This is my entry for CG Society’s Hardcore Modeling Challenge #19: 80′s cartoons.

Circe from Ulysses 3

Anger and angst when all is destroyed

For those new to GCSociety’s Hardcore Modeling Challenge, it’s a friendly contest held on their 3d modeling forums. Different modeling topics are chosen and the winner decided by popular vote. You could be the biggest, baddest 3D modeler with a stellar porfolio and years of experience and you’ll still find the HMC’s to be a challenge. All skill levels are welcome, and other participants are some of the nicest and most helpful you will meet. The best and most helpful C&C  I’ve ever gotten is from my fellow modelers on CG Society.

The character I chose was “Circe” from Ulysses 31. She is a minor character at best, but I was looking for a lesser known persona with an interesting costume. I watched some old episodes of Ulysses 31 for reference, the animators didn’t seem to place any importance on Circe expressing any emotions. The worst example I found was the final scene where the gods punished Circe by destroying her tower (with her in it)- yet no trace of anger, rage, disappointment, or helplessness was found in her face. With my entry I decided to infuse the missing emotions from this scene.

Top View

Base Mesh

I used maya to create the base mesh and used zbrush to sculpt in all the details, the renders were done in mental ray.

The difficult part didn’t turn out to be her facial expression or the clenched fists. It was the costume. This was the first time I’d modeled a lot draped cloth, and the experience certainly taught me a few things on what not to do. I failed to put enough polygons in the base mesh of the cape and some areas of the dress. This came around to bite me in the rear when it came time to render my displacement maps for the beauty renders. I thought the cape and dress fringe looked terrible, but I didn’t have enough time left in the competition to correct the base mesh, and once you’ve gone far enough into sculpting the detail in Zbrush, it’s not all that simple bringing in a revised basemesh and expecting the displacement to work.

It is a tough decision where to keep your model light, and where you want to invest in adding in some detail. Even after the Bishop model for HMC 16, I still find myself misjudging where to add extra polygons. I’m starting to think I build my base meshes too lean, thinking it was always good practice. Thanks to Zbrush the draping didn’t turn out to be the hard part, and I look forward to another project where I can experiment with more complex draping.

As always, the reward of CG Society’s HMC is learning something new!

Final Render of Circe