Talaaya
Well-Known Member
After completing my Samus costume I wanted to take a step back and do a more relaxing, non-heart attack inducing project which would also have the added bonus of actually being comfortable to wear to a con. My sister Nanya and I have had the idea of doing characters from Skyrim for a long time now and we finally settled on our favorite characters of our favorite race: the cat-like Khajiit. I'll be doing M'aiq the Liar, a quirky guy who runs around the game and tells you random, often fourth wall-breaking, humorous quips. He's been in every game in the series since Morrowind.
Nanya chose J'zargo, a member of the College of Winterhold, who can become your follower buddy if you do a quest for him. He's a mage who's very full of himself and dead set on becoming archmage before the player, and even has you test what turn out to be backfiring fire spells. Cheeky bugger.
Nanya will be posting in this thread with me as we will be helping each other on this project together. For now I'll just share what I have so far and she'll make a post about hers soon.
A nice benefit of these characters is the only fur they're showing is on their faces and tails, which makes crafting everything way easier. They do actually have bare hands in the game but we opted to wear gloves with our costumes because it would be near impossible to make furred hands look realistic enough for our liking, and it makes sense that they might be wearing gloves in the game. We chose gloves which were as close to the color of their hands as we could get so it wasn't distracting to the overall look of the costume. Here are my gloves:
If you've read this far I'm sure you're wondering how we're going to do their faces. We didn't have any interest in doing prosthetic makeup or anything like that and since I'm already proficient at 3d printing it seemed like a good solution. For Samus I had used my friend's professional 3d printer. I figured it wouldn't be around forever since he was likely to sell it so I decided now was a good time to get a printer of my own. Obviously I couldn't get one of those ridiculously expensive (and giant) professional models so I found a high end consumer desktop printer: the Ultimaker 2:
So far I'm really loving it! Each printer I've had has its pros and cons: the old one could print more complex shapes in larger pieces and had faster, higher quality prints, but they were heavy and very expensive. This new one uses a different printing method so it can be a bit harder to get shapes oriented to print well, but the material is super cheap and light. With the old printer there's no way I could have printed a mask and worn it. It'd have been much too heavy so I would have had to mold and cast it, adding a ton to the cost. With my new one I can just use what I print! Yay!
So far I've only printed my mask but I'm just about ready to print my sister's. To make the model I extracted M'aiq's actual model from the Skyrim Creation Kit (official game editing software) which was a huge pain in the ass because the game doesn't save characters in a single file; they use a compositing system to add a bunch of pieces together to make the whole character. So I couldn't just grab M'aiq's file; I had to get the software to show his model all together and then rip the model with video rendering capture software (essentially print-screening a 3d model). The game model is pretty low poly and I didn't want to just use that. I wanted rounded shapes and more detail, especially in the nose area, which isn't actually 3d in the game - it's just a texture. To do this I opened up the model in Zbrush and used the normal map as a displacement map to create actual geometry where there were previously only false details. I then cleaned it up and fixed various shapes, along with adding an actual sculpted nose. We'll be putting fur on the masks, so to allow for that extra volume I reduced the surface of the mask which is why the nose looks like it's sticking so far off the mask.
You can see in the second image how I divided up the mask into smaller pieces. While the entire mask would fit within the printer bed's dimensions, I decided to cut the model apart so it would be easier to print. I didn't take any special care to make sure the seams were flush since it'll just have fur over it anyway, plus I'm still learning how to do this type of printing. There are also some rough parts near his eyes which were caused by the extra support material the printer can create to help hold up the print as it's being made. If I cared about the finish I could sand those out and make it look nice. Also some parts were done on higher quality settings than others, although I'm not sure you can tell from the images. It's faster to print at lower quality.
You can see the quality difference a bit better in these pics, which are from a secondary secret costume I'm working on when I have nothing else to do. ;D
They go from lowest to highest quality from left to right.
The mask's jaw is detached currently but it will be on a hinge which will move when I move my own jaw. It will also be complete with a silicone tongue and full set of teeth.
