Ashley Aerostar Personal Project

[MasterJedi2014]

Hello everyone. I feel like this project is at a point where I am happy enough with my work that I can show it off. A bit of background first, however. I found the MakeHuman software late last June while poking around the internet. Upon finding this software, I decided to make a 3D model of my Starbound player avatar. My reason for doing so is that I was never overly satisfied with the digital drawings I had previously made of her, so I saw an opportunity to make something I would be much happier showing off when I found MakeHuman.

I will spare the reader with the details of how this project morphed into what it is now, but assuming I don't burn out, the current end goal for the project is to make a short stop-motion style video of the events of the game Starbound as the Ashley Aerostar character experienced them. I have embellished and/or altered some details of the base game's plot, and have even given the character a full personality and background and added to her story after the events of the game's end. While the end goal is a short video, during this time where I am still in the process of making assets for this project, my focus is just to make a render every so often as I make new assets.

There are now a total of six custom characters, each with their own mostly fleshed out personalities and backstories. Four were the result of creative decisions I have made over the course of this project's life.

The custom characters are as follows:

Ashley Jade Aerostar: The main player character. Since she is the main player character, her personality is heavily based on my own personality, but has enough differences to make her distinct from myself.

Corran Lewis Aerostar: Someone who Ashley rescued early in the game's events who she eventually marries after the end of the main story.

Daniel Christopher Aerostar: The original player character. I made this player character first, but never finished the game with him for some reason, so he has now been re-purposed into Ashley's brother character.

Nova Lux Aerostar: First daughter of Ashley and Corran. Born after events of game have finished.

Kimberly Spero Aerostar: Second daughter of Ashley and Corran. Born about three years after Nova.

Nokia Aerostar: Brain child of Nova and Kimberly. A sapient android prototype made a member of the Aerostar family.

Most of the clothing that the characters wear was made by members of this community, and those that use CC-BY licenses and that appear in renders posted here will be credited at the end of this post. Many of the clothing articles have had their textures edited by myself to better suit my needs/desires for the appearance of the clothing article in question.

All of my rendering has been done in Blender using the Cycles render engine. The terrain meshes were made in Blender using the Landscape plugin, and the trees are free to use assets I found online. Almost all of the scenery props and all the buildings have been made in AutoCAD by myself, as I am more comfortable modeling non-sculpted objects with AutoCAD than I am with Blender. These objects are then exported from AutoCAD to Fusion 360, and then exported from there to OBJ files, which then have their materials applied to the models once the OBJ files have been imported into Blender.

My biggest hurdle to overcome throughout this entire project has been getting the character models to emote properly. I have mild Asperger's, which makes it very difficult for me to read other people's body language and facial cues. This means that for every character except Ashley, the more emotive I want the character to be in a given scene, the harder it is to capture and recreate the subtle body language and facial cues associated with that emotive state.

Here are a few of the renders I have made so far:


This scene shows off the arch model I made for scenes pertaining to Ashley and Corran's wedding and was also made to show off the dress I had chosen for Ashley to wear for scenes pertaining to her wedding. This is my most recent render of Ashley by herself. The arch took about six hours to make from start of modeling to the point it was ready to used in a scene, two hours of which were spent on setting up the gold trim along the edges.


This scene is set to take place shortly before the final quest of the base game in Starbound. Ashley is walking along the shore of a lake on the planet she started the game on, Ilusoria Sigma IV, the same planet as the one she is on the above render. It is impossible to tell in this render, but she is supposed to be singing while walking.


This was a scene I made for New Years Day this year, and features all of the characters I currently have models for. It is set to take place on New Year's Day in-universe about 23 years after the conclusion of the events of the main questline in Starbound.
This scene was originally going to used for a Christmas render, but I ran into problems with it that made it so that I couldn't render it in time for Christmas, so I repurposed the scene into what it is now. The scene had to be split into three parts to get it to render on my computer, which were then recombined into one image via GIMP.
Listing of the characters from left to right, we have: Nokia, Nova, Kimberly, Corran, and Ashley.
This render is not without its flaws, most notably that the material for Ashley's skin got messed up somewhere along the course of the development of the scene, a mistake I didn't notice until after I had finished the combined image.


