My latest painting for Wild Beyond the Witchlight is finished! I've been so excited to paint this one. Deer are one of my favorite subjects to draw so I could not pass up the chance to paint Wrath, the iron hart, in standing majestically in his tower. This painting is designed as a counterpart to the official art of Envy's tower. It was fun to imagine Wrath being envious of Envy himself for having art when he didn't. Now the hart no longer has to envy the lion.
You can find this piece and all of my other WbtWL art on DM's Guild.
Hi res downloads are also available to all Ko-Fi supporters, one-off and monthly. I'll also be posting a process video for this painting on Ko-Fi as soon as I finish editing it. (also comms are open, if you don't feel like using Artistree feel free to DM me here or tzlyn on discord)
@blachalkar <3 Imagine, you're a Draken who's looking for his brother and your only hope is a shaman, who can track him down through your blood. Rahibe is here for you.
This is not a-z guide for beginners, this is a collection of tips for ppl that know some basics like using the Blender's interface and installing addons, because that's something I obviously can't teach you right away. This post might make your first rip easier without doing some tedious guesswork.
I might be editing this post for grammar later.
1. Software I'm using, old for various reasons.
Ninja Ripper 1.7.1 (the last working for me freeware version) - Comes with ninjaripper (.rip) format importer for Blender 2.7x, Max and Noesis (these need to be installed manually). I had no success launching 2.0.5, and newest versions are paywalled.
Blender 2.79b, because that's the one I learned, newer is drastically changed and I can't get used to it at all. Plus the plugin won't work with newer. Blender is always free. I repeat, Blender is always free.
Optionally Noesis - as a .rip format browser. When ripping a scene, NR makes a lot of repetitions, it's sometimes difficult to browse through all meshes loaded at once in Blender, so in Noesis you can find those that you need, and check filenames, copy them somewhere else, rename, whatever.
For Noesis to being able to read .rip format, install a plugin provided with NR.
IMPORTANT THINGS:
NR 1.7.1 should run regardless of any overlays like Nvidia Experience, but if you're using any Guild Wars 2 addon, I recommend to disable them.
You might have to run it in compatibility mode and save the setting Windows finds for it.
GW2 is a DX11 game now, so use appropriate injection mode. NR creates a d3d11.dll file within game's directory. After you're done ripping and turned the apps off, GO TO THE DIRECTORY AND REMOVE THIS FILE, otherwise it will be still working even with NR turned off and the ripping keys will be active, not to mention game will work like crap.
Make sure you picked the correct directories also for output files. The rips are numerous small files, single scene can take several GB's.
Back in the days, the default keybinds for ripping didn't worked well with GW2, so out of habit I change them, you can do that too, those are mine and you don't need to do the same:
If the default rip command doesn't work despite that, use forced rip.
Make sure your game settings while ripping are:
LOWEST animation quality. This turns off some jiggle bones and will prevent meshes from being deformed and detached (hair, armour, some weapon tassels and ribbons).
LOWEST character models limit/quality. Also Environment and LoD distance.
HIGHEST textures and shaders.
Assuming you're attempting to rip model of another player/npc: Make sure texture quality is also best.
2. Most important options to set up at import to Blender are:
Forward: Y forward
Up: -Z up
Invert X axis
Import blend weights (if you want vertex weights)
Skip if untextured
Detect duplication > Skip full duplicates (does little, because if there's two same meshes with different materials, it will still load both).
Flip Vertical (flips UV maps back to their correct positions).
uncheck "import custom normals" (sorts out a lot of normals, but not all of them, some must be fixed by hand).
NOTE: You can save these settings as custom operator preset for the future.
Find your rips folder, hit select button, then load:
3. Ok, now, what NR will get for you:
Your character, the weapon they wield, and their backpack should they be visible. Their correct headmorph. Weights. Nearest models drawn by the game, textures and UI elements. All UV layouts, if a model has more than one.
