Bubbles

In an effort to expand my look development skills, as well as gain skills in grooming, I decided to texture a character. The character I chose was Bubbles, from the anime Powerpuff Girls Z (an anime based off of the American cartoons Powerpuff Girls). I chose Bubbles because, while I did not particularly enjoy the anime, I found her character design to be very cute, and wanted to recreate it in CG. Below is a video showcasing my turntable, and beauty shots: 

Process

Modeling

First, since I am not a modeler by any means, I decided to go onto CGTrader to try and find a character model. I ultimately went with this model: https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/character/anatomy/base-mesh-woman-06. I chose this one because, not only did it have the cutesy, cartoon look I was going for, but it also seemed to have clean topology. However, I did make minor changes to the model, mainly in the face, to enhance her cute look. The images below show side-by-side comparisons of the model before and after I tweaked it:

Model straight from CGTrader on left, model with my tweaks on the right

The model I bought from CGTrader was also fully UVed, and the UVs were actually very well-done (seen below)!

However, I felt like keeping her entire body’s UVs in one UDIM would result in low resolution textures, which I did not want. Therefore, I researched how to make textures across multiple UDIMs, and switched up the model’s UVs accordingly. I also slightly changed the UVs on her face:

Next, I needed to get Bubble’s clothes modeled. I decided to use Marvelous Designer to model her clothes, and found the program fairly intuitive. Thankfully, Marvelous Designer even had a Beta version of retopologizing available, which really helped speed up my process of getting clean clothes geometry ready to go! I hard surface modeled her accessories (gloves, shoes, choker, earrings, hair tie and ring) myself using a duplicate of Bubbles’ body model. I bought her barrette from CGTrader (https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/various/various-models/hairpin).

Texturing

To texture Bubbles, I used Substance Painter. I had never textured skin or clothes before, so it took a few attempts to really get it correct. For her eyes, I followed this tutorial on making realistic eyes in Photoshop. Below shows some in-progress shots when I was texturing her:

Grooming

Prior to this study, I had never groomed a single thing in xGen. Therefore, this step in the process was by far the hardest and longest. Below is a series of pictures that chronicles the journey I went on to get Bubbles’ hair to the end point, including the many, many failures:

Since I had never used xGen before, I naturally decided to look up some tutorials online. The majority of tutorials I found were, interestingly enough, for how to use xGen’s new Interactive Grooming, and not Core xGen. However, I didn’t quite understand the difference at the time, so I proceeded to try not only to groom exclusively with Interactive Grooming, but I also tried to do the entirety of Bubbles’ hair in one description. The results are the first 3 in the series of pictures above. Even when freezing the hair, I found it difficult to control and shape so many individual strands at once, resulting in several failures.

Eventually, I learned about Core xGen as well, and how to use it. I also learned that it is both easier and better for more control to use several descriptions. (I learned all of this from this amazing tutorial). Therefore, I started grooming by placing and shaping guides with Core xGen, and divided the hair into descriptions for Bubbles’ bangs, pigtails, the hair on her head, the curly strands on the sides, the strays at the nape of her neck, her eyelashes, and her eyebrows. With this method, I slowly began shaping Bubbles’ hair!

xGen Troubleshooting

I definitely ran into several problems along the way as I was grooming Bubbles’ hair. For one, I couldn’t get the part for the hair on her head to be as clean as I wanted. Some hairs simply seemed to not be following the Region Map I painted. To solve this, I just decided to switch to using Interactive Grooming, which would give me the ability to move and delete individual strands of hair.

Additionally, I found her pigtails to be incredibly challenging. While grooming them, I realized that maybe a character with hair like Bubbles’ wasn’t the smartest decision for me to pick for my first time grooming…

First, to make her pigtails, I made guides that went in the direction of her pigtails, and used the Clump Curl attribute to give the pigtails their curl. However, I found it impossible to get both her left and right pigtails to match this way. So, I figured that I needed the pigtails to be modeled, and I would extract the curves from that to make the guides. However, that was way too intense of a model for me to ever attempt. So, I decided to buy a twisty lollipop on CGTrader (https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/various/various-models/twisted-lollipop-lipstick-81874426-54fe-4cdf-9af4-59d64e1558d2). This had the exact curliness I was looking for and, with a bend deformer and other slight tweaks to the lollipop geometry, I had Bubbles’ pigtails made!

(Left to Right): Attempt at pigtails with Clump Curl, the lollipop geometry I used to make the guides for Bubbles’ pigtails, the first attempt at making the pigtails with them, and the final result

Rigging

I decided that I did not want Bubbles in a T-pose for her turntable. Unfortunately, that meant I would have to rig her. I have no experience in rigging, so I used Advanced Skeleton to create the joints and Nurbs controls for me, and I painted the skin weights to the pose.

Below shows Bubbles in her pose, with painted skin weights. I used a Wrap Deformer to get her clothes to warp with her body.