<h2 style="text-align: center">Let's chase a classic bounty hunter storyline inspired by "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie." An amazing character-creation story awaits!</h2><hr><img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/db0b4d1dc5184ab9b9f076f693cb53efezgif-1-3ce3b395f2.webp" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="db0b4d1dc5184ab9b9f076f693cb53ef" data-width="800" data-height="338"><h1 style="text-align: center">Interview with Daire Powell | The Bandit of Solis Tomb﻿ | Artist&amp;Film-maker</h1><hr><h1>Can you start by introducing yourself and sharing a bit about your background?</h1>My name is Daire Powell and I am a 23 year old Artist/Film-maker from Ireland. I recently graduated from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin with a BA in Moving Image Design. From a young age I have always been interested in film and animation, firstly experimenting with stop-motion animation using home made rigs and as I got older, cinematic video editing within games and 3D. My passions began with more traditional roots, putting a lot of my time into more fine art practices such as sketching and painting. However as I got older and leaned into digital media, I learned that I could blend my traditional backgrounds with newer forms of media to find a balanced workflow that benefits me. Originally I went to university to focus on live-action filming techniques but soon rediscovered my love for animation and bringing my own worlds to life. During the last two to three years of my course I dived heavily into using Blender and other traditional methods of animation, eventually developing my first original short film "The Friend, The Dove &amp; The Deer" which managed to make it to a few festivals in Ireland and Canada. I am currently working as a freelancer in the games and esports community as well as developing personal animated films in my free time. You can find more information about me and my work on my <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://dairemovesthings.cargo.site/">Website</a>.<h1>What was the story or concept behind your artwork for the Kinetic Rush challenge? How did the idea come to life?</h1><img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/440ef0a087a740ff9c5a3cad7e4c03d1Copy_of_title%20%281%29.webp" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="440ef0a087a740ff9c5a3cad7e4c03d1" data-width="1920" data-height="810">"The Bandit of Solis Tomb" is a short piece based on a frog-bandit; a wanted criminal in a small desert town after the disappearance of an ancient relic from Solis Tomb. He is on the run from the A.P.U (Automatic Police Unit) whilst hiding out in the local markets. I was inspired by the portrayal of the eastern style markets in “Cowboy Bebop: The Movie” and have always loved a classic bounty hunter storyline.<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/529adf32f78642aea7183c296239e053Copy_of_ref1.webp" class="custom-image large-size" data-id="529adf32f78642aea7183c296239e053" data-width="1000" data-height="302">Finding those nooks and crannies between locations is something I love in world building and was an important influence for the setting of this piece. I often take strong inspiration from old storybooks or the stereotypes around them and enjoy playing with those ideas, that is why I decided to use a frog with humanoid proportions and movements to reference old fairy tale tropes. The style of the animation and shading is something I have been developing and experimenting with for a while now since my first short film. This project was a sort of test run for the processes to be used in my future works.<h1>It's very interesting that you used Marvelous Designer for 2D animation. What inspired you to use Marvelous Designer for this project, and how did it help you achieve your artistic vision?</h1>Generally in stylised forms of animation, it's more common to include the clothing in your rig to have more control over cloth as a character in itself. However, I thought the juxtaposition between using a 2D-stylised character and physical based cloth simulations could work well and, with this movement being primarily at speed, help sell my secondary action with the detail that Marvelous can provide me. I have used the Blender cloth simulator for a few years now and understand how tough it can be sometimes, especially with complex characters and animation, to successfully execute the right simulation without third party addons. Marvelous Designer gives me a more real time simulation workflow with good quality that allows me to "trial and error" my clothing until it flows the way that I want as a sequence.<h1>Could you walk us through the tools you used in your workflow? How did Marvelous Designer fit into your pipeline?</h1>The tools that I mainly used in my workflow are Blender, Substance Painter, Rebelle 7, Marvelous Designer and After Effects. I would say that my workflow for this piece from a 3D standpoint was pretty standard, but when it came to texturing and cloth, there were a few more steps to be taken to achieve the look that I wanted. In the Kinetic Rush challenge we were tasked with creating a scene and a story from scratch, being given only a base animation to use. I started by blocking out my scene in Blender with simple shapes and retargeting the animation to a custom character that I modelled. Once I had my composition and my character cleaned up, I was ready for my texturing and simulation process.