MURO Making: Making a Character Using Crashsune's Tutorial and My Inspirations (Part 1)

PART 1, BACKGROUND AND INITIAL SETUP

     Hi again, everyone!

    It's been a hot minute! I've been struggling to make this post because I hit some roadblocks during this project, but I wanted to share with you anyway!

    Today's topic is actually a question I was asked right as I was starting this blog, and I didn't have a good answer. We're coming up on a whole year of MURO, and I finally decided to answer by doing a project! The question is, where do I get the inspiration for my character designs?

    Now, I could go down the list and name every single thing that's ever inspired me, but that'd be a long and exhausting read! To put it simply, I incorporate elements of things I enjoyed growing up with into my designs. If I like freckles? I make my characters have freckles. Do I like street fashion? I make my characters wear street fashion. You can always adjust the design later if you find something that worked at the beginning stops feeling right, so I'm very fast and loose with my work.

    I wanted this project to be remaking a character from one of my inspiration sources in my style!

    As a kid, I enjoyed a game series called the Touhou Project created by Team Shanghai Alice (formerly ZUN Soft). The team's sole member is ZUN. Most games from the Touhou Project (34 in total at time of writing) shoot 'em up style game where girls throw magic at each other, with a massive cast of characters where the majority literally eat humans for breakfast.

    "Now, MURO, what do you mean they eat people? I thought you said you were a kid when you played this!" I hear you say. Well, I'll tell you! I was a weird kid. But also, most of the girls are anthropomorphized yōkai, which is a term that tends to be localized as 'demons' but means something closer to a supernatural entity or spirit. Anthropomorphized means that something that isn't human has been given human form or characteristics. 

    The reason I hesitate to label yōkai as 'demons' is because while some yōkai are very demon-like and actively malicious towards humans, others are very easy to trick or even beneficial to humans in their mythology. Demon, meanwhile, has a purely negative connotation. When you think demon, you tend to think actively hostile and malicious. From all the media I've seen, less dangerous yōkai tend to be treated like wild animals to ward off and avoid rather than an evil presence to be purged. No humans are ever depicted being harmed by yōkai in Touhou Project! Instead, they have battles using magic.

Nitori Kawashiro, as depicted in 
妖精大戦争　～ 東方三月精 
(Great Fairy Wars ~ Three Fairies)

    Here's an example of an anthropomorphized character! Nitori Kawashiro is meant to be a kappa, a type of yōkai that looks like a human-sized turtle with a bowl built into its head. Meanwhile, Nitori is dressed very classically for a character created by ZUN. Big hat, a poofy skirt, and not a single scale in sight.  Kappa in this universe are depicted similarly to how fantasy goblins are often portrayed: opportunistic, industrious, and eager to turn a profit. Touhou Project makes these little departures from the folklore to create a functioning society of yōkai, humans, and magic in a sealed barrier known as Gensokyo (literally, "Land of Illusion").

    It's a very successful franchise, as well! I was an active Touhou fan growing up. It began in 1997 when ZUN created the first two games of the series, Highly Responsive to Prayers and Story of Eastern Wonderland. 

 

Image from video titled "Touhou 6 - The 
Embodiment of Scarlet Devil - No Bombs Lunatic 
1cc" by Jaimers.

    Here's a screenshot of a person playing my favorite Touhou game, 東方紅魔郷 〜 The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (2002). The series is known for being punishingly difficult, to the point where if you play on Easy mode, the characters will point it out. In some games, you aren't able to get the real ending of the game unless you finish it on Normal mode or higher difficulty. Despite this, the gameplay feels rewarding and not unfair. Part of the fun, at least for me, is getting introduced to new characters at each stage. They're introduced from the weakest to the strongest, so you learn the power hierarchy in each area (Gensokyo is a BIG place, and most games take place in different regions) as you play the game.

Alice Margatroid, as depicted
in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.

THE ACTUAL PROJECT

     My character of choice is Alice Margatroid! She's a magic user who can bring the dolls she creates to life. She's a former human who turned into a yōkai by becoming a magician. 

    The term "magician" in this setting is used to refer to either what a person is or what they do. A person studying magic can be a magician, but there's also a subspecies of yōkai similar to humans called magicians. For example, there are two other magicians with whom Alice frequently interacts. One is a human studying magic, Marisa Kirisame, and the other is a natural-born yōkai magician, Patchouli Knowledge. Alice and Patchouli's bodies are powered by magic and will never age, while Marisa is a normal human. 

    It's a neat piece of world-building that I particularly like, because it makes Alice much more mysterious. What was Alice like when she was human? How did she become a yōkai? How much did it change her life? She's not as bombastic as the other characters, but she definitely has a place on my favorites list.