This scene was made after I had finally gotten the walls, floor, and ceiling for the main residential floor of the Aerostar house modeled and gotten the materials all set up. This is the main hall of the main residential floor, and the tables visible here were the only furniture I had finished modeling at the time this scene was made. It is set an hour or so before the previous render, with Nova and Kimberly leaving the house to make final checks on the fireworks show they had put together. Nokia can be seen waiting for them around the corner, head turned in their direction to signify that she has heard the approaching sisters.


As the reader might be able to tell, this isn't a render. This is a screenshot of the floor plans for the bottom three floors of the Aerostar house as they look in AutoCAD. The house is a four story house, with three of those floors below ground for in-universe security reasons, and so that I can get away with only ever having one floor loaded into any given Blender file. The ground floor, the one not in this screenshot, is mainly just a large workshop area for Ashley and later Nova that is filled with CNC machines and any other machinery needed to make whatever creations the two can come up with. The second floor is the main residential floor, with the third floor being the secondary residential floor. The fourth floor is the utility floor, with a weapon storage room kept under lock and key, access to the house's fusion power generator, the water heating and purification room, the air conditioning and filtration room, the main computer and its server racks, and a hoverbike garage that connects to the surface via a tunnel.



These renders feature Nokia and Kimberly. These renders take place about six months after the New Year’s render. In the first render, Nokia has picked up a picture frame that has the New Year’s render, pleasant memories coming to mind. As Nokia looks at the photo, she thinks about how it feels like she has become a member of the family in the eight months she has been fully operational, causing her eye color to start flickering between its neutral color, happy color, and a color that wasn’t programmed into her, indicating a new set of emotions. Her eye color eventually settles on the new color, a deeper blue than the light blue that indicates Nokia is in a happy mood. This image is actually a composite of three different renders, edited and combined with GIMP.
In the second render, Kimberly has come across Nokia and asked her what she is doing before noticing that Nokia’s eye color is one that Kimberly didn’t program into Nokia’s “OS”. Kimberly askes Nokia what she is feeling at the moment, Nokia response being, “Seeing this photo made me realize that it feels like I have become a member of this family. I feel wanted, like I belong.” With Nokia’s words and body language, Kimberly realizes what Nokia’s new eye color signifies, that being that Nokia is feeling loved.


This is a render of the master bathroom countertop and sinks in the Aerostar house. The main material for the countertop is a procedural marble material I made myself by following a tutorial. As you can see, the house isn't completely modeled yet.


This is a render of Nova as a 13 year old. This render was made to fill a picture frame within the house, though I still put effort into trying to make it look decent.


This is a render of Kimberly as a ten year old. Like the previous render, this render was made to fill a picture frame in the Aerostar house. Unlike the previous render, however, this scene with Kimberly was a pain in the rear end to get to a state that I was satisfied with. All of the issues I had making this render arose as a result of the expression I chose for Kimberly. I tried to go for a "I've suddenly been asked to smile for a camera with no warning I'd be doing so today, but am happy to oblige my mother anyway" kind of face. I spent many hours tweaking and adjusting her mouth in an effort to make it not look uncanny.


EDIT: I have replaced the image that was here with an updated version of the same image. The updated image uses the current version of Ashley's model and the image has gone through a fog glow filter to make the blade glow.
In this render, Ashley is wearing the Midnight Exigent armor from Destiny 2. In her hands is my model of the Protectorate Broadsword, an end game weapon in Starbound. I always envisioned the Protectorate Broadsword was a plasma sword like the lightsaber or plasma sword from the Halo games. This image was a suggestion from my brothers, and is actually a combination of two renders, one where Ashley had the armor on and one where the armor was off, using the blade of the Protectorate Broadsword to bisect the image into it's two halves. The texture for her bodysuit is a modified version of the base texture of the Skintight Body Suit clothing model, and has been modified to look more like the clothing the player character starts the game with.


In this render, Ashley is wearing the Titan-class Reverie Dawn armor from Destiny 2.


Here are the three Aerostar ladies at the gun range with their long range weapons of choice. All of the weapons are guns from the game Destiny 2.
Ashley, in the back, is using the Dreaded Venture kinetic sniper rifle, and is currently making sure that her daughters are doing okay in the ammo department. Kimberly, in the middle, is using the Go Figure kinetic quad-burst pulse rifle. Nova, in the foreground, is using the IKELOS SR V1.0.1 energy sniper rifle, and is just about done slotting a new ammo power pack into the gun.
This scene was made primarily to show off the improvements I have recently made to make the gun models look higher poly than they really are. Their protective headphones are punkduck’s headset model, though I have edited them so as to remove the microphone from the headset.

