Kim Kerman

[helldiver]

Started as an idea to put pinup art on the side of the Kerbostar. I was brainstorming ideas what one would look like... so I did something stylized back on my thread.

Then I got bored of doing mechanical things and thought I'd try speed modeling Kim Kerman...

She's weighted and has proper edge loops for facial animation.

I went low poly first and ended up using up more polys on the head. Came to less than 1500 tris. 1024x1024 Diffuse, Normal, and specular.

Could have gone with the cylindrical head/no-nose style Squad does but then it wouldn't resemble the original I did.

Size/scale comparison:

Improved lighting:

Edited July 22, 2014 by helldiver

[SolarLiner]

Her hair in the 3D model, it's lovely

I like the original drawing, but not the 3D renders. Something is wrong with the shading on her head, I don't quite know what.

[Justin Kerbice]

Lovely is she just a kerbonaut's wife (ie house wife) or do she have a full space suit too ?

Nice work, except the head shape isn't really kerbal kind. Is she an "extra-kerbinian" ? ("kerbistrial" ? or whatever who comes not from Kerbin), or she's a mutant !! too much hydrazine around when she was younger.

[helldiver]

Her hair in the 3D model, it's lovely

I like the original drawing, but not the 3D renders. Something is wrong with the shading on her head, I don't quite know what.

Lol! That's because the lighting is really not meant for characters but for the larger vehicles. Keep in mind that's a real time screenshot, not a render.

Lovely is she just a kerbonaut's wife (ie house wife) or do she have a full space suit too ?

Nice work, except the head shape isn't really kerbal kind. Is she an "extra-kerbinian" ? ("kerbistrial" ? or whatever who comes not from Kerbin), or she's a mutant !! too much hydrazine around when she was younger.

Uh... Kim Kerman is a news reporter and helicopter pilot. Whether she's married or not, I leave that up to the viewer

[problemecium]

...She has Kerboobs o_O

[vardicd]

Lovely is she just a kerbonaut's wife (ie house wife) or do she have a full space suit too ?

Nice work, except the head shape isn't really kerbal kind. Is she an "extra-kerbinian" ? ("kerbistrial" ? or whatever who comes not from Kerbin), or she's a mutant !! too much hydrazine around when she was younger.

Well, since we've never seen a 'stock' kerbal female, perhaps there could be a radical difference in head shape. there are several species here on Earth that have wild variations in appearance between male and female genders. Here is just one example:

I think its entirely believable that male kerbals have a thicker head structure than a female. why not right?

[enneract]

Lovely is she just a kerbonaut's wife (ie house wife) or do she have a full space suit too ?

Nice work, except the head shape isn't really kerbal kind. Is she an "extra-kerbinian" ? ("kerbistrial" ? or whatever who comes not from Kerbin), or she's a mutant !! too much hydrazine around when she was younger.

Plausible that kerbals have a high degree of sexual dimorphism.

[vardicd]

Well, since we've never seen a 'stock' kerbal female, perhaps there could be a radical difference in head shape. there are several species here on Earth that have wild variations in appearance between male and female genders. Here is just one example:

snip

I think its entirely believable that male kerbals have a thicker head structure than a female. why not right?

Plausible that kerbals have a high degree of sexual dimorphism.

wow, could we have timed that closer?

[Felsmak]

I guess I can expect my Kerbals to spend their next break quietly observing the Mystery Goo by themselves. They can be pretty shy.

Edited July 22, 2014 by Felsmak

[helldiver]

Well if I was to get serious about an actual female Kerbal, all I'd have to do is a new head. I'd probably go with the design someone posted around here somewhere.

I'm too tied up with Phase 4 of KSOS to really sit down and do that though. I just did this for fun and to relax.

[benzman]

She is GORGEOUS!

[helldiver]

Give you guys an idea:

Inspired by the images Hayoo did. Not a fan of the strabismus so I took it off the female. I've always felt that Kerbals are wall-eyed to give them that 1970's Buzz Aldrin look.

[Whirligig Girl]

How about this? This image is deliberately drawn to look just like a 3D model.http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86295-Girlbal

Edited July 22, 2014 by GregroxMun

[RuBisCO]

She looks creepy. Can't the kerbals be an androgenous species that reproduce through budding? It would be wacky hilarious to see kerbal sprout from the head of another kerbal.

[Whirligig Girl]

She is GORGEOUS!

Kerbals aren't supposed to look gorgeous. Cute, silly, and funny, but definitely not gorgeous. Imagine drawing a male Kerbal (Admittedly a somewhat masculine face) like a body-builder. Astronauts aren't generally unattractive, male or female, but they're not supermodels.

[zekes]

Well, since we've never seen a 'stock' kerbal female, perhaps there could be a radical difference in head shape. there are several species here on Earth that have wild variations in appearance between male and female genders. Here is just one example:

http://i.imgur.com/g7A8ZuX.jpg

I think its entirely believable that male kerbals have a thicker head structure than a female. why not right?

...thanks for that. thanks. I just had to fight the huge spider in Skyrim and now i'm pretty skittish when I see one. Now I won't be able to think about female kerbals the same again.

