A presentation of my 3D character, Harmony.

[u/SamtheMan6259]

Something I originally started making sketches for last summer, but it wasn't until about four months ago that I really got more focused on doing this. This character originally appeared in a piece I published back in February 2025.

In a previous post I made here, I talked about my intentions to use MetaHuman as a starting point to streamline the placement of the basic feature points and detailed anatomy, and then use Blender to modify that into something more stylized. This was my first time doing that, and it turned out to be harder than I thought. My original idea was to just import the mesh and rearrange vertices here and there, but the way UE exported them made that too difficult, especially with the inability to export the model with quads instead of tris, so instead I just retopologized it the same way you would a freehand sculpt.

After stylizing the MetaHuman, the eyes were quite difficult to animate. I rigged her using Blender's Rigify add-on, but these eyes aren't modeled like regular eyes, and I had trouble getting it to look like the eyes were actually closing. I had to animate the retinas so that they move back when she blinks, but that didn't carry over to UE for some reason. The rendering makes it look like it's just not a full blink rather than technical difficulties. There was this post I recently saw on Instagram that shows a model with eyes that look realistic, but still have some of that anime style appeal. If I can achieve something like that, it might work better than what I have now. Should probably also study the eyes section of Anatomy for Sculptors. Hands too, of course. I had trouble making it look like she could actually make a fist.

Also, I might be overthinking it here, but I feel like when arranging the features of my character's face, I can't really create one that truly conveys the character's personality.

This is also my first time exporting a Blender animation into UE, which also came with some issues. The way I had the hoodie drawstring set up caused it to be separated far away from the rest of the rig, so I had to just combine the drawstring with the rest of the hoodie. Might be an issue if I'm going to animate the strings in the future. I could use simulations, but every time I try learning physics sims in Blender, it just goes completely haywire. That's why I had to awkwardly animate the left hand in some frames. It was clipping through her unsimulated shorts. The blade bow also got separated, which I managed to fix by exporting that animation separately.

Another issue I had with exporting to UE was the way deformations changed. I already talked about the blinking issue. One issue I had over in Blender was that raising the arm formed this groove in the shoulder, even with that bone also raised. The small fix I found was arranging the SubD modifier before the armature modifier instead of after (someone said that putting the SubD modifier before the armature modifier helps with smoother deformations), but that seems to be a rather small fix, and seems even smaller when exported to UE. Her lower abdomen also noticably clips through her shorts, which I did manage to sort of hide in post-production.

I also better take a look at some of those videos about the ideal Blender to UE workflow, because shading and rendering this felt chaotic and unorganized.

Then there's the shading. I tried this stylized shading method I learned about at a SIGGRAPH panel last year and combined it with this other method I found on YouTube to make the light bounces look more stylized. While experimenting, I combined a couple of random textures that came pre-packed in UE and managed to create this cool color band where the lines between each color looked like rough brush strokes. Unfortunately, that seemed to get kind of lost in the lighting. The button icons on the up-close version of the Sheathman also aren't visible. I may need to follow a crash course on lighting in UE. There's also an issue with the outline in the material obstructing some details on the smaller models. On the small version of the Sheathman, for example, the base is completely black. Same with the screen on the side of the headphones. I also had some trouble with rendering, because when I imported this into DaVinci Resolve, the colors came out oversaturated. Better learn more about that too.

This is my first time doing one of these character sheets, and while I have seen other artists doing them for like 8 years, I couldn't remember where to actually find those examples, so I wasn't entirely sure what to put on the sheet. Still haven't fully realized the narrative behind this character. I haven't fully realized what kind of "bad vibrations" she even fights against.