BHG Challenge | Socket7 | Golden Hermit

[Socket7]

BHG Challenge | Socket7 | Golden Hermit
http://www.gameartisans.org/contests/competitions/uploaded_thubnails/29-game-3d-art-992-1178246628-concept_icon.jpg

Socket7 has entered the competition!

[Socket7]

Been thinking of what I am heading to... Here is the concept of my wild birdy. :D
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/9306/conceptsketch01bd6.gif

So, the bird lives in deserts and other hot places and usually goes after big animals and humans. Its assault strategy is to hunt from the skies by means of rapid descending with its tail ready like bees do. First strike with the tail to wound the target and then grab it with the big claws.
Not sure about the skin yet. Obviously there should be feathers but maybe not everywhere. Want to try some mix. Maybe someone will advise something...

[Socket7]

Start of the modeling.
http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/8461/modelling01dg4.jpg

[Frozan]

keep it up my friend.

[Socket7]

Some progress on the body:
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/2010/modelling02mp8.jpg

[Socket7]

Some more progress. Made more details on his head. Thinking of giving more details on his chest and legs... Something nice to be added for sure since I'm not satisfied with his plain look.
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/4008/modelling03iq4.jpg

[Socket7]

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/879/modelling04km7.jpg
Added some armor like flanks and made his ribs to be visibible. Now it is about 3k tris. Still have room to add alpha planes and maybe some more details. The rest of his teeth will be made of planes. But I'm still not satisfied with his look yet. Of course lot of details will be done with normal and bump textures.
What do you think guys?

[kurocrash]

honestly? he is very plain, but it reminds me sort of the old harryhausen models actually, mixed with a bit of fin fang foom. especially that broad round mouth.
my advise would be to look at existing creatures for reference. there's a couple of things that are a little sketchy about it's form. for instance, it has what looks like a pectoral muscle (or whatever that is on each side of him there going down his front), but it's not attached to anything. no arms, & wing is very far away from it up on its back.
also you say 3k tris but it's looking a lot denser than that. to me anyway. it looks like you've got a lot of extra polys that aren't contributing much to it. like the amount of edges you have going around the ankles or all of the rows of edges going down the tail or around the neck. there's a lot of optimizing you could do & then later you could put it toward rows of extra scales popping out or feathery wings.

-J

[Socket7]

kurocrash: thanks for the crit. I'll think what can be done. But in the front actually are not muscles on the sides. These would be bones of his thoracic cage.
Anyway, agree with you about the plain look. Will be back. :)
PS: and yes, Kurocrash was right - it is about 5.6k tris total now. Will remove unnecessary stuff.

[Marcus Dublin]

When you revise and play with your model one thing you may want to adjust is the thickness of its neck, as it probably couldn’t support the weight of its head. One thing I like to do when making creatures is to make a quick sketch of it’s skeleton, this way you have a better idea where certain muscle groups go and it’ll help with getting much better proportions across the board. Good luck with him Socket7!:)

Marcus

[Socket7]

Marcus Dublin: thanks for advise! I tend to keep such things in my mind rather than put it on paper but I'm learning bit by bit how to visualize them. :) I'll check the neck, maybe you're right.
Anyway, below is the base mesh I'm going to take to sculpting. It is revised and now weighs 4690 tris, so I can add teeth and feather/hair stuff later on. Will play with it for awhile to get all missing details in high poly form.
http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/5531/modelling05lg4.jpg

[Socket7]

Have been playing with his look a little:
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/4347/sculpting01vu9.jpg
Don't mind the color and shader. ;) I will certainly change that. Have an idea of making my chicken out of desert stone and sand... What do ya think? Although, don't know yet how to realize that. Any comments and suggestions are welcome!

[Kus Umok]

Dude I like the idea but those ribs just dont fit in. It also looks like its got rings of fa on the legs. I would personally change that and I would also change the tail and wings a bit theyre to straight.

[Socket7]

Kus Umok: Dunno, I like the idea of visible ribs. He's kinda starving - no wonder it's dificult to eat enough for him in the desert. :D But maybe you're right. I'll think more about the concept. Now about the legs... They are covered with bone armor that is attached to its muscles/tendons. And I will try to come up with nice tail and wings after I decide about his skin. Thanks for the input! Cheers!

[Socket7]

Don't have anything to show yet. Playing with ZB and messing with flipping green channel on the seams in the normal map from zMapper. Argh! :( Probably will have to correct them manually using graphics editor. Will try to come back soon.

