First Attempt: Astrid

Diplocaulus

I have pretty limited experience with this, but this is the first one I think is actually worth acknowledging.




Astrid, the stellar dragon. Credit to Brownmane for the horns.

She might be a bit much, but nebulae aren't exactly subtle either.

Brownmane

Nice to see people are finding uses for my stuff.

Not a bad concept, but could use a bit of work. I see there's quite a bit of stretching where the starry texture image maps onto larger polygons, for example, as well as seams where the unwrap cuts are. Both issues are easy enough to solve, provided you take the time to learn how to paint directly onto a model in Blender (which won't necessarily require any actual painting, as you can use the existing starry texture as a stencil).

I'll drop some vids and quides here that helped me figure out how to do it, for a start, but I can also do a more specific step-by-step guide if you'd like, as I've been tinkering with textures myself for my latest project. It'll take some time to type up and take screenshots for, though, and the aforementioned project still needs some finishing touches first, so prepare to wait a while.

Styl1sh's video on texturing YL2 character mouths, useful for figuring out the basics
Blender 2.8 Beginner Tutorial - Part 7: Texture Painting
BLENDER 2.82 - NEW UDIM & TEXTURE PAINTING FEATURES
Styl1sh's guide to UDIMs on YL2 characters, plus video a few posts down

Diplocaulus

Thank you for the constructive criticism. Learning how to paint directly onto a model in Blender will take some time as I just picked it up yesterday.

I'll definitely check out those videos, the few tutorials I've watched have been pretty helpful, but not necessarily for this project.

Diplocaulus

Took a look at those guides, tried to synthesize what I could from it, retooled and modified Astrid. So here's take two:
https://imgur.com/a/oXA1CBD

I'd appreciate any constructive criticism.

Brownmane

Much better, but still looking a little blurry and stretched. Did you try the stencil painting shown in Blender 2.8 Beginner Tutorial - Part 7: Texture Painting? You can paint isolated portions of the model with it, projecting the image onto the model from your current view, which should remove any stretching effect if you're careful only to paint on relatively flat surfaces compared to your current camera angle, moving the camera as needed when the surface curves. You can also resize the stencil to avoid stretching the image and thus making it blurry. All you really need to watch out for are seams between the areas you've painted with the stencil; you'll want to use a brush with soft edges and check that you don't have any stars that are cut in half along the edges. If you do, just paint over them with an appropriate portion of the stencil.

The issue might also be that the star texture you've got simply isn't in a high enough resolution. If you search for "stars high res" you should get some good results, but always take a closer look since some of them might have compression artifacts that will make the black space between stars look sub-optimal.

Diplocaulus

I fear I may have tried to do too much all at once, without fully absorbing the lessons before moving on. I made it a lot harder than it needed to be. But! Here's the third iteration. The stenciling method you recommended worked like a charm, but I'm still not quite confident in the use of udims yet. Thank you for your feedback!

https://imgur.com/a/Pap5Vwo
http://imgur.com/a/1hDJ9pD 

Brownmane

I fear I may have tried to do too much all at once, without fully absorbing the lessons before moving on.

I know that feel. It might be boring and take a while, especially when you're chomping at the bit to get going with a project, but it pays dividends to first watch/read a guide all the way through, ideally making note of the places where the most pertinent information is located for future reference. But, of course, it's easy to forget to do that in the heat of the moment, as many (yours truly included) can attest.

UDIMs aren't too difficult, the guides by Styl1sh have all the info needed to get them set up properly, but there are some odd pitfalls that you need to watch out for. You'll need to save the UDIM textures to a file immediately, for example, as they aren't saved into a blender project save for some reason. Lost quite a bit of work thanks to that, let me tell ya.

She still has some spots that could use a second pass, the arms and thighs (especially around the buttocks) most notably, but it's coming along nicely.

Diplocaulus

It's a been awhile and I think I'm happy with this iteration, but there may be room for improvement yet. Thank you for your advice and critique, it has been invaluable. The next project will hopefully be smoother.

https://imgur.com/a/FszSfsu