  

 "You might imagine magicians as being indoor-type people; in Alice's case, you'd be right. She spends most of her time alone, and the forest is a good place for that. The forest is quite humid, however, and her dolls will become damaged without her constant care. Because of this, she's currently planning to make a doll that will automatically take care of other dolls." - Alice's description from Imperishable Night

To begin, I eyeball some colors from Alice's portrait up there! I'm a bit off, but she's a very pale mix of red, yellow, and blue. It reminds me of Easter too much. What if we make it a bit darker?

Looking good!

    For this project, I'm going to use Crashsune's low-poly reference character sheet as a base to build my model! I plan to draw my design onto the sheet and then create a 3D model of Alice. This first post is already really long, so I'll draft my design for now!

    I start by giving Alice a fitting unimpressed expression. In terms of personality, she's a loner who's depicted as having a somewhat bad attitude. She lives alone in the Forest of Magic with her dolls, where she hones her crafts. If I were a magician, I think I'd be a lot like Alice.

 

    Here's our Alice so far! I wanted to capture her most iconic features, so this is our starting point. I want to keep tweaking her design, so it's easiest to get things in place quickly and then modify them as we go. You can see me going back and forth between the lighter and darker palettes in this picture, so I do some tweaking until I get a color scheme I like. I also started adding details like the ruffles on her skirt and tie, her headband, and some detail on her eyelids!

    If you're wondering why the side view is in a tank top and shorts, it's because I want to make sure she has a fully functioning body before I slap clothes on top of it. I'm deviating from our reference photo, but that's part of artistic license. You can keep a character recognizable without perfectly matching the original. If I were to explain it, I'd say it's more about having an eye for what makes a character that character and how abstract you can go with it. 

Here's an example! What does this image make you think of?

What about this image? What character does this icon represent?

Images are sourced from Disneyclips.com!

    Despite being three abstract dots, it's easy to tell that these pictures are Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Likewise, with Alice, we know it's her by her short blond hair, her dolls, her shawl, her matching hairband, belt, and ribbon. If I were to change her hairstyle and color, take away her iconic outfit, or get rid of her dolls, it wouldn't be Alice anymore. 

    Since this post is already getting long, I'll be breaking it up into multiple parts. The next part will be going into Blender and creating a 3D model using our reference image! Thank you for reading this far, and see you next time!

✤MURO Making: Let's make a basic teacup in Blender!✤

    Hi again, everyone, today I have something a little different! This post is going to be very technical. I'm a beginner at 3D modelling, so I wanted to share some of my work with you! Today, I'm going to be making a teacup in Blender.

    So, why a teacup? My first reason is that it's a very simple object, but there's also some historical context here. I wanted to make a homage to the Utah teapot, also known as the Newell teapot, created by Martin Newell in 1975. Personal computers were not something that your average person had until the 70s. Working at the University of Utah as a computer scientist and needing an object to model more advanced shapes, Newell's wife, Sandra Newell, suggested using their Melitta brand teapot. The Utah teapot is now iconic in the 3d modelling community, and the real teapot is currently located at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. You can read more about Newell and the Utah teapot on Wikipedia!

    Blender is a free and open-source program used for 3D modelling, animation, VFX, and more. What open-source means is that the code of the program is freely available for viewing and modification. You can go to GitHub, a code-sharing website, find Blender, and see every line of code that makes up the program. It encourages transparency and collaboration, because other developers can read the code and understand exactly what it does. For example, if a person hid code in an open-source program that was malicious (ex. steals your data, infects your device, etc), other developers could see it and inform others or develop their own version without the malicious code.

 

The initial setup that appears when you launch Blender

But enough talk! Let's launch Blender and make that teacup!

A circle mesh, representing the rim of the cup.

    To start, I use the Shift + A command to bring up the Add menu and add a circle mesh to my scene, representing the rim of the teacup. A mesh is a simplified representation of an object's physical form that resembles a wire frame. Much of the terminology is complex, but the simplest way to think of it is that a mesh represents an object's form. After selecting my circle and entering edit mode, I can use the extrude feature by hitting E, which allows me to add to the wire-frame and build out the shape. With just these two commands, I've gone from an empty starting point to creating a hollow cylinder. 

An extruded circle mesh, now becoming a cylinder.

 

   But my way isn't the only way! 3D modelling is very similar to pottery in the sense that there are many different ways to achieve the same goal. I could have started with a cylinder shape and worked from there, but with my process, I felt it was easier to begin with the rim of the cup and build outward. You can start from the top, bottom, side, whatever part of the object catches your attention most! There aren't complex rules that say you can ONLY make an object this way or that way. Have fun with it!

 

After using the Scale tool to pinch one ring of my cylinder inwards, it has a cup shape.

    Now in Edit Mode, I can select each ring I've created and adjust its size, like sculpting a clay pot. It already looks like a teacup, but wait! The inside looks terrible! It has a massive hole in the bottom! There's no way someone could drink tea out of a cup like that, so let's fix it!