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List of community assets used:
AVA Ex Machina Bodysuit: punkduck
black cocktail dress: punkduck
Chunky Chain~Heart Necklace: Elvaerwyn
Costume Leggings: punkduck
Denim Jacket: punkduck
evening gloves: punkduck
Evening gown: punkduck
F Dress 01: Mindfront
F Dress 02: Mindfront
F Dress 03: Mindfront
F Dress 09: Mindfront
F Dress 11: Mindfront
F Lusekofta: Mindfront
french lingerie (bra): punkduck
french lingerie (stockings): punkduck
french lingerie (thong): punkduck
M Suit 01: Mindfront
Male Classic Jeans (and associated belt): punkduck
Motorcycle Jacket: punkduck
Mototcycle Pants: punkduck
Running Shoes 01: punkduck
Shoes Biker Boots female: Mindfront
Shoes Biker Boots male: Mindfront
Skintight Body Suit (Female): TioMegamanX
Wireless Headset: punkduck

Let me know if I missed any attributions.

I will add more every so often as I make renders, but updates on this will likely be months apart, since I am the only person working on this right now. I have opted to currently only post the best renders I have made so far, but I do have more renders from the project that I can post if people want to see renders with a little bit less polish. If anyone has any questions about this project, I am willing to answer them, and constructive criticism is also welcome.

[MasterJedi2014]

I am back with more renders of my characters! I have made some character intro scenes for five of my characters, those being Ashley, Corran, Nova, Kimberly, and Nokia. I will also give some info on the characters along with their respective images.

Here's Ashley's, using her 22 yr old model:


Ashley's middle name was chosen as a nod to the character Mara Jade from Star Wars.

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Here's Corran's, using his 23 yr old model:


Unlike the other intro scenes, Corran's is more of an actual scene than it is just a studio photo. This scene takes place the day of Ashley's 22nd birthday, wherein Corran is leading Ashley by the hand to his gift to her, that being the white teddy bear he is pointing towards.

The crates are brand new assets I made for this scene, textures included, and the teddy bear asset came from the internet. The card in the teddy bear's lap does have a custom made texture with text on it that would be legible if the card were the focus of the image.

For those curious, Ashley's in-universe birthday is Pi Day, March 14th, 2400. This means that this scene takes place a little over nine months after the destruction of Earth. Corran's in-universe birthday is December 29, 2398.

Corran's middle name was chosen largely at random, with no special reason behind it. His last name, though, does have a story to it. The Aerostar last name actually comes from Ashley's side of the family, not Corran's. The real reason for this is because Ashley had the last name "Aerostar" first, and Corran was largely made because Ashley needed a character father her children with once I decided to give Ashley children. As such, I decided that Corran's original last name would be "Duravantin" and that the in-universe reason he changed it was because he liked Ashley's last name better.

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Here's Nova's, using her 23 yr old model:


I was going for a playfully mischievous look with Nova's intro scene.

I picked "Lux" as novas and supernovas produce a lot of light, but I didn't like using "Light" as her middle name, so I used the Latin term for light instead. As for her first name, I just thought "Nova" sounded nice. There is a character by the name of "Nova" in Starcraft II, but I wasn't thinking of the Starcraft II character when I gave my Nova her name.

Nova's character came about largely as an accident. She was initially just going to be a child character for Ashley to interact with solely to show off a softer side to Ashley. However, I was only really coming up with ideas for interactions between the two characters that worked well if there was a parent/child relationship between the two characters, so I decided to just make the child character be Ashley's daughter.

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Here's Kimberly's, using her 20 yr old model:


Here are the stories on how Kimberly came to exist in the first place and how she got her name:
Kimberly was initially made because I was still trying to get used to the MakeHuman software and was messing around with Nova's model, but then I had the idea to give Nova a sister, so I decided to make Kimberly.

When I first made the character, her first name was "Amber." My brothers didn't care for that name, nor did they like how that would make her have the same first initial as her mother, Ashley. Since I wasn't dead set on using the name "Amber," I decided to change it, deciding to look around for names until I found one I liked. I found a few that I liked, but I preferred the name "Kimberly" the most out of those that I found.
Kimberly's middle name was chosen after I had come up with an in-universe explanation of where Nova's middle name originated from. "Spero," is the Latin word for hope, and was chosen to go with Nova’s middle name and complete the “light of hope” nickname Nova had had in the womb. Part of me wants to come up with an in-universe reason for Ashley and Corran picking "Spero" for Kimberly's middle name that is different from the real world. Another part of me recognizes that I haven't bothered to come up with a different reason in the 11-ish months that Kimberly has had this middle name, and thinks I might as well just leave the in-universe reason the same as the real world reason at this point.

