It's amazing how much more you can get done when you're serious about something or motivated enough as opposed to when it just feels like boring work and nothing more. It's reasons like that I like to major in art to begin with, it doesn't just feel like plane work. Below are some big updated profiles explaining more on Ra'seth and Zelaxias' backgrounds that I've been meaning to get around to doing sooner, also much more progress on modeling Tanwen.
Ra'seth
Gender: Male
Race: Mountain Khajiit
Main Class: Monk
Sub Class: Mage
Alignment: True Neutral
Height: 5ft, 9in
Weight: 141 lbs
Much of Ra'seths' early life on the khajiit, mythra and sahuagin home world, Barathask, was spent as a scoundrel always getting into trouble. During later years of his life Ra'seth matured and spent much of his time meditating and practicing supernatural arts, aka magic, along with still doing many drugs like most khajiits of all species do. Never really having a place to call home, Ra'seth would travel from place to place all over Barathask, usually within mountain land scapes, for that exploring was a hobby of his though he had never once left the planet until meeting Tanwen, mainly because most khajiit, mythra and sahuagin cultures are more primitive in technology. Tanwen was already working in lead with a band of smugglers from Earth by the time Ra'seth crossed paths with her on Barathask when he caught her transporting off world drugs and questioned her on the matter. Tanwen took it as a threat and replied by fighting him head on. After several minutes of this the two of them could tell tell they were clearly on equal terms with each other, thous the two them of them ended up earning each others respect as a result, eventually leading to Ra'seth joining the band of smugglers Tanwen was a part of.
After the events with the Silver Fist crime organization and obtaining the lost ship, the Black Phoenix, had passed Ra'seth and Tanwen were a few of the only surviving members of the smuggler band left and continued their lives as adventures for hire while making a home out of the Black Phoenix.
Like most khajiit, Ra'seth has a natural love and resistance to drugs, including many not native to Barathask. He is typically laid back and very unbiased, often remaining neutral in opinion and not acting strongly on any ones side unless necessary yet does remain loyal towards his companions despite his act. Balance tends to be one of his strongest concerns and goals which would explain Ra'seths' dislike for organizations with too much power and his comfort with Tanwen whom works hard for a living. When fighting, Ra'seth often likes to engage his opponents unarmed or with limited weapons as he favors his claws. He does however use bracers with energy katar blades that can spring out on verbal command, often only used though to deliver the killing blows. Think of them sort of like the omni-blade weapon that was introduced in "Mass Effect 3". For range, if not using magic, Ra'seth uses a khajiit designed bladed boomerang but sometimes uses a Beretta 92FS pistol that was given to him when he joined the smugglers band, as a side arm or a back up. In his spare time he enjoys drugs of all sorts, drinking, practicing martial arts and magic for comfort along with meditating, doing art, reading, mind challenge games like chess and taking walks.
Zalexia
Gender: Female
Race: Scion Astechique
Main Class: Divine Cleric
Sub Class: Samurai
Alignment: Neutral Good
Height: 5ft, 5in
Weight: 130 lbs
A note of warning, Zalexias' profile ended up being far larger than I expected as I took some time into giving a fair bit of info on her race and culture she comes from along with her background info. Be prepared for a lot of reading below should you like to know more about her.
Zalexia is a member of a small spiritual culture of scion specie astechiques known as the Trelcanins. The temples they live in on the land known as Trelcanah has a more primitive and spiritual look and feel though none the less, the Trelcanins are highly advanced in technology like all of the other astechique cultures. Unlike many astechique cultures though, the Trelcanins are a more peaceful sort that wish nothing more than peace with the other races. Zalexia and her culture, the Trelcanins, were designed to show not all individuals of a race are bad and a reminder of how harsh and arrogant it is to judge everyone of a given race just because of what some of their individuals do or have done. Part of this reasoning is based off much of the racism that goes around in history or even still yet today, such as the racism against the blacks through out the past history, how the Nazis treated the Jews during World War 2, the constant bad mouthing of races like orcs, goblins and trolls in almost any fantasy genre or against the batarians in "Mass Effect". Ok so while some of that is against fictional races, the point still tends to be the same in long run, racism is just flat out cruel and pathetic rather it's real or fictional.