 

A hollow teacup. The horror!

    I switch back to Object Mode. Using Shift + A again, I add a sphere and nestle it into my teacup like an egg. Then, I select the top half of the sphere and delete it, leaving me with a smooth, bowl-shaped object. Now, we need to determine how to fill in the gap between the half-sphere and our cup shape. By selecting both objects, right-clicking, and then pressing Join, we can merge them into one. Then, we can choose each edge and press the F key to fill in the gap. Going around the rim and filling in the top and bottom, I soon have a completely solid cup! Now, we need to make the handle. But how?

 

Adding a sphere to form the inside of the cup and deleting the excess.

Filling in the gaps between the exterior and interior using the F key.

    Thankfully, Shift + A saves us once more! Re-entering the Mesh section, I can add a doughnut-like shape known as a torus. Using the Scale and Move tools, I position and resize the torus to fit inside the cup, then delete the excess. I also make the section of the handle that disappears into the cup bigger to make the shape look more organic.

 

    One last step before we can start looking at this as a finished product! Like in origami, we need to add creases so the computer understands which parts of the object are sharp edges and which should be smooth. Selecting the edges of our object and pressing Shift + E allows us to crease them, making them nice and sharp. Now, we can return to Object Mode, right-click, and press Shade Auto Smooth. This button takes our mesh and uses math to smooth it into a more organic-looking shape, so we don't have to smooth it out manually. Our creases help preserve the lip of our teacup and its base. We now have a full teacup!

 

After adding the handle, I got a little excited and forget to photograph the process thoroughly. This is after applying a smooth material to the cup!

 

    Now, we can move on to the material of the cup! After reviewing our materials and applying one to our teacup, we have several options. For now, we're going to focus on Roughness. Since we know glassware is smooth, we lower the Roughness, and we now have a glossy reflective surface on our cup. We can also use Base Color to change the color of our cup! I started with a sky blue before I eventually chose a deep plum color.

 

The teacup, shown in a Render preview display mode that includes lighting and material properties.

At this point, I'm shifting towards rendering, which is the step that processes the base scene into a polished image. Rendering is a subject I'm not deeply familiar with, so I use default settings. I add planes, which are flat surfaces, to represent walls and floors. Then, I add the model we mentioned at the very beginning of this article, our teapot!

 After adjusting the camera to where I want it to be, I line my objects up, adjust the light source, and select Render Image from the Render menu.

And here's our result! I think this is an easy project for anyone starting out, so if you'd like to try 3D modelling, try downloading Blender and making a teacup! Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next time!

My finished cup alongside the legendary teapot!

✤MURO Marching : Monument✤

 Have you ever wanted to build something bigger than yourself?

 

     Monument by Sylan Troh takes this feeling and turns it into a social experiment, similar to my previous post about Crazium's Worlds, which you can read here. When you join the World, you begin in a desert valley. A massive tower looms ahead, tall enough to that it fades into the clouds, and you're greeted by a sign.

 

     "Have you ever wondered what it would be like to build a monument? Something so large, that a single person could never hope to create on their own? The tower before you is synced across all instances: each brick you place is permanently added, and will be visible to everyone. Mine rocks, chisel them into bricks and help us build a monument together!" - Intro message upon loading into the World.

    Initially, when taking these photos, I hit a bottleneck when my game camera was unable to capture the tower. Despite several attempts, I failed to capture the entire scale of the tower in a photograph, resulting in landscape shots with no tower in sight. A recent update seems to have fixed this problem, because now I can use the in-game camera with no trouble.

 

   To add to the tower, I begin by picking up a pickaxe and breaking off chunks of rock from the cliff face. Then, I take all the stones I mined and a chisel from the workstation, and proceed to carve each chunk down into a brick. After loading all of the carved bricks into woven baskets, it's time to make the long trek to the top!

 

    The design of the monument includes a long, spiral staircase that takes you up a winding path to the top floor. There's no railing, so it's easy to overshoot and fall off if you get impatient. When I reach it, I'm so high up that I can no longer see the desert below. When I go to unload my baskets and place the bricks, the spots that I'm able to put them light up blue. When I click, the brick disappears from my hand and fades into place in that spot.

 

 

    A real person placed each brick of this massive monument. You can watch in real time as bricks materialize into existence with a flash of blue light, signalling someone somewhere else has filled in that brick. Even without speaking to them, you can feel connected to these strangers in your united goal. The tower is already massive! There's no way to pinpoint the exact bricks we laid, but my friends and I visited this world and helped fill in several layers of it. And the results speak for themselves! So many people have contributed to this tower, that the top stands far above the valley.

 

    What do you think? Would you participate in a project like this? Let me know in the comments! Finally, here's the World's credit list, photographed on the right! 