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Here's Nokia's:


Nokia is an android and is the the brain child of Nova and Kimberly. Here is the background info I wrote for her character:

"The brainchild of Nova and Kimberly, NK-1A was built primarily by the two sisters with help from their immediate family over the course of five years. Ashley provided a 3D scan of herself as a template to base the android’s frame and face off of, acted as a wall to bounce ideas off of, and acted as moral support. Nova built the frame and mechanical aspects of the android with help from her mother and uncle, and Kimberly, with help from her father, programmed the base protocols and systems which the android would later develop its personality upon.

Midway through development, the designation “NK-1A” was chosen for the android and soon after the name “Nokia” was suggested by Ashley as the name of the android. The sisters liked it and upon booting up the android for the first time four years into development, told NK-1A that “Nokia” was its name when it asked for a name for itself."

Basically, Nokia is the result of two genius sisters working together.

The name "Nokia" for the character actually came before the designation "NK-1A" did. I thought it'd funny to name the character "Nokia" after the tech company, and then thought up the designation as a plausible in-universe reason why the "NK-1A" android was given the name "Nokia."

I originally made the character because I found this "skin" made by punkduck and decided to use it in one of Nova's old intro scenes. However, just like how Nova was originally just a way of giving Ashley a child character to interact with for a few scenes before Nova turned into a permanent character, Nokia just kind of became a permanent character after I thought about how I wouldn't be able to get rid of an android once it was complete enough to become sapient like Nokia is supposed to be. I edited the texture file for the android "skin" myself in GIMP so as to cover as much of her limbs as I could without causing weird texture wrapping issues on her torso or without editing the UV map.

Nokia’s general emotional state is displayed via the color of her eyes, with white and light blue being the most common colors, white representing a neutral emotional state and light blue meaning that Nokia is feeling happy, satisfied, content, etc.

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For those curious, all of my characters are more physically fit and more muscular than the norm because they are Starbound characters, and the player character (and by extension, the rest of my characters) does a lot physically strenuous activity in that game. For this reason, I made them all look a little more muscular than the average human. This is most noticeable on the female characters' shoulders.
I am currently working on a family portrait image with all five of these characters in it, and will post it once it is finished.

[Elvaerwyn]

How very awesome! Nice work overall. I look forward to seeing more, my mum has been an avid autocad user for about 30 years now.... XD So respect. Suggestion though, if you want to post more renders and get feedback that may help make them better, always the artist gallery on deviant art is available! Group membership open to any and all mh artists-would be able to see more of you and you can get feedback from outside mh ideally and from other 3d artists
Elv/Lic

[MasterJedi2014]

Thank you! I do have a few ideas floating around in my head that I will likely need help from others to get right, but they are a little ways off in my pipeline of things I am working on at the moment. I currently only post WIP stuff on a couple friends' Discord servers, but not many of the people there are 3D artists, and none of them use MakeHuman, so any advice I get on WIP stuff I post there is non-specific general advice. I have had a Deviant Art account for several years, and just uploaded a lot of my renders from this project there after posting my intro renders here and requested to join the MakeHuman artist gallery there, so I do have that avenue of feedback now.
My production of renders is somewhat slow at the moment. I have been working on the intro renders I just posted for the last one and quarter months, but that is because I have done some work on another smaller project of mine and I have made a few other assets for this project in that time. I really wanted to get all of these intro scenes done before I posted them here, that way everyone here knows a gist of the characters' personalities from point forward. Now that these intro scenes are out of the way, I will probably post here a bit more frequently.

[MasterJedi2014]

Actually, I think I'll post pictures of some of the assets I have made, but haven't been used yet/aren't super visible in any of the renders I have posted. Unless otherwise stated, all of these were modeled in AutoCAD by myself before being imported into Blender for rendering.

First, here are the small tables I have made for use in the Aerostar house:



Here is the master bed in its place in the master bedroom with some bedside tables on either side:

I have yet to make any pillows or blankets for the bed. I need to look into cloth sims for the blankets, and I was waiting for the recently released 2.83 version of Blender to release to make the pillows, as 2.83 has a new cloth brush sculpting tool that would make making the pillows easier.


