Queen Marika the Eternal (Model WIP)

Hey, I've got a new project that I'm excited and nervous to show off. I've been working on this a for a while, and it's finally ready to be shown off.

I wanted a more canonically accurate Marika model, but there isn't an actual model of her in Elden Ring, so this wasn't going to be straightforward. There are various statutes of her in the game, but none with high enough quality to translate to a proper model. At the end of the game though, there is a crumbling version of her. I normally do head swaps for my own models, but this would not be suitable for that process.

I needed to take a different approach. I started with a user created Marika lookalike in Elden Ring using the in game character creator. Credit to Nouvlesse for the sliders (link to them if you're interested). I followed the sliders pretty closely though might've made a few minor changes. I exported that character to use as a starting point. This gave me face textures and materials to use directly from Elden Ring rather than to use other assets from scratch.

I used the face wrap technique to transfer the Elden Ring character model's shape to the standard DAZ model. This is a pretty standard technique most modelers use, but this was the first time for me. The process went pretty smoothly and I successfully transferred the shape.

This wasn't really the end point since it was only an approximation. I continued by taking the in game crumbling version of Marika and sculpting my model to better match her face. It's not an exact way of doing things because the in game Marika is not in a full rest position, but it is a good guide.

With the model herself done, I moved on to the last extra bits. As suggested with the character creator, I used the Dancer's Dress extracted from the game as her clothes. I also commissioned QuickE to do the stone version of her textures as well as edits to the pattern on her dress. Lastly, I commissioned TheFastestGMan to do her particle hair.

I still think there's probably some room to improve the likeness, but the model is in fairly polished state and ready for me to start using in bigger projects.