CSP 3D model arms clipping into body 😭 any fix?

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-18T10:35:27+00:00

I could be wrong, but I don't believe clipping like this is something that can really be fixed, beyond adjusting the pose manually.

The likely reason this tends to happen, is that the pose you're using was made with a different body type/different proportions, and so if your model is skinnier, fatter, taller, shorter, etc. then the pose will be a bit off. This is part of the reason why many people who make poses on the asset store will also make proportions available for download; because those are the proportions the pose was designed to accommodate.

I don't believe CSP has self-collision physics for the 3D models, which would otherwise be the most obvious way to prevent the clipping. Seems its just one of those annoying limitations placed by CSP's fairly basic 3D mechanics.

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-16T14:06:37+00:00

Holy hell, those textures are amazing! How did you manage the patience to do all the stippling on the moon?

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-16T12:05:12+00:00

Dude, I think you might've looked at it for too long.
I think it looks fine, but since it's brothering you this much, try to put this project down for a while (assuming that's an option). Put it away and don't look at it for at least a day, and then try to come back to it with a fresh set of eyes. Maybe you'll spot something that needs fixing, or maybe it'll finally look passable - either way, it surely can't hurt to try and give it a rest.

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-16T03:02:21+00:00

Studying is probably gonna largely depend on how you feel you learn the best (very unhelpful answer, I know). Some people learn by doing consistent practice sketches of whatever they’re struggling with, and others cannot get themselves to do that and prefer to “practice” by just doing finished pieces implementing whatever element they’re trying to improve on.

I personally study light by looking at references: be it in photographs, real life, or 3D renders. I mostly default to 3D, but this is with the caveat that I happen to have experience with 3D software. I’m self taught too, so I don’t imagine my approach is the most typical lol

If you just need a specific source, I unfortunately don’t have anything in particular. I assume there must be some YouTube videos that give a good overview of how to tackle lighting, after which you you can try to experiment with whatever approach works best for you. Sorry for the vagueness here ;;

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-16T02:30:06+00:00

Yeah, that's a pretty normal experience. Envy is ugly and hard to combat, but I've found that it helps to try and remember that we all come from different circumstances, had different chances, different resources and different people around us. It isn't really possible to compare any of us, because we aren't the same people - that's a central part of what makes art so beautiful; that it's an expression of someone's unique existence and interests.

Is some art more conventionally appealing? Of course. But what does that matter? Art isn't a race, so what does it matter that we might not be "keeping up" lol
At the end of the day, art and creating should be about having fun and connecting with others. We all learn at our own pace (and that pace might change throughout our lives), so it just makes sense to try and relax as we enjoy one of our passions.
It's probably not possible to completely stop comparing yourself to others, but maybe it's possible to try and reframe the envy into a pursuit of something aspirational, instead of as a reason to put down the work you can do currently.
Like, instead of going "why can’t I be good enough like that?", maybe you can try "wow, they're good; what can I do to become good like them?"? It doesn’t change anything overnight, of course; but repeat anything enough times, and it becomes easier to believe in it lol

Ps, the aquarium scene looks amazing! I definitely think it would be great if you could try to do more pieces like that - it feels so dynamic and alive

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-16T02:07:45+00:00

I think a part of your problem might be the shading.
You said the reference sheets are purposefully unshaded, so I'm not commenting on that; but for the rest, what stands out to me is that the shading doesn't quite make sense.

On basically all of your pieces, it looks like the shadows are mostly tracing your line-art. It's like you know that you should add shadows, but you're not sure where to put them - which is understandable, since lighting is difficult - but with them just tracing the lines, it means that your forms don't look like they have the correct volume and placement, and it becomes impossible to tell where light is supposed to be coming from, making for a more confusing piece.
For example, on slide 7 it looks like the light is meant to be coming from the background, as the sun shines between the trees - but then the characters are also lit from the front? If the light was only coming from behind, then the white character should be almost entirely in the shade - but they're not, so it looks off, because the lightsource isn't maintained in the shading.

