I'm a beginner in Blender. But I've decided to take it upon myself to modify and animate Talim Ryona. SC4 is one of the better "clothing destruction" games IMO. Senran Kagura is funny but isn't as sexy IMO. Dead or Alive is sexy, but doesn't have as much clothing destruction.
Step one of modeling is to build the original model. Or in my case, find the original model somehow. There were XNALara models available everywhere, but XNALara is too primitive for the work I wanted to do. Furthermore, Talim's "clothing destruction" meshes were unavailable everywhere I looked. Instead, I found a rip of SCIV and rebuilt the model from the data. (Game hackers already converted it to MTL and .OBJ files).
While this was time consuming and took a lot of effort to learn how to do, I think the effort has been worthwhile. Blender's idea of transparency is just simply better. And animations seem to be far more possible in Blender. Finally, the bump-maps and normal-maps I'm using are cannonical to the original game... while I don't know how anyone actually made those XNALara mods.
Without further ado, here are three "states" of Talim. First, the fully clothed model. Second is the "torn" model for the three SCIV states: hat off, shirt off, and pants-torn. Finally, I created a mod for Talim's hair which I feel like it'd be useful. I basically took Hilde's hair (P1 model) after Hilde's helmet is knocked off, recolored it to Talim's hair color, and then merged the two meshes. I tweaked the vertices a bit and then used cloth physics to get Hilde's hair to fit on Talim's head a bit better.
I need to tweak it a bit more but I think it does a decent job at looking like Talim's hair is down.
My next step is that I have to somehow learn to rig, and then maybe I'll start to do some static-poses (likely based on the Senran Kagura: Estival Versus poses). After I get used to rigging / posing, I do plan to eventually make simple animations.
The "360_view.zip" file are .mp4 files that are simple animations to do a 360 loop around Talim. I did manage to play with a bit of the cloth physics of Blender, so if you notice... the ribbons, pants, and "foot rings" are actually animated according to Blender's internal physics engine.
So that sort of stuff should make animation easier for me (and is a big reason why I'm using Blender, and not XNALara).
I haven't fully figured out what my ultimate plan will be. But this is probably a good starting point for some kind of Ryona story. Text + Visuals should be helpful in theory. Talim is also one of the few characters who can dual-wields the legendary blades of the game (Soul Edge + Soul Calibur). So I feel like these two weapons can provide better potential as a starting point for a story.
Step one of modeling is to build the original model. Or in my case, find the original model somehow. There were XNALara models available everywhere, but XNALara is too primitive for the work I wanted to do. Furthermore, Talim's "clothing destruction" meshes were unavailable everywhere I looked. Instead, I found a rip of SCIV and rebuilt the model from the data. (Game hackers already converted it to MTL and .OBJ files).
While this was time consuming and took a lot of effort to learn how to do, I think the effort has been worthwhile. Blender's idea of transparency is just simply better. And animations seem to be far more possible in Blender. Finally, the bump-maps and normal-maps I'm using are cannonical to the original game... while I don't know how anyone actually made those XNALara mods.
Without further ado, here are three "states" of Talim. First, the fully clothed model. Second is the "torn" model for the three SCIV states: hat off, shirt off, and pants-torn. Finally, I created a mod for Talim's hair which I feel like it'd be useful. I basically took Hilde's hair (P1 model) after Hilde's helmet is knocked off, recolored it to Talim's hair color, and then merged the two meshes. I tweaked the vertices a bit and then used cloth physics to get Hilde's hair to fit on Talim's head a bit better.
I need to tweak it a bit more but I think it does a decent job at looking like Talim's hair is down.
My next step is that I have to somehow learn to rig, and then maybe I'll start to do some static-poses (likely based on the Senran Kagura: Estival Versus poses). After I get used to rigging / posing, I do plan to eventually make simple animations.
The "360_view.zip" file are .mp4 files that are simple animations to do a 360 loop around Talim. I did manage to play with a bit of the cloth physics of Blender, so if you notice... the ribbons, pants, and "foot rings" are actually animated according to Blender's internal physics engine.
So that sort of stuff should make animation easier for me (and is a big reason why I'm using Blender, and not XNALara).
I haven't fully figured out what my ultimate plan will be. But this is probably a good starting point for some kind of Ryona story. Text + Visuals should be helpful in theory. Talim is also one of the few characters who can dual-wields the legendary blades of the game (Soul Edge + Soul Calibur). So I feel like these two weapons can provide better potential as a starting point for a story.
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