So far I haven't done any work on M'aiq's outfit but after a ton of searching I finally found the cloth I'll be using for both the hood and the robe:
I've made progress on the other parts of the costume as well but that'll have to be for another post in the near future.
Nanya chose J'zargo, a member of the College of Winterhold, who can become your follower buddy if you do a quest for him. He's a mage who's very full of himself and dead set on becoming archmage before the player, and even has you test what turn out to be backfiring fire spells. Cheeky bugger.
Nanya will be posting in this thread with me as we will be helping each other on this project together. For now I'll just share what I have so far and she'll make a post about hers soon.
A nice benefit of these characters is the only fur they're showing is on their faces and tails, which makes crafting everything way easier. They do actually have bare hands in the game but we opted to wear gloves with our costumes because it would be near impossible to make furred hands look realistic enough for our liking, and it makes sense that they might be wearing gloves in the game. We chose gloves which were as close to the color of their hands as we could get so it wasn't distracting to the overall look of the costume. Here are my gloves:
If you've read this far I'm sure you're wondering how we're going to do their faces. We didn't have any interest in doing prosthetic makeup or anything like that and since I'm already proficient at 3d printing it seemed like a good solution. For Samus I had used my friend's professional 3d printer. I figured it wouldn't be around forever since he was likely to sell it so I decided now was a good time to get a printer of my own. Obviously I couldn't get one of those ridiculously expensive (and giant) professional models so I found a high end consumer desktop printer: the Ultimaker 2:
So far I'm really loving it! Each printer I've had has its pros and cons: the old one could print more complex shapes in larger pieces and had faster, higher quality prints, but they were heavy and very expensive. This new one uses a different printing method so it can be a bit harder to get shapes oriented to print well, but the material is super cheap and light. With the old printer there's no way I could have printed a mask and worn it. It'd have been much too heavy so I would have had to mold and cast it, adding a ton to the cost. With my new one I can just use what I print! Yay!
So far I've only printed my mask but I'm just about ready to print my sister's. To make the model I extracted M'aiq's actual model from the Skyrim Creation Kit (official game editing software) which was a huge pain in the ass because the game doesn't save characters in a single file; they use a compositing system to add a bunch of pieces together to make the whole character. So I couldn't just grab M'aiq's file; I had to get the software to show his model all together and then rip the model with video rendering capture software (essentially print-screening a 3d model). The game model is pretty low poly and I didn't want to just use that. I wanted rounded shapes and more detail, especially in the nose area, which isn't actually 3d in the game - it's just a texture. To do this I opened up the model in Zbrush and used the normal map as a displacement map to create actual geometry where there were previously only false details. I then cleaned it up and fixed various shapes, along with adding an actual sculpted nose. We'll be putting fur on the masks, so to allow for that extra volume I reduced the surface of the mask which is why the nose looks like it's sticking so far off the mask.
You can see in the second image how I divided up the mask into smaller pieces. While the entire mask would fit within the printer bed's dimensions, I decided to cut the model apart so it would be easier to print. I didn't take any special care to make sure the seams were flush since it'll just have fur over it anyway, plus I'm still learning how to do this type of printing. There are also some rough parts near his eyes which were caused by the extra support material the printer can create to help hold up the print as it's being made. If I cared about the finish I could sand those out and make it look nice. Also some parts were done on higher quality settings than others, although I'm not sure you can tell from the images. It's faster to print at lower quality.
You can see the quality difference a bit better in these pics, which are from a secondary secret costume I'm working on when I have nothing else to do. ;D
They go from lowest to highest quality from left to right.
The mask's jaw is detached currently but it will be on a hinge which will move when I move my own jaw. It will also be complete with a silicone tongue and full set of teeth.
So far I haven't done any work on M'aiq's outfit but after a ton of searching I finally found the cloth I'll be using for both the hood and the robe:
I've made progress on the other parts of the costume as well but that'll have to be for another post in the near future.
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