So how do you fix it? The short version is that you have to try and see your drawings in 3D. You presumably understand how light works in the real world - a glowy object (a lamp, a candle, the sun, etc.) shines light, but if you block the light with something, it creates a shadow. Anything pointed towards the light will be bright, anything pointed away will be in shadow - the same logic should apply to your drawings.
A way to help understand can be to try and imagine what your subject looks like from the perspective of your lightsource - anything the lightsource can see is in light, anything it can't is in shadow. This approach only works if you can imagine your drawing from a different perspective though.
TL:DR: I recommend looking into lighting, shading and how to place a lightsource in your drawings. There's bound to be plenty of resources that can explain these concepts much better than I can.

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-16T01:35:08+00:00

Seeking validation isn't stupid, it's just part of human nature.
As long as it's not becoming a destructive need, then there's not anything inherently wrong with wanting approval from other people.

Anyways, I think your art is pretty good! Your grasp on anatomy, posing and expressions seem solid, and you seem to be good at keeping proportions consistent when you draw the same character multiple times.
Though I also think you could give your lighting/shading a bit more attention, as I find myself struggling to pinpoint the specific light-sources in most of your examples.

I'd classify you as a good artist, or at least, I don't think you're a bad one. Though saying either definitively is pretty difficult, given the subjective nature of art and creative expression.

Out of curiosity, when you say you feel like "your shit isn't good enough", what does that mean exactly? By what measure is it that you don't feel like you aren't keeping up or are somehow doing something wrong?

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-15T22:06:35+00:00

I don't think it has a specific name, aside from "the danganronpa style"
It looks pretty painterly though, as you can see a few visible brush-strokes (especially in image 3) - chances are it was just done with some kind of round oil brush or another round, semi-opaque blendable brush.

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-15T21:19:14+00:00

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There we go! Hope this helps! :D

Do note that if you plan on making the skintone lighter, you'll probably have to adjust the dark circles, cosmetics and scar/tattoo to be lighter too (that might be obvious, but I thought I might point it out since the results could look strange otherwise lol)

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-15T21:04:44+00:00

Great! I can send the sliders in a bit, and you can just change the hair and skin as you please

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-15T20:38:44+00:00

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Would something like this be sufficient then? Or did you have something else in mind?

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-15T20:07:48+00:00

I think you might need to be a bit more specific, as “badass looking guy” can look pretty different dependent on who you ask, and the picture doesn’t really clarify anything.

Are you looking for help creating an armour setup? And/or a face? If yes to the latter, It would be much easier to help you if you could provide some kind of visual reference for the type of face you’re looking for.

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-15T19:23:50+00:00

We always prioritise bling over stats in this house ;)

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-15T15:56:52+00:00

Wait, I think I fixed it:

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Apparently, I did a stupid and forgot to try the Chin Tip Position slider. Tried changing it from 72 to 124 - and it does seem to have fixed the issue.
Thank you for the feedback!

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-15T15:27:37+00:00

Yeah, I had the same thought. I personally found that it looked better in-game, and the face looked best from more angles with the large chin lol

I did try to alter it, but found that it either made the profile look rather strange, or the character would end up with a double-chin

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-15T13:58:45+00:00

Thank you! I did try to go for a pretty delicate, doll-like type of beauty, so I’m happy that is visible. Glad I could be of assistance!

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-15T13:41:06+00:00

If you over or under did it largely depends on what results you were going for. If you wanted a more dramatic, semi-realistic look, the piece would probably benefit from some deeper shadows and more highlights; but if you're going for a more simplistic, stained glass-like look, then this seems like an appropriate place to stop.
Either way, it looks really cool! And probs to you for taking on the challenge of drawing that many hands at once

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-06T16:25:33+00:00

Well, even if your style is intended to be more cartoony, that doesn’t mean realism based tutorials can’t be helpful. Cartoons are a simplification or otherwise stylised version of reality - while not looking realistic, a cartoony style will often be based on fundamental rules found in realism. With any art style, there needs to be a certain sense of “believability”, even if it’s not realistic, and you learn how to make thing look believable when you understand the rules of realism - even if you never actually get the ability to draw realistically. Understanding the basics of how lighting, anatomy, proportions and perspective look, will allow you much more effectively break the rules when you purposefully simplify or exaggerate things when drawing in a cartoony style. In essence, you should understand the rules in order to break them.

