This month I wanted to showcase a 3D model of myself for the cover. I’ve been 3D modeling basically as long as I’ve been doing drag. There’s a few 3D projects I’ve put on here in the past, like the Megamox album cover I made all the way back in January, or my egghead series (that I admittedly haven’t worked on in a while).
This model isn’t totally finished, but I only needed her done from the shoulders up to make the cover. Here’s what the rest of her looks like:
Unlike the Moxie model, I decided to make this Flaminia segmented. So instead of her body all being connected, it’s a bunch of separate pieces. Sort of like a ball jointed doll. I chose this more segmented approach so she’ll be easier to modify and animate later on. Blockbuster titles put a heavy emphasis on realism and high poly models, and they can be quite dazzling. But I’m working alone, so I should be practical. The topology around the face should still be detailed enough to support facial animations though. I think there’s a beauty to this more artificial approach, especially given the subject matter. Here’s the wireframe of this doll:
She’s as simple as I could make her while still capturing resemblance. After going through hundreds of pictures of myself, I basically have the silhouette of my face memorized.
I decided to keep her unshaded. One of the benefits of working digitally is being able to move around lights and see how they affect objects. However, shadows can often appear harsh and jagged on lower polygon models. Instead I opted to paint on shadows.
In 3D space there are three coordinates representing where points of a model are in space. Left/right, Up/down, and Forward/Backwards; X, Y, and Z (which mean different things depending on what program you’re in for some reason). There are two more coordinates that 3D models use to tell the computer what albedo (color) to assign parts of an object. The U and V coordinates. To the right in the image below you can see the UV’s for this model.
It’s a flat image that corresponds to different parts of the 3D model. I paint directly onto the model and it’s translated onto the model. If you look at that picture you can obviously see where I painted the iris and the cleavage. I gave the space larger UV’s because I wanted the most detail there.
Anyways hope you found this somewhat interesting k thx bye <3