Original 3D Texture: Custom Cat (UPDATED)

UPDATED 12/17/12 - I added about 4 more detail layers of Light/Shade fur texture, which dramatically increases the level of realism in custom-colored renders.

Custom Texture Skin/Template by & (c) HuntressLight
Made for the 3D Digital Model "DAZ Millennium Cat"
Do not claim as your own work or character or redistribute.

My second full template skin is complete! This is the first time I've fully skinned an entire character. It's a bit trickier than skinning the wings was, as there are many seams on the cat that I had to keep from being obvious. With a bit of care, though, it turned out well, and will be ready for use!

I am going to be offering custom commissions for 3D cat portraits. Could be a character, could be your sovereign feline at home! I have 10 common poses that came with the model, and can make unique ones as well.

The model didn't come with a skin texture though - just that wireframe on the right hand side! So I painted one myself from scratch. You can see the different stages I went through to get all the various shading, lighting, and fur detail layers. Total time: 9 hours. The first stage alone took 3, as I needed to figure out how the texture plate wrapped, and where the seams joined up. The initial fur details took another 3 hours, part stroke tedium, part fine tuning as misplacing the strokes made the seams REALLY obvious. The final few stages - Fur detail x 2, Fur light detail x1, and refining the rough shade and lighting from the earlier stage, went far quicker, with all those layers taking 3 more hours.

I designed the texture skin so that I'd be able to customize the colors and marking patterns on it, this is just a very simple demo using the default color and a belly marking. I'm going to do a couple gift portraits to test my technique and refine the template, then I'll be opening for commissions.

Tech
Photoshop CS5 - digital painting of the all-new texture skin
DAZ|Studio 4 Pro - Model posing
Wacom Bamboo Capture pen tablet

Resources:
Model: DAZ Millennium Cat LE (www.daz3d.com)

Original Elements:
Template Texture Skin