I've had a number of questions about my process for creating a 3D visual novel and have decided to create a series of dev logs outlining my process.  At some point, when I have time, I may do some timelapes and post to YouTube but for now, I'll be posting here.

A little bit about myself;  I spent 25 years as an IT professional and am now retired- sort of. My retirement job is 3D art. For the past 10+ years, I was a 3D art hobbyist but, for the last 5 years, I've taken a deep dive into 3D particularly learning Blender, Zbrush, and Unity. So, I have a rather unique skill set I can apply to my VN. 

Anyway, I hope you find this series interesting and if you have any questions, feel free to ask! I keep no secrets about my process and am happy to share.

Part one is about how I create character models. Mostly this follows the same process I use for commissions for VRChat and Vtuber avatars. 

My main character creation software is Blender, the program is amazing and has been constantly updated. However, programs like Maya and 3D Studio Max are just as good. 

Right now I have no characters I need to build from scratch so, I'm going to use the model of Kemchin Wolf as my process example.

This model is actually completed but this shows what the mesh looks like. Now, these days I rarely start a model from scratch, after all these years I have a bunch of base models I can start with which saves time! I load in a model base and start sculpting to get it as close as I can.  Sometimes I use Blender for this, and sometimes Zbrush. It depends on how detailed I want to get. In this case, I used Blender for sculpting. Here's the trick for getting awesome-looking models while keeping the polycount low- normal maps. 

Normal maps are a pretty deep and important subject so I'll save that for part 1-2