<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/c7ffc557762848c19a3a895741dcd497Copy_of_ref2.webp" class="custom-image medium-size" data-id="c7ffc557762848c19a3a895741dcd497" data-width="2000" data-height="1300">When it comes to texturing, I like to be pretty hands on with the freedom to be messy and create manual texture and shapes. For the characters I used Substance Painter to paint a flat base texture that will eventually be put back into Blender to drive my stylized shader.<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/3be286e7d5cd4374a842d07fd593464eCopy_of_ref3.webp" class="custom-image medium-size" data-id="3be286e7d5cd4374a842d07fd593464e" data-width="2000" data-height="1300">For background elements, scene texturing and animation sprites I used Rebelle 7 which is what gives my work a tactile impression. I created a collection of base textures to use and some more element specific ones to layer on top in the shader. Every single texture in this artwork was painted by hand, with time saving methods of reuse and combinations of paintings.<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/7e54f90639834b14b293349201c37506886e3cbbc79841af9335e8a339d8fc5f.webp" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="7e54f90639834b14b293349201c37506" data-width="2000" data-height="800"><img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/a22a707bd5d9411bbf6efad496c42a6be24d0edbfe5d4864989129b323fc9c67.webp" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="a22a707bd5d9411bbf6efad496c42a6b" data-width="2000" data-height="1000">I needed to find a way to fit Marvelous Designer into this workflow in both character design and texturing. Marvelous has a great library of garments that you can purchase from the store which really helped with my lack of fashion design knowledge and with the short timeframe that we had to create the project. I purchased two pieces of clothing that helped give a lot of personality and culture to my character. The garments were quite loose and simple in design so fitting it to my non-human character wasn’t difficult, I just moved the 3D pattern to fit around my character and GPU simulated it until it was in a natural position. Marvelous Designers layering system is also a great tool that helped me differentiate the folds in his hood and wasteline.<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/8c0724b5f31d408c8e0f014ff705dd35Copy_of_ref6.webp" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="8c0724b5f31d408c8e0f014ff705dd35" data-width="2000" data-height="1300">The relation between the 2D pattern window in Marvelous and exported UVs came in very handy for my texture workflow. I was able to export a clean unfolded version of my garment that I could bring into Rebelle for manually painting my details.<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/d31e34be9fe1418f95da101a0258cb67Copy_of_ref7.webp" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="d31e34be9fe1418f95da101a0258cb67" data-width="2000" data-height="731">Being able to export in stable animation data formats such as alembic has helped me convert my 3D simulations into a frame-by-frame look. Blender allows us to manually override the frames being used from an alembic so all I had to do was import the garment and step the simulation frames to time with my 12 FPS character.As mentioned before, I wanted my clothing to juxtapose my character in realism so I used layered passes in the compositing stage so that I could render my cloth with Cycles and a holdout in Blender while keeping my character in Eevee. This created the 2D/3D combination that I needed. More behind the scenes can be found in my short Breakdown Video.<div data-youtube-video="" style="padding:56.25% 0 0 0; position:relative;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/cb4z9pStP5I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" width="640" height="480" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" style="position:absolute; top:0; left:0; width:100%; height:100%;"></iframe></div><img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/148fb6441a8845e8a3032585ca3f7343Copy_of_ref8.webp" class="custom-image large-size" data-id="148fb6441a8845e8a3032585ca3f7343" data-width="1000" data-height="800">On that note, I have since been exploring more ways to use Marvelous Designer in a "2D-shaded" 3D pipeline. Recently I have been experimenting with manually painting normals in Substance for an upcoming film. I needed a way that I could blend this method with my clothing; considering that there can be many tight folds when simulating animations. I realised that if I export the T pose of my Marvelous simulation and bring it into Substance Painter, I can use that frame as a base normal to add my painted averages before my simulation creates folds that are hard to paint.<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/1eb2fb8ddc8b4746a09776150aafcd41/images/564c2f4e30fb44cf979135c13ae93b5cCopy_of_ref9.webp" class="custom-image medium-size" data-id="564c2f4e30fb44cf979135c13ae93b5c" data-width="2000" data-height="1000"><h1>Are there any standout moments, scenes, or characters in your project that Marvelous Designer was especially useful for?