 

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!

✤MURO Marching : Interactive Water✤

    Hi again, everyone! How was your summer? I love everything about the season, except for the heat...

 

    Today's post is about interactive water! That doesn't sound that impressive on the surface, but when you think about it, what goes into recreating water in a digital medium?

 

    Solids and gases have the benefit of being easy to establish visually. Collision, in game mechanic terms, is a property of whether or not the player can pass through an object. If I place a plain white cube in a space and turn the cube's collision on, I've successfully created the illusion of a solid object for the user. For gas, it's the opposite. Turn off collision, and make it see-through. In only a couple of steps, you can create both. 

 

 

    Liquid, however, is more complicated. Sure, I can create a flat, see-through surface, turn off collision for the user, and label it as water. That's what a lot of games do! And if your only need is to have water nearby, it's serviceable. But what if you wanted to have water pour into something? What if you wanted players to be able to interact with it? The more you think of what water is naturally capable of doing versus what you have to intentionally make it do, the more complicated it gets.

 

    Realistic water movement requires constant calculations. Computational fluid dynamics is an entire branch of fluid mechanics, which is itself a branch of physics. The more calculations, the more demand and strain on your PC, so less is usually better.

 

    The water I'm looking at today is a mashup of different assets, put together by iyFale Edvifin! The World photographed is ODN Pool ［VRCLV 2․0］, a rooftop pool with a video player and lights. It's a great party spot! I think the night mode with the auroras turned on looks super dreamy, and splashing in the water is so much fun.

 

 

    So what's so fantastic about this water? Well, look at it! Making realistic-looking and realistic-moving water is already a feat. But this water is Quest compatible!

 

    What's Quest Compatibility? The Meta Quest headset line is Meta's take on a VR headset, optimized for ease of use and portability. As a result, the Quest headsets have less processing power than a headset plugged into a computer. In VRChat, Quest users must follow stricter guidelines when uploading Avatars and Worlds to ensure the Quest can handle the volume of user content. That means for something to be compatible with the Quest, the creator has to know how to balance visual quality with performance. Making it so you're capable of splashing your friends, air bubbles spread under the surface after a splash, your vision blurs, and more, all while keeping it Quest compatible, is impressive! (Note: These photographs are taken on PC, so they may not accurately reflect how the World looks on Quest.)

 

 

    I'd also like to start including the credit lists from Worlds in MURO Marching because it's interesting to know how many individual assets go into making a World! What do you think? Should I start including credit lists when they're available? Let me know in the comments! 

✤MURO Marching : The Architecture of VR✤

 

    Hey, hey, everyone! Today, I have a big post about architecture! Not just any architecture, though. Today, I want to discuss architecture in - you guessed it - virtual worlds, specifically in VRChat.
 
    The reason I'd like to focus on this topic is that, when considered theoretically, it's fascinating. World creators can design their ideal environments with no concerns about scarcity, practicality, or regulation. Everything is made to be interacted with by a person in a three-dimensional space and is easily adjustable. The only barrier to entry is skill.

✤MURO Mellow : Travel Gallery 1✤

 Hi again, everyone!

    When I'm writing MURO Marching, I tend to take a lot of pictures of Worlds I think are interesting but I don't end up writing about, as well as take a lot of photos that I end up not using in my posts. I still think these Worlds are lovely and worth visiting and the behind-the-scenes would be a fun bonus, so I wanted to showcase them here! Each World will have its name and author credited in the captions, and you can find them by searching on the VRChat website.

 

すぅる～む by すぅ'ω'

2000s Classroom by Artic-

 

 

ORGANISM （v1․5）by DrMorro

 

 

 

 

sp_a1_intro2_d by Moon yt

 

 

Aquarius by Fins

 

    I really like photography, so I'd like to do more posts like this! What do you think? Let me know in the comments if I should make more Travel Galleries or if you have Worlds you think I should showcase!

✤MURO Marching : Hedonism✤

    Hi everyone! Today, I'm talking about a VRChat World creator I like!

    First, a history lesson! When VRChat released their Udon update in 2020 (an update that allowed creators to start using code in their Worlds with the aforementioned programming language Udon, which you can read more about here), creators suddenly had a whole new box of tools to play with. They could program things to happen in their Worlds instead of relying on jury-rigged systems and having to be deeply familiar with how Unity and VRChat work. Udon lowered the barrier of entry for creators while also providing them with more tools to work with. 

 

    The creator I'm talking about today is suzuki_i, who creates many worlds based on technical gimmicks they discover while working with Udon. Since these Worlds tend to be very small and focus on one or two concepts, I'm including multiple in this post. An example is SUZUOIL, which showcases the creator's take on a realistic oil painting simulation. You can blend colors to create new shades, and brushstrokes follow the direction of the brush.