Zalexia herself is no outcast to the Trelcanin culture as she is very open minded and more curious than anything else in other races and their ways. She's more often than not very friendly in personality, despite the creepy look her pale skinned, tattooed face and spectral like astechique eyes may give off to some, and remarkably smart, wise and charismatic. If you were to make her into a Dungeons and Dragons character, her intelligence, wisdom, and charisma ability scores would all be above average, or above 10 in D&D measurements and with decent strength and dexterity and slightly below average constitution. Astechiques more than less in general are incredibly intelligent but are not known for their constitution and have difficulty adjusting to or for that matter breathing on some of the other inhabitable atmospheres like on Earth or Barathask although their bodies can adjust over time none the less. As a result, Zalexia often wears a helmet like most astechiques do that not only serves for protection but also for breathing purposes although Zalexias' body has managed to adopt much due to her constant ex poser off world though may every now and then still need to temporally put her helmet on as she's not always entirely able to withstand some of the other inhabitable planets and moons atmosphere still yet at times such as when weather or climent changes occur, exc. It's important to note on her visual features, what looks like hair on her head is actually a series of tentacles, the front ones being tied back. Astechiques do not grow hair on their heads like humans do but they do grow out a series of semi-movable tentacle like things that serve for visual communication. Like hair they do continue to grow longer over time and can be cut and regrow without doing any harm to the individual. Astechiques originally lacked vocal communication ability back in an earlier state of evolution but have better evolved into it since then and the tentacles growing out of their head serve less purpose than they once did, some astechiques like to cut or stylize them for fashion purposes like humans do with their hair.
Before meeting Tanwen, much of Zalexias' life was spent serving protection for Trelcanah as one of its' many spiritual warriors. The spiritual warriors' of Trelcanah major class roles can be as either divine clerics, monks or paragons, (often reffered to as paladins in other fantasy world settings or sometimes templars), in Zalexias' case a divine cleric with sub class training as a samurai which results in a character with combat strengths and weaknesses similar to many of those shrine maiden characters you see in anime series like Tomoe from "Queens' Blade" or Arashi from "X". It's important to note that unlike the clerics you see in many other fictional world settings, I don't make them as being religious sorts who worship different gods as I've never taken any interest in much of any deities or mythology gods of any sort, (that being said I in no way intend any sort of offense towards those who are religious, everyone has the right to believe in what they want and I respect that), so ended up not bothering with making any in my world setting and classes like clerics instead for that matter are more almost like "Buddhists" or spiritual guides who'd set others in zones of comfort and paths, be yourself, believe what you want of sorts, exc. Think of it like spiritual comfort or ease like what meditating, practicing Tai-Chi or Yoga, or for fictional purposes like what training to be a Jedi or even a Sith is in "Starwars" sometimes result to, classes like clerics, (divine or shadow type), paragons and monks specialize in stuff like that. This can sometimes also be the case with the classes druids, shaman and even death knights.
Zalexia met Tanwen sometime after Ra'seth met her and she made the Black Phoenix her ship, when Tanwen took up a job from a Trelcanin contact for that Trelcanah was having some trouble in a battle against one of the neighbor astechique forces along with an old enemy, the Silver Fist crime organization. Tanwen and Ra'seth proved to be a big help being as that they were already very familiar with how the Silver Fist worked and after victory Tanwen was unacceptably generous in turning down what payment in money Trelcanah offered in return stating that she instead only wanted them to offer her a place that would take her in during times of need. This could be due to Tanwins' respect for Trelcanah being an open minded none judgmental culture that treats everyone as equals which is rare although Tanwen never stated her reason. Along with many of the Trelcanins, this earned a high amount of respect and thanks from Zalexia and later lead to her offering to join Tanwen as a companion in arms in which Tanwen excepted, being that Ra'seth was the only other working with her at the time.
Zalexia often likes to avoid fighting and coming to peaceful solutions first but she will resort to fighting none the less if she has to and is good at it to. She has a lot of skill with white magic and uses a naginata when engaging in melee. Because she is not familiar with many offensive magic abilities, she more often uses astechique designed guns in ranged combat situations, a blue energized plasma assault rifle for a main and a blue energized plasma pistol for a back up. The Trelcanin culture favors blue plasma energy type weapons as far as fire arms go to support their army. In her spare time she likes to study in science and sociology, paleontology, reading, video gaming, mostly in strategy and rpg type games, (rpgs, isn't that ironic), and history.