</h1>I used Marvelous Designer for my main character's costume and also an easter-egg character in the background that will appear in a later work coming soon on YouTube. Marvelous came in handy for any complex animations that needed to interact with fabric.<h1>What were some of the challenges you faced during the project, and how did you overcome them?</h1>My main challenge on this project was honestly just painting everything, manual processes are something that I hold dearly in my heart and they should always be practised, but they are very time consuming. My compromise was to create a range of general textures that I could use as texture brushes or masks in the shader editor in Blender. That way I could keep layering with diversity without painting every single stroke again.Another challenge would have been the clothing design but I was lucky that the Marvelous store had a vast selection and exactly what I was looking for. With more time and experience, I am hoping to dive deeper into creating beautiful garments like these from scratch in Marvelous.<h1>Do you have any tips or advice for other 3D artists looking to incorporate Marvelous Designer into their workflow?</h1>Don't be afraid to break the rules a bit and play! 3D simulation is a very technical process and hard to jump into, you might also expect to do things in a set way, but within a software like Marvelous Designer there is so much potential to find your own workflow to suit your needs - From realistic to stylised. Just play with simple garments first and the rest will come to you over time.<h1>Finally, how would you describe your overall experience using Marvelous Designer on this project?</h1>Overall I had a great time using Marvelous for this piece and will definitely be referring to it again when it comes to character costume in animation. It definitely has its frustrating moments, like any 3D simulation software does, but the speed and detail that it can simulate cloth in comparison to other 3D softwares i've used feels unmatched so far. Having found a workflow where I only need to fit a character once and just click simulate for each action, has been extremely beneficial to my artistic journey.

The Bandit of Solis Tomb

<h2 style="text-align: center">Alison, Grand Award winner in the Design MIYACORE Contest, shares her journey as a 3D artist, blending historical elegance with modern flair using Marvelous Designer.</h2><hr>The Design MIYACORE contest, held from September to October this year, has successfully concluded.Presented in collaboration with the CONNECT asset store for Marvelous Designer and SUNMIYA CLUB, this special event brought vibrancy to the community through the inventive spirit and enthusiasm of its participants.Notably, a Marvelous Designer user received the GRAND AWARD, garnering significant attention.To delve deeper into this exceptional work, we're excited to share an interview with the GRAND AWARD winner, ALISON GADELETA, with all of you. Let's explore her creative world together!<h1>Interview with ALISON GADALETA | 3D Artist</h1><img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/7e113424ee7e492c98594150ac035fc5/images/307a822f09ff4b158d0a9b212acb8f0a6ee6f7abea1949d6b36ae5fb5884282d.png" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="307a822f09ff4b158d0a9b212acb8f0a" data-width="2560" data-height="3413"><h1>Artist Introduction: please tell us about yourself.</h1>Hi everyone! My name is Alison, I am an Italian 3D Artist specializing in Virtual Fashion. I'm currently working in a fashion company as a 3D Design Specialist for almost one year.I started using Marvelous Designer when I was pursuing my Master’s Degree in computer graphics in 2021 that’s where my real passion was born.It was during this time that I delved into Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, and, of course, Marvelous Designer.Being passionate about computer graphics and 3d in general, it was a lot of fun to participate in this contest and use these beautiful characters to create the outfit.<h1>We’d like to hear more about the art direction in your Design MIYACORE Contest. What was the visual style you were aiming for?</h1>Before we started modeling, each of us could choose two themes from those proposed: Juicy Newtro and Bad Lady.The Bad Lady theme was much closer to my style, and I could have had many more style options, but I deliberately chose the other theme so that I could step out of my comfort zone and create an outfit that was different, but at the same time reflected my personality.Also, Juice Newtro was a perfect theme to challenge myself on the color scheme.I started by creating a concept board from random references about clothing in America in the 1950’s. I researched what was fashionable in those years and what were the main characteristics a woman in the 50’s looked for in an outfit.