Jan