Horizontal banding - can’t make it look twisty enough!

While sculpting horns I was quite sure I was going to use Blender for all the sculpty goodness seeing as it had actually imported the mesh to begin with. I think I’m going to have to accept the fact that my brain is never going to play nicely with Blender because even though I have been doing so much better than I ever have, I still don’t understand it. Very roughly positioned front, side and three-quarter view of the character in a window on the 21in monitor. The actual work was being done on the Cintiq at close range. The multiscreening is one seriously cool thing about Blender and I do miss it a little bit in Sculptris