Oni Drunkard Model WIP: More Normal Maps and Low Poly Fur

To start off this week, I applied normal maps to the foam head and mug, using different styles of mapping for each.

For the foam, I created a high poly version of the mesh, and then sculpted the high poly version using a patterned brush with a bubble pattern.

After that, I baked the high poly onto the low poly, and it's looking kind of ok! although the pattern seems a bit inverted, the effect still works decently.

While the pattern is distorted a bit on the dragon head, it still stays consistently visible and smooth throughout the mesh. Good enough for me!

For the normal map on the mug, I used a noise texture stretched along the Y axis to create a streaking reflective surface to exaggerate the wood grain effect.

To do this, I just used a mapping node with a UV coordinate node, and put the noise into a color ramp to match the colors a normal map would bake as. It worked pretty well!

A quick change I made between doing normals and the upcoming fur mesh I did was actually twisting the swirling mesh to make it more convincing of a cyclone.

It's a simple change but super effective!

And finally for this week, I added some low poly fur to the Oni's chest.

To do this, I first added a particle system to the torso with its weight and distribution being tied to a poly group around the center of the chest.

Then I created a 2D fur texture with some alpha blending applied to a flat plane. SUPER happy how this turned out, as it's all hand drawn within Blender's texture editor!

Then, the plane is added to the particle system as a particle instance, and set to follow the strands.

Then, add some children, change the size, tweak some settings...

And then clean it up and add some physics so the hair follows the chest, apply the modifiers, and parent the new mesh to the existing rig!

And that's that for now! Just need to edit the rest of the Oni's clothes, horns, hands, and feet, and change the metal material on the mug, and it'll be all set to go!

Here's another render of it all coming together!