Modeling Tanwens' Features and Cloths
In the last milestone, Tanwens' body was finished in a step by step process, below shows the model results of her other body features as in her eyes, teeth, hair, exc. and her cloths. Below shows the the other body features, all except the hair, which was saved for last.
Wireframe above.
Render prieview above. Below shows these features along with the rest of the body so you can see how they come to fit in.
Note that the images of the model pieces have colors but these are not the final textures that will be used. When building model pieces, I like to assign them textures with solid colors before I get around to doing all the UV map layouts and texturing in Photoshop because it helps in a since of getting a feel for what's what and the idea of where I'm headed for the model. Now that these model pieces are done with, below shows the cloths being built out. Building cloths is easy in comparison to the body of the model, how I do it is by making a copy of the model then selecting the faces of the polygons on the model where the individual cloth pieces will be located as can be seen below, then I extract these faces and delete the other parts of the model copy that aren't needed.
You can see the selected faces highlighted in brown on the image of the model above that will be used to make Tanwens' Tunic she wears beneath her coat. Below shows the finished results of her tunic, shorts, neck belt, leg belt and patch eye after using the process I mentioned on how I build clothing pieces for characters.
Above you can see the wireframes of the selected clothing pieces and how they fit on the rest of the character which is currently transparent in a separate layer. Below are render previews.
Render preview of the patch eye, neck belt, tunic, shorts and leg belt above.
Above is another render preview showing the same clothing pieces along with the rest of the character model. Below shows the same step by step process with the arm and legs clothing pieces, first selected in Maya to show the wireframes along with the rest of the character model being transparent, then a render preview of the clothing pieces and another render preview of the clothing pieces with the rest of the character model.
Only the coat and hair model pieces need to be built now, below shows the same 3 image step process of the sleeveless leather coat Tanwen wears being added in.
Below shows the wireframe of the selected hair model piece, followed by the render preview from the front and the back and then how it looks along with the rest of the character model pieces.
From what you can see in the images of Tanwen in the previous milestones, you can kind of make out the shape of the hair in the model in the images above. Right now it doesn't look a whole lot like hair I know but once I get around to texturing it that will change. The model will have hair lock textures running down what looks like flat sheets coming out of the scalp in the images above with the empty spaces between the hair locks being transparent to make the hair look realistic. This same process is used to make the hair on a lot of the character models you see in video games today. The hair was a huge pain in the ass to model and would have been a lot easier had I given Tanwen a simpler hair style but hey I like challenge myself, even it does get me frustrated at times.
Below are images of a zoom up of the upper back of Tanwens' coat. You can see straps coming out that are being used to hold the pair of kamas she wields in place.
It was a bit of a pain getting the kamas to fit while making sure the size comparison with the rest of the character was accurate. With all of the modeling of the pieces of Tanwen being done now, below are render previews of Tanwen first naked, then clothed, similar to the image process of the illustrations of Tanwen you saw in the first milestone. Only the kamas are currently equipped on her in the images but the rest of her weapons will be equipped on the model once I get all the scaling and adjusting figured out.
Body Views (Naked)
Body Views (Outer Coat)
With the modeling done, now comes the sarcastically fun part, UV layouts, Princess Luna would so not be saying "Ha ha the fun has been doubled!" to this. But it does pay off once you get to texturing. Below are examples of the UV layout and texturing done on a previous character model I made of a female sahuagin, a mystic type sahuagin to be more exact.
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To the left you can see the wireframed UV layouts of the model pieces and to the right the texturing results. Below you can see the results of how the texturing looks on the actual model.
Although it might look harder to some, I found this model to be far easier to build than that of a human like I've said before. Animating them is another story entirely. In the next milestone, the model of Tanwen will be finished with texturing and video results.
Tanwen Model Video Demo
Below are demo versions of the Tanwen model being built up from naked to clothed. Keep in mind these are just some tested demos and barely any of the pieces have been textured yet but it's a test to get an idea for the final results. The final results will be in the next milestone.
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