The Road to 3D Grooming. My Story. Part 16 - 2018 - Hair Grooming/Lookdev for Jessika

"She walks in beauty..." - how does that line go? =)

Yes, it's still 2018. It feels like I got stuck there, but no. I was just making a lot of stuff =)

Anyway, I got tired of Camilla and decided to create a new doll. And this time not a mannequin, but a full character, head to toe, with everything that comes with it.

I already had some experience from the Harley Quinn I made back in 2016. I haven't shown her in this story, but you can find her on ArtStation in the History category =)

I wanted to make a girl who could have different hairstyles. Sort of an avatar, as people like to say these days. Yep, we were building metaverses years ago, and the world started talking about them much later =)

Why Jessika

Her name is Jessika. Why? I just like the name. And once upon a time I was a huge Jessica Alba fan: posters on every wall, folders full of photos and all that =)

The face, though, didn't turn out the way I wanted, no matter how hard I tried. The face and the clothes took me the longest. I guess I just lacked practice: I spent far more time on grooming than on the other parts of a character.

And looking at her now, I can't understand how I ever liked that makeup =) I overdid it a little. Then again, Jessika is a bright girl, so she can get away with it.

Sewing patterns and a seamstress grandma

I got so into it that I even sewed her clothes and learned to read sewing patterns.

I imported the model from Maya into Marvelous Designer and made the clothes there. I found a pattern online, consulted my grandma (she's a former seamstress), and it all worked out =) The presets for the fabric settings came from this course.

My grandma liked it, by the way. It turned out exactly the way she had imagined =)

Rig and walk

I also dug into rigging and other 3D goodies that were still exotic for me. Well, actually, I was constantly experimenting with this stuff and searching for myself. All improvisation =)

I did the rig in Maya with Advanced Skeleton or some other plugin, I don't remember exactly. But it was definitely something automatic. I've never liked building all that from scratch, I was always looking for plugins and shortcuts =)

Then I animated the transition from the T-pose into a walk and moved on to grooming.

How I wove guides into braids

All the grooming was done in Ornatrix for Maya. I built the braids in Braid Maker, then used HairFromMeshStrips to convert them to hair. Retopology was done in 3D-Coat, painting and materials in Substance Painter.

But it was with this hairstyle that I came up with an interesting way of weaving guides into braids. You copy the curve you got from Braid Maker, draw the weave-in with the Draw Strands tool, and then connect the curves with Attach. It's much more convenient this way. I'll show how to do it in one of my tutorials someday.

I rendered it in V-Ray Next for Maya. On CPU back then, on the ForRender farm. My friends and I collaborated with them: I rendered a lot of my work there, showed the farm on my channel and ran tests.

I didn't track the time, but there was a lot of work here =)

And finally, a question, mostly for the ladies, of course =) Would you want this hairstyle? Do you like her outfit?

And for the guys: do you like girls with hairstyles like this? =)

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Soft: Maya, Ornatrix, V-Ray, Marvelous Designer, Substance 3D Painter, 3DCoat, Braid Maker
More renders HERE

Previous episode: Part 15 - 2018 - Grooming for Joseph #3. Cornrows and Beard