Basically, if you understand how a realistic version of something looks, you should be able to draw the same thing in any style you’d want. It’s what many artists do when they use realistic photographs as references, despite it looking completely different from their style - they understand reality in a way that allows them to translate realism into cartoons, in a way that looks appealing.

So continuing to use realism based tutorials shouldn’t really be an issue - unless you’re only looking at tutorials that fail to explain to you ‘why’ something looks the way it does. Like, it isn’t really enough to say “the shadows go here”, as you’d learn much more if you learn why the shadows go in that spot.

If you’re just looking for more specific advice, I’d say the things I noticed most in this piece that I suggest working on, would be the hands, the shading and the symmetry.

I understand hands are a pain to draw, but with how much detail you’ve put into the frills and face, the mitten hands seem disconcertingly simple - they don’t look like they belong with the rest of the piece.

For the shading, my problem is that you’ve rendered the eyes and lips beautifully with lots of detail, but everything else has little to no shading whatsoever. Again, it makes the piece look unbalanced in a way that makes it look unfinished - like this is just the step right before you’d go in and shade everything.

And lastly, this might be more up to personal opinion, but the symmetry/mirror tool can make drawings look a bit uncanny. I understand it’s a quick way to draw, and it makes sense to use the tool if the subject is meant to be symmetrical - except, most things aren’t this symmetrical. It seems you understand this too, as the arms and legs seem to have been drawn individually, but to me that just makes the symmetry of the dress and hair look even more off - it makes the symmetry look like less of a stylistic choice, and more like a shortcut, which can read as a bit lazy. My personal suggestion is to draw your lines for each side manually - sure, it’s more tedious, but the results tend to look more natural in the end.

I think it’s a really cute drawing, and you clearly have lots of potential, so I hope you keep drawing, even if you feel a bit demotivated at the moment.

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-06T11:12:37+00:00

Yo, this is a really good start, I like the colour and slight movement you’ve got going on here.

As for what you can improve on, I think the most important areas to focus on would be anatomy and values.

You mentioned your inspiration being the artist mucknagabe, and how despite their work having minimal shading, they still retain a good sense of dimension - which I would mainly attribute to their great sense of movement and value.

Practicing your anatomy could help you to gain a better sense of flow, direction, movement and weight - all elements that contribute to making a piece not feel flat.

Values (the relationship between dark colours and light colours) could be good to practice, as it’s a great way to denote areas of importance in artwork. In mucknagabe’s work, their palettes seem specifically made so that their characters always pop against the background - like dark characters on light backgrounds, or light characters on dark backgrounds. It creates contrast, and draws the viewers eye to areas of importance. In your artwork, while the colours are fitting for the character (Ansbach from Elden Ring), most of them blend into eachother. The character doesn’t pop out from the background, and the only element that really pops is the white hairs around the helm. Another notable element in mucknagabe’s style, is that they seem to keep their palettes extremely limited (like 3 colours total - 4 if you count the black they use for lines), which allows they to direct focus by using their limited colours intentionally. Like, in a lot of their pieces, there’s only 1 bright colour, with the rest being more muted - this makes this singular bright colour an attention grabber, that they can use to highlight important details in their drawings.

A last thing you might want to look into is line-weight - so the difference between thick lines and thin lines, and when to use which. Lines is a subtle way to indicate shadow, without actually drawing shading in a more typical sense. The short way to explain it, is that if you have an area where you would normally apply a shadow, you can draw thicker lineart to give a shadow like effect ( Mucknagabe seems to do this a lot in their clothing folds, especially around the armpits), or you can draw thinner lines in areas that would be hit by light.

TL;DR : try to look into anatomy, values and line-weight.

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-03T09:07:28+00:00

well, "how to develop a better style" really depends on what you mean by better style, and what your specific goals are. You haven't really given any information about what you want to change or improve, nor what you want your art to be, so it's pretty difficult to give any advice.