4. What it won't get:
Your body type and height. It will be the default one.
Bones.
Cape or mount dyes.
Vertex colour.
Eye colour.
5. What it will get but messed up:
Some meshes with cloth sim will be distorted, detached from the model and placed somewhere in the scene, hard to find. Capes - always. Some rare armors/outfits. Blish's cape. Generally, if you set animations to lowest but still see something flowing like cloth - ripping it intact will be impossible.
TIP: To slightly alleviate this, it's better to ingame: go first person mode, open your inventory and rip the character from there. The detached meshes will be always placed somewhere directly high above the character model.
Environment placement. It throws every single mesh to the middle, there's no world/local switch like in NR 2.x.x, although there's no FoV distortion. Rips will be a mess in a way. Your toon will be fine though, mostly, no worries.
TIP: If you don't need weapons or backpacks, it's generally most comfortable to rip your character from the login menu.
6. General tips:
Make sure there's no characters of the same race nearby. Best place for ripping for me so far is the instanced version of Hall of Monuments, accessible via portal stone or talking to Kimmes in the hub version), hugging the most-eastern wall. Eventually character select menu.
Game will freeze for a bit, which is a good sign.
After you import the .rip files to Blender, this is the first shizz you see after a successful load. Select all by type>mesh and size them all down to 0,001 (S 0,001)
Use wireframe view to browse easier:
Characters will be placed on the center, within all the mess. Their weapons get dropped to the ground too:
Select all the parts of your toon and move them to another layer. Or if you're feeling cheeky, remove all the crap around them.
Don't forget to double check for small meshes like lashes (some face presets may have none, or only the small shading mesh over the eyeballs), or body/skin parts.
Check the material panel of each mesh to see the textures they use if you're not sure of any.
Check if weights are ok. But for the model to be posable you need either create a skeleton and bind the weights to it, or rig the model from the top. For now they're not bound to anything and if you attempt to convert to some other format, you will most probably loose them.
And this is it, you can now process further as you wish. This is obv not for beginners, but I'm hoping it will make your run smoother.
With six years, Zero joined the Wildcat's crew. A scrap collecting and recycling space vessel. The captain couldn't find a suiting job for a Mechari who won't talk, but noticed that he is good at cleaning things and does this job with care. During his shifts on this critter infested ship, he often encountered a group of Slanks. They weren't Chua or Cassians. So can it be, that there are other organics out there, waiting to be discovered by him?
Trying to befriend these Slanks did end in dissapointment. XD They weren't good dialogue partners.
Drawn a small RP scene. ^^ While on a trip through Malgrave, Rahibe and Zero stumbled across a destroyed caravan. Besides of a few corpses and looted supplies, they found a small clutch of Draken babies, hidden under a heavy blanket. DX
wanted to make a fake promo poster as a treat for myself after pushing through two back-to-back deadlines and maybe try to gently manifest something; ended up too unhappy with it to go through with doing it painty / totally finished-y so here’s as far as i got. istg i’ll draw some actual canon characters at some point, these two are just …… comfort OC s ………
Ha, that's a grossly simplified title for eye-catchiness.
It should be "A Stream-of-Consciousness Compilation of Catbat's Thought Processes and History of Taking Commissions: Hope This Helps."
Long story short, I'd been mulling over trying to make a doc like this for a LONG time. After doing some polls and asking some questions, I decided to go forward with it!
It made the most sense to do it on a Doc (please for the love of god, keep "Outline" open for organizational purposes) because I have a LOT of thoughts.
Feel free to read and don't hesitate to ask additional questions you'd like to see answered in the doc (either about my personal process or commissions in general!) This doc will be updated over the course of time!
I sincerely hope this has some nuggets of helpful information both for new commission artists and maybe some ideas for seasoned artists!
Been feeling nostalgic for Wildstar lately and also wanting to practice painting faster. Thanks to the good folks in the WSRP discord for offering their OCs for me to practice on.
