African Wear 01: Studio

Blender, Photoshop, Poser
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Hello to all!  Thanks so much for taking the time to view my work.  And a double thanks to all those who take the time to favorite or comment.  I deeply appreciate it.

Finally!  I've submitted both my African Wear 01 and African Wear 02 to HiveWire3D.  Now I'm waiting for the QA team to get back to me and tell me what I need to fix or improve.  I've got my fingers crossed.  This shows the first set, which includes a wrap top, a side slit skirt, sandals, and a morphing head wrap and dreadlock prop I probably should have sold on its own because it was so much work.  Several groups of bezier curves in Blender, which meant a fair amount of work when making morphs. 

Which reminds me- I use Blender's shape keys to create all my morphs.  I thought everyone knew about them until I saw someone saying they'd just discovered them.  They're under the Vertex Groups in the object data panel.  By default they're set to only show their dialed effect, but clicking on the thumbtack icon lets you see and sculpt the selected shape key at 1.  That's how I make most of my morphs.  If you need to create morphs based on another morph, you need a different workflow.  For instance, my static props are all made for Dawn by default and then have a V4 fit morph.  But then I need A4, G4, and (in most cases) S4 morphs.  Those should work on top of the V4 morph (in other words, only when the V4 morph is 1).  To make them, I had to unpin my shape keys and click the icon next to the thumbtack to make the shape key visible while editing.  Then I set the V4 morph to 1, selected my dependent morph (say A4), and set that to 1.  Then I morphed away, sometimes in edit mode and sometimes in sculpt mode.  I realize that example is very Poser specific, but it should work the same for, say, eye shape keys that should work with a smile shape key.

Blender's shape keys are pretty great.  I just wish they had as robust an interface as Poser's morph dials.  Being able to make trees of morphs you can collapse and expand is very useful.

But I'm really happy with how the head wrap came out.  I'm really happy with the set in general.  I made my own patterns, discovered new solutions to different design problems, and used new techniques.  I'm thinking I'd like to make more scarf/wrap and dreadlock props in the future, just on their own and not as part of a larger set.   I used procedural textures on the locks, and I think they worked really well.  I made 7 different materials for them, but I used "Chocolate," which is a natural dark brown (almost black) in all but one promo image.   The cloth in each piece is mapped for easy texturing, so if you can use any tiled textures on them you want. 

The figure wearing the set is Dawn, using the absolutely _incredible_ Face of Africa Skin Set1 and Morph Set by the talented Virtual World.  It is hands down one of the best characters I've ever used.  I've been amazed by the detail of the skin.  And you can see that it renders beautifully, without the burned in artifacts that mar most darker textures.  It also uses my cyclorama, softbox, and "panel surround" for the scene.  I did color adjustment to make the image pop a little more, but that's pretty much it.  I also used Art Sorcery's African Poses for Dawn, which are highly detailed and carefully crafted.