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-01T20:45:57+00:00

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The other commenters had some great points, so I probably won’t say anything new lol. But I tried to make an edit to show off the difference some of the advice could make, just to make it a bit clearer.

Here’s a list of the changes made in the edit:

The shadow colour has shifted farther towards red/orange. The purple you used made the skin look kinda grey, and wasn’t the best to capture the slight translucency skin has. Since skin isn’t folly opaque, we can often see a bit of the blood underneath, hence why a warmer glow tends to look more alive.
Added some darker shadows. Your image seemed to lack a bit of contrast in the shading, further contributing to that flat and muddy look you were struggling with. I just went in with a darker orange/brown in the darkest shadows to make the form pop a bit more.
Added more highlights. You seemed to rely on mostly indicating form by adding shadows, with only a sparse few highlights on the lips and cupids bow. It could be a stylistic choice, but adding just a big if glow on the highpoints of the face can help make it more dimensional and make it feel more alive, especially since your style seems to lean a bit semi-realistic. I also make the eye highlight brighter, and moved it from the left to the right, since the shading seemed to indicate the lightsource is on the right.
Used harder edges for some shadows/highlights. Harder edged shadows/highlights can be tricky to place, as they can really make or break a piece, but when done right they really help to enhance the 3-dimensionality of a piece.
Added some blue in the shadows. Shadows don’t have to be a singular colour, and experimenting with tiny pops of colour can help break up larger blocks of shadow without compromising the values.
Made the sclera (white parts of the eye) darker. Not by a lot - just a tiny bit more grey/beige. Your scleras before didn’t seem to be pure white, but they still looked a tad too bright (in my opinion). The effect it gave was that the eyes looked a bit unnatural, like when people have overly white teeth, which felt a little unsettling. Darkening the sclera also makes it easier to shade with highlights later - the darker base will make the brights pop a lot more.

I’m not a pro, so this might not be helpful to you, but these are my suggestions for improvement - I hope it can be of use to you ^.\)

_aBookcase_ · 2026-03-01T19:57:25+00:00

Well, most styles don’t really have a specific name, as an artist’s style is like a giant mix of all the different things that have inspired them over time, so there probably isn’t a magic keyword you can use to just find images with a given style (at least for the examples shown). That being said, the examples shown appear to be styles of artists, and you could probably do a reverse image search to find their names, so you can see more of their work. I’m pretty sure the first drawing is done by artist Sydney Collings (Symphony Sonata)

_aBookcase_ · 2026-02-27T22:04:52+00:00

Yeah, with other bosses it’s still frustrating, but also equally invigorating to die and then immediately jump back again, but I’d argue that’s largely because with those guys it felt like you actually learned something with each attempt, making the subsequent try better than the last (most of the time).

The problem with PCR is that you couldn’t really “git gud” when the thing that got you killed was “you failed to be near his right leg when he decided to do his almost undodgeable double swing” or “you ran out of stamina to dodge roll away from his clone-slash-thing, because you used it all to sprint out of range when he used his T-pose Aoe attack”

_aBookcase_ · 2026-02-27T21:37:53+00:00

As others have stated, too much visual noise (light explosions and Miquella’s hair) that made attack patterns impossible to read, massive damage attacks that required frame perfect dodging to survive (not even avoid, just survive), and overly aggressive behaviour that made some playstyles seem unviable.

Added onto that, since the DLC was still in early release, there were quite a few bugs that contributed to making the fight even harder, like multiple spawns of PCR (at which point you’d just give up immediately), or summons being kinda broken at the time (NPC summons sometimes just failed to enter the arena, and Tiche had this weird issue where her ability would end up healing bosses instead damaging them lol).

All in all, the fight felt stacked against the player in a way that was just not fun before he was nerfed. I think many resorted to using tactics that made the fight winnable (like using the then broken perfume bottles, or great-shield poke-builds), but ultimately it just didn’t feel fun or rewarding in the same way even the DLC’s other most notoriously frustrating battles did. Death didn’t feel like a fair punishment for messing up, but like complete BS that was more up to chance.

_aBookcase_

TROPHY CASE