maternity app - freelance job

A month ago I got hired to do a job through the working academy. Since they don't require signing an nda, it's possible for me to make a post here.
My task was to Model and rig a mother and a baby + some of the organs of the mother. This is to be used in a maternity educational app on android devices.

The client's target art style was pretty much in copying this picture they found on shutterstock:

So at first I was told that the models are to be pre-rendered- I made them high res. Then it was decided that the models should run animated in real time within the app.
So then reduce their poly count. Luckily when I initially modeled them, they were designed to work with a subdivision modifier to get their final "smooth" look so reducing the poly count wasn't hard.

They required the mother's face to be neutral - not belonging to any specific ethnicity or having too much character. Realizing that this neutrality is very much determined by the shader's properties as well as the shape, I decided to use a material that is as close to the target art style as possible. It was also important for this material to be game friendly. Creating a matcap(inkscape) allowed me to achieve the look in real time in the opengl viewport. Unity has a matcap shader, so in theory this should run in the game engine.In any case having this for previewing purposes helped me sell the model and get it approved. I needed to first pitch the approach - at the time thinking they will be prerendering the animations:

The woman is using a matcap (or any shader that gets similar look- it can be a  ramp shader) The material is really not transparent, but the organs are showing on top of the mesh, even though they are inside it in terms of 3d space.The rim light and the subtle darker tone towards the middle of the matcap sphere helps reinforce the illusion that the mesh is transparent.
In blender its a matter of toggling "xray" for the organs geometry in their viewport render attributes. Maya is a similar story. You can alternatively use passes and composit them together (if you are doing prerendered clips).

It was suggested to simply use a transparent shader. I tried it and found some practical issues with that approach:

Both characters are based on a man mesh I made a few months ago. Reusing geometry is a nice way to save time in some cases. I still had to change the edgeflow to follow some curves better.
At the first pass the client requested to reduce the blocky-ness on the buttox of the woman. So I added more topology where it was needed to be more curved.
Modelling the baby was more challenging, because it was important for it to have that "newborn" look. There was a lot of play with proportions.

Dominique Lane provided concept art images for reference. I followed those closely as it was what the client approved. They later decided to remove the hair for the woman. For the organs there were references on the web. Dom provided concept art for those as well. I Looked at lots of pictures of babies and pregnant women. The poly count can be reduced more but was told to stop doing that :D
In total ALL the models(+organs) in the scene are 17 000 triangles. But all of the models are not going to be visible at all times.

The organs are made using lots of modifiers, making them easy to edit later on, while also being low poly. Blender has a nice "decimate" modifier that can  non destructively reduce poly count- it's not ideal for everything, but it's handy in a few cases such as irregular static shapes. If you want to keep your mirror modifier, but still have some asymmetry, you can combine it with a simple latice modifier.

Rigging and skinning was the easiest part, because it didn't need approval from the client.It took a day for both with a rigging script- skinning taking the majority of the time.

A big part of this job for me was communicating with the client and the other team members, waiting for feedback, asking questions that weren't answered in the brief, etc.

For the model of the mother is good to note that they required a pregnant and non pregnant version. To achieve that I gave her a "belly" controller that is driving a joint. It is completely possible to animate her pregnancy progression by scaling/moving/rotating it. The skinning was a big part of getting that part right. Unity and most game engines don't do blendshapes very well or it is too expensive as far as I know.
This project was a slightly weird experience, that was still enjoyable. Here's hoping that it will find it's way to an android device! That part depends on the rest of the team.