Give you guys an idea:

http://i.imgur.com/dmGelgD.jpg

Inspired by the images Hayoo did. Not a fan of the strabismus so I took it off the female. I've always felt that Kerbals are wall-eyed to give them that 1970's Buzz Aldrin look.

MUCH better! The OP's pics looked very unrealistic and I didn't really like them personally. But that's just me.

[helldiver]

How about this? This image is deliberately drawn to look just like a 3D model.http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86295-Girlbal

Uh? What about it?

I'm not Squad's character artist. And if I were I would go with what's best identifiable as well as usable. Kerbals as they are, are a pain to work with do to their irregular proportions. I do this for a living man. Also, your drawing doesn't read feminine at all. At a distance they'd be indistinguishable from any other Kerbal, insofar that it's just like using Texture Replacer (which we already have).

Kerbals aren't supposed to look gorgeous. Cute, silly, and funny, but definitely not gorgeous. Imagine drawing a male Kerbal (Admittedly a somewhat masculine face) like a body-builder. Astronauts aren't generally unattractive, male or female, but they're not supermodels.

They can be what ever I want them to be, this is the Fan Art thread isn't it?

I'm not making Kerbal character models. I just did Kim since she's part of my project. Just for fun and to practice speed modeling. If eventually someone does a plugin or something that allows us to change the Kerbal's 3D models and such, then I'll take a stab at it. And if I did I'd make sure they read as feminine from the average distances used in game. But until then I have other things to do.

...thanks for that. thanks. I just had to fight the huge spider in Skyrim and now i'm pretty skittish when I see one. Now I won't be able to think about female kerbals the same again.

MUCH better! The OP's pics looked very unrealistic and I didn't really like them personally. But that's just me.

Problem with those eyes is that they are just too creepy

Edited July 23, 2014 by helldiver

[OrbitusII]

Give you guys an idea:

http://i.imgur.com/dmGelgD.jpg

-snip-

I think that left one looks a lot truer to the original Kerbal and thus looks better as a whole. The big poofy hairstyle just seems overbearing so if you continue working with those you should use the left one.

[helldiver]

I think that left one looks a lot truer to the original Kerbal and thus looks better as a whole. The big poofy hairstyle just seems overbearing so if you continue working with those you should use the left one.

Yeah, if someone did such a plugin or if Squad opened it up, I'd go with the left one.

Although I'd re-engineer the head to use proper edge flow, working mouth, and correct topology for facial animation.

Personally I like the big hair (like the majority of female astronauts have long hair). It frames her face better. Unfortunately we'd run into all sorts of clipping issues with the helmets, chairs, and so on. So ultimately we'd have to go with the crew cut or simple pony-tail.

Edited July 23, 2014 by helldiver

[OrbitusII]

If you (or anyone, for that matter) were to reverse-engineer the kerbal model then I could look into making a plugin to make certain Kerbals use the female model. Just let me know if you ever get to the point where that could be a possibility!

[helldiver]

If you (or anyone, for that matter) were to reverse-engineer the kerbal model then I could look into making a plugin to make certain Kerbals use the female model. Just let me know if you ever get to the point where that could be a possibility!

You'd have to elaborate on what you mean by reverse-engineer.

I can model a 99% replica. Unfortunately I would need their skeleton in order to properly weight it and get the correct assignments.

The other method would be to redo our own animations as well. At that point we may as well make our own game.

Squad would have to provide their skeleton files (akin to how Bethesda uses global animation files character meshes with skin modifiers reference)

[OrbitusII]

By reverse-engineer I sort of mean taking the model from the game and using the rig to create a framework for the new model. By doing that we could save a lot of time because we could simply recycle the Animator Controller and animations on the original model. Once the model is made and rigged, the Unity animation system allows for native recycling of animations provided the rigs are set up correctly.

I remember that there is some application or something that allows you to pull the mesh data from the game and someone got the kerbal model by doing that. Unfortunately I believe there may be some legal issues with distributing something based off of that directly, so what could be done is a model grab to give you a reference rig to create your own. I can then configure that rig in Unity for use in KSP and make sure it's working right through a little trial-and-error.

As for making our own game, I am actually doing that in my spare time!

Heck, we may not even need to grab the original kerbal model from the game! If you can make the rig then I can likely get it configured to use the stock Kerbal animations through a little bit of code.

[RocketscientistV]

The thing is, in the OP I was looking at the helicopter and not Kim, But I still think its a nice idea to mod female kerbals like that, And my arachnophobia was re-triggered by this thread.

[vardicd]

Anything that adds more variety to the kerbals in the game, I'm all for. I'm using texture replacer to give my kerbs different appearances, but if someone could actually stick kerbal models into the game that were different, so they weren't all karbon-copies of each other with different 'face-paint' on that would be awesome. It needs to be a thing, please?

[OrbitusII]

What I can do is start working on the plugin needed to do this in a "sterile" Unity environment (i.e. a new Unity project so that I can get things running a lot faster) and then develop it into a state where it can work for KSP.

The sterile environment will be really helpful since it will give me an idea of how to go about swapping rigged meshes at runtime without major issues. I'll probably start looking at that stuff tomorrow.

When I get the chance to I'll open up a thread in Addon Development dedicated to this project.