<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/7e113424ee7e492c98594150ac035fc5/images/e0d75187d0284f87bebe72808ae96acd96961aafb8f54d25be83dad1e53cd10b.png" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="e0d75187d0284f87bebe72808ae96acd" data-width="1764" data-height="1125">During my research, I was fascinated by one of America's most beloved first ladies: Jacqueline Lee Kennedy, wife of the President of USA John Fitzgerald Kennedy. A woman with a strong determination, a mix of charm and elegance. In fact, her style was inspiring for the creation of this project.The result is the creation of an elegant and playful cocktail dress that highlights the hourglass silhouette, typical of that time.To add a modern touch, I wanted to create the dress shorter than standard, also to balance the overall volume.Another key element within the design is the outerwear: a raincoat with voluminous sleeves with contrasting lining made of silk to enhance the interior and make it a luxurious garment.Finally, to add particularity to the look I added the scarf in tone with the dress, a belt to match the shoes, and a pearl necklace same as the buttons on the dress.<h1>Would you be able to give us a quick overview of the different tools you use in your pipeline with a focus on Marvelous Designer? Have you encountered any challenges and how have you overcome them?</h1>I think it is only through experience that each of us learns to have our own workflow.The first phase during my process of creating any dress is the blocking phase. In this phase I create the general volumes and build the basic 2D pattern, enhancing it according to the avatar's body. In addition, I add the buttons but do not insert any additional details.At this stage, the avatar is in A-pose.In the intermediate stage, I begin to pose the avatar and create more detail in the clothes I have modeled; I change the thicknesses of the pieces, increase the resolution of the garments, and set the materials to see if they are suitable for that type of dress.Only when I'm satisfied with the look, then I move onto the detailing stage paying attention to draping, because it is very important for realistic modeling. To finish, I create accessories such as shoes, scarf, necklaces, and belts. In order not to overload the simulation, I usually create separate files for each of these elements and finally add them to the main file.I textured everything in Marvelous Designer and rendered with V-Ray, while I used Photoshop for post-production.This was my first time modeling shoes in Marvelous Designer. It was challenging but if you remember to freeze each piece step by step when you are satisfied, everything becomes much easier!<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/7e113424ee7e492c98594150ac035fc5/images/4c7fd59dbe0b4c4dbe13fee7e80942dadba8ad959b8e44cf8af3669f983be313.png" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="4c7fd59dbe0b4c4dbe13fee7e80942da" data-width="2421" data-height="1198"><h1>Are there any tips and tricks with Marvelous Designer that you can share with the community?</h1>One tip I would like to share is to pay close attention to the details, looking at an existing physical garment figuring out what components and materials are used in its creation, and try to replicate it in a realistic way.For example, let us dwell on the inside of the coat: it has different materials and components: facing, lining, and made of nylon and silk, respectively.<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/7e113424ee7e492c98594150ac035fc5/images/63515571715f4035be3b3b0e7d66a01f8e056c323a9a4b53a069cb4e8e614f06.png" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="63515571715f4035be3b3b0e7d66a01f" data-width="2212" data-height="1350">A trick I use in creating models that have multiple layers is the layer clone option.To make the simulation more stable, I usually higher the particle distance and set everything in strengthen.<img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/7e113424ee7e492c98594150ac035fc5/images/885f81585d694904a34c911250fae3d056dc29233fb74e0b99bee91a8229b1c4.png" class="custom-image original-size" data-id="885f81585d694904a34c911250fae3d0" data-width="1699" data-height="1049">After creating the layer underneath, I lock the simulation and, when selecting, use the remove linked editing tool.Then I can draw internal lines and cut and sew the interior as I prefer to create facing and lining.Another trick: in reality the lining is a little larger than the outer, so I increase the shrinkage settings in warp and weft.Finally, I check the material, remove the strengthened mode, lower the particle distance again, and simulate again for a more realistic drape.<hr>Check out other incredible designs from additional award winners through the link <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://connect.clo-set.com/contest/21">here</a>.<h1>by ALISON GADALETA</h1><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.instagram.com/aellys3d/">Link to Instagram</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-gadaleta-90647b1ba/">Link to LinkedIn</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.artstation.com/alisongad00">Link to Artstation</a><img src="https://storagefiles.clo-set.com/public/community/202412/7e113424ee7e492c98594150ac035fc5/images/c92574f4a5c1496da487fd5f5bc3f9326ee6f7abea1949d6b36ae5fb5884282d.png" class="custom-image hidden-thumbnail" data-id="c92574f4a5c1496da487fd5f5bc3f932" data-width="2560" data-height="2568">

The Bandit of Solis Tomb

Marvelous Designer Official

Marvelous Designer Official