In doing an exercise of posing, texturing and uploading an elephant model to sketchfab earlier in the semester (see here: https://skfb.ly/o96SJ ) I had had some experience with this process, but applying it to my character was a little more difficult.
Since the arms and legs of my sculpt were separate to the coat and trousers respectively, it was awkward in Blender to move them into their respective positions. I find Blender’s rotation and movement tools difficult to use, and in edit mode I’m unaware of any other way to select the elements without having to select all the vertexes, which can’t be done in one go from one angle.
What’s more, it was difficult knowing where exactly the pockets were in the mesh since they are sculpted details so I was mostly relying on luck here. Additionally, only after I’d taken him into sketchfab did I realise that I’d forgotten to pose his legs, leaving him looking very rigid. After brief contemplation I felt it worth it to go back and pose him further and bring him back to apply his textures and light him.
I was quite excited to be able to light him and more properly establish the mood and tone of the scene I imagined him in; standing outside a gala or a theatre, waiting for his chauffeur to bring the car around so he could leave early.
I represent the ambient light of the night and the light of the moon with a blue light to his front left and a brighter rim light to his top back left, then a warmer light to his right to give the impression of his car pulling up.
Despite being able to see the polygons quite clearly, especially close up (I’m not sure if I missed a step of smoothing the mesh or something) I like very much being able to see my stout little guy with such personality and in nice lighting.
I’ve named him Laurence F. White in reference to illustrator Laurence Fellows and to his breed.