[Antimagic]

the visible ribs are a good idea, but if you do them, you should make em look like ribs. I believe the reason they look strange is because they are separated too far apart and there is a center piece that looks like it's breaking his bone structure. From the side, it looks good, but it's only when you see him from the front that it looks strange. The outer ends of the rib cage is fine, For the center parts, I think if you make it look less like the ribs are digging into his center, this might help your entry look less strange.

Hope this made sense:D

[Socket7]

Antimagic: Yeah, I agree it's a strange look but hell, it shouldn't be anatomically similar to the existing animals on our planet. :) But I might try to put something that will give it some sense. Thanks for the comment.

I finally made right adjustments in the zMapper configuration so the uv map seems to be correct when exported. Some small thing to be done to it though. Here are the snapshots from zMapper. I decided to make my chicken from wood and stone. :)
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/5291/zmappersnapshotbd9.jpg

[Socket7]

Playing now with the color scheme. It's good that the deadline is extended. Will be able to finish this one. Apart from the texture simple rigging and alphas are still to be done... Time is getting tight. Busy with my job lately. :(

[Socket7]

Here is the sketch of a texture I'm thinking to go with... Don't look on wings cause they're basically not touched. And the tail wings are going to be remade.
Not sure if separate stones was a good idea from the huge monster perspective. :think:
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/1043/shottexturetryau1.jpg
What about the color scheme? The color of the tree will not be as redish later.

[Socket7]

Made a wooden part. Going to fix his legs, wings and add alphas. Not satisfied with his chest as it is now. Will do it from big stones. Let's see how it turns out.
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/9821/shotwoodto1.jpg

Next time I better spend more time on the concept and actually draw it as it should look finally, instead of making few strokes of a general direction. With the nicely worked concept it should be easy to do all the modelling and texturing part. I'm just so lazy on drawing and thinking of a concept details ahead. :o Now it just eats too much time on trying and re-doing things over and over again... :brick:
Anyway, I feel good about this one as it is basically my debut. Learned a lot about ZB and all the work needed to create a character. Never done this before. :) Will just try to finish it nicely and next time, god, I'm definately going to be smarter. ;)

[kurocrash]

the texturing looks like a nice start but those brown parts on him seem to 'vein out' into arteries, & as of right now, the edges seem big & round & if it is huge, you should definitely make them a little smaller, stringier if that makes sense, tapering down a lot more.

-J

[Socket7]

kurocrash: Yeah, thanks man! I revised the skin a bit. Dunno if it's much better but I kind of tired of this plain looking chicken. :) Will post some shots later.

PS: removed stupid question about 2-sided planes. Just duplicated them with inverted normals.

[Socket7]

Here some shots of my latest version of the damn chicken. Got tired solving lot of issues with ZB.
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/3038/textured01xg0.jpg
I might revise the textures. Maybe will add spec and glow but not sure. Want to rig him for a nice position and maybe (not very likely though) I might add the pedestal (if I'll get some nice ideas how it should look and manage to finish it).
The question also is how to reneder everything nicely. I'm so unexperienced in this...

[Marcus Dublin]

Are you rendering this with the normal maps, because right now he looks 100% self illuminated? To get the most out of your render I’d create a strong spec map with a bump map as well for the smaller details and turn off the self-illumination. Once that’s done I’d set up a nice 3 point lighting scheme with a fill light, rim light, etc. Also try to add a bit of variation to the color map; right now the contrast and saturation on the gold parts seem 100% even throughout the texture. Last but not least darken up the eye’s some, the creature has a stare that's very distracting, I'd add a darken layer in your paint program and darken up the white part of the eyes.

Marcus

PS: Here’s some Tutorials on lighting to get you started: http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html

[Socket7]

Marcus Dublin: Thanks a lot for your advice! :) I'll get it done. Wish you luck with the dragon! Cheers, mate! :mugs:

[Socket7]

The winning pose and the beauty shots I submitted:
http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/8652/winningposefm5.jpg
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/7919/beautyig1.jpg

There was still a lot of work to do on this chicken but I just gave up. It was pretty boring concept from the beginning, so I just decided to learn and try all that new stuff I faced with this challenge.
Thank you guys for you support and advises! Probably should start my WIPs on the CGTalk forum to keep practicing and learning.

[Socket7]

Yeah, and the texture sheets:
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/1074/texturescl3.jpg