Here are a couple images of Ashley's personal journal:


These images were made back when I was using a different material for the tabletops/countertops.


Here are some ceramic cups and plates I made in case I ever want a character to use them:



Here are some desk decorations:



Here is a house decoration that spins 360 degrees once every 16 seconds, with the light bar and light sheath going up and down the central pillar a few times every 360 degree spin:




Here are a few images of a wall decoration of the mathematical concept known as the Dragon Curve:





Here are some images of the Matter Manipulator tool from Starbound:




The last two show off the screen on the back of the Matter Manipulator with some of the different display options I have set up for the screen.


Here is a render of the planet Ilusoria Sigma IV in its entirety:

This was made entirely in Blender with the help of a procedural planet generation Blender file I found online.


Here is an viewport image of the Aerostar house on the surface of Ilusoria Sigma IV:

The house model was made entirely in AutoCAD, then imported in Blender, and the terrain was made entirely in Blender.

[loki1950]

Like those table top materials

Enjoy the Choice

[MasterJedi2014]

Thank you.

[MasterJedi2014]

I didn't have any renders of one of my scenery objects that appear in most of my outdoor renders, a cylindrical lamp, so I made some.

Here it is in direct sunlight:



Here it is in shade:



Here it is in complete darkness:

[MasterJedi2014]

Here are some WIP screenshots of my model of the fully upgraded human ship from Starbound. The model screenshots are the model as it currently stands in AutoCAD, and I have provided a screenshot of the in-game pixel art of the ship open in Paint for comparison (I've been using Paint for the pixel measurements of everything on the exterior of the ship). The model is currently still symmetrical on the top and bottom of the ship, though that will change after more of the ship is modeled.

I estimate that I have spent about 11.5 hours working on this particular model so far. I have also started questioning whether or not Fusion 360 will even be able to export the completed model as an STL file due to how complex it will be once it is done. To be more precise, I'm sure that the program can handle it, I'm just worried about whether it will be able to do so on my machine.

Here are the images.






Here is an isometric view of the back of the ship. For some reason that I cannot figure out, some parts of the model aren't displaying properly in this view. One of the more notable missing parts is a third large engine that should be in the middle row of engines.


Here is a close up of one of the engines, for those curious about that sort of thing.

[MasterJedi2014]

I finally have that family portrait finished. Here it is:



This is the Aerostar family as of mid February 2447, which is about 25.75 years after the destruction of Earth.

The ages of the character is as follows:

Ashley is 46 yrs old, though her biological age is 31.
Corran is 48 yrs old, though his biological age is 32.
Nova is 23 yrs old, with an identical biological age.
Kimberly is 20 yrs old, with an identical biological age.
Nokia is about four months old, going by the time since she was determined "complete" by Nova and Kimberly.

I haven't mentioned it here, but due to the level of technology in the Starbound universe, my head cannon is that the people of the Starbound universe have developed technology that can slow aging. I have also decided that this technology works to varying degrees on an individual by individual basis, but averages out in such a manner that three years' time equals about one year of biological aging. Furthermore, I have decided that this age progression slowing technology is not to be given to individuals of the human species (I haven't decided on ages for the other sapient species in the Starbound universe) until they reach the age of 23 so that the technology doesn't interfere with growth during childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. Hence why Nova's and Kimberly's real ages match their biological ages here, and their real and biological ages matching will likely be the case for all images they appear in, since I don't currently plan on making scenes where they are much older than they are in this scene.

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I have repurposed the poses of Nova, Kimberly, and Nokia from their intro scenes for this scene, though because Ashley and Corran are using different models here due to them being a different age here than in their intro scenes (there is a 23 year gap between Ashley's and Corran's intro scenes and Nova's, Kimberly's, and Nokia's intro scenes), I opted to give them a pose that tried to signify their relationship as a couple.

I would like some feedback on Corran's smile. I am not entirely satisfied with it, but I didn't want a repeat of Kimberly's 10 yr old portrait scene all over again, so I went ahead and posted this despite not being completely satisfied. That being said, any pointers would be appreciated. For reference, I use the MHX rig type when importing my character models into Blender with the MHX2 Runtime plugin, just so y'all know what face rig I am working with.

Any other feedback is also appreciated.