Since this model is used in VR, it must be designed with performance in mind, so the model was limited to only 3 materials and under 35k triangles.
Rendered in Blender EEVEE
Rendered in Unity (real-time)
Captured in the social VR platform, VRChat. The model is rigged to feel natural when being "puppeteered" by a player in-game.
The ribbon asset used a custom anisotropic shader to really give it that ribbon look.
A custom eye shader was also made, with iris depth, pupil dilation, and a customizable eye highlight.
Using Unity's animation tree as a sort of visual scripting language, I created "physical" interactions that drive the character's facial expressions.
The Rag Rat is a game ready character model designed to be used (puppeteered) by players in the social VR platform, VR Chat.
Designing for this use case brings up a lot of unique requirements most digital artists probably won't face.
First off, since it's designed to be used in Virtual Reality, a platform which must render efficiently, the model had to be highly optimized, I had to work with low poly counts and minimal materials.
The model must also be designed with the intent of being mapped to a human body, where each part of the digital body must line up with the player's physical body reasonably well. This is accomplished both by sticking to a humanoid skeleton, but also using constrains and visual tricks to make it seem that everything lines up correctly, even if it doesn't.
The face is also a direct extension of the player and must be expressive, both to sync up correctly with what the player saying, and also to convey the correct emotions to other players.