Thanx for all the input guys, very muchly appreciated. You can read and do tutes all day long, but you've still only got one perspective on your work unless you get feedback. Nice or otherwise, all extra opinions help.

Uh-huh, blendshapes. I've got the idea of phonemes and doing the breakdown first, but I've never animated anything much more than stickmen on the corners of exercise books in highschool, Lol.
Oh yeah, I don't know if blendshapes are used at all in the tute to be honest, I didn't even bother to look at the stuff on rigging her yet. That's just one thing I'd have zero chance of translating from one to the other at the moment. Rigging, blending, smooth/rigid binding, basically anything to do with movement..

As for the texture on the face, hmm. Guess I'd better hang my head in shame. So far I've used nothing more than very simple shaders. The sword's the only part that actually has a texture. :blush: The skin is only done with a crappy blinn at the moment. I only want something that looks reasonably realistic in colour, and blinn was chosen since it shows up surface irregularities quite well, on account of the specular highlights. Can't be sure which renderer I used for all the pics so far. More than likely just the software one with raytracing turned on just enough to cast nice sharp shadows and a reflection of the sword in her boots.

Yeah, you like the sword? That was actually one of the easier parts for me so far. Nice hard surfaces, exactly defined shapes even if not perfectly scaled. The Joan tute is great if monkey wants to do what monkey sees. The sword's here if you want it.. Just change the reference to the texture file to suit. Something lossless is obviously the preffered format, but when the choice is 13kb jpg VS 475kb psd, the only choice is whether to include a crappy jpeg or to include nothing. It takes all of about 3 minutes to texture it as I've done thanx to the way I did the UVs, so if anyone wants it, it's attached. All modelled in polygons, then converted to subds for the rendering. Perhaps would have better off doing the uv mapping on a subd, wouldn't have had the texture moving around a bit like it did, but hey it's all learning.


Ahhh, I see. Steven Stahlberg is it? Must have a look at that one tonight, thanx gster. I may even have seen that a few months ago and dismissed it as way too far in the future for me. It's amazing how much easier and faster something is when you're really enjoying yourself.

Guess I really should get back to her, too much tv and gaming these last couple nights, man it's hot in Melbourne at the moment. Staying at 25-30 deg C overnight is nothing out of the ordinary at the moment and I don't have air-conditioning.

Oh well, Copper Zombie, here I come...

EDIT: Just found something by Stahlberg on Human Skin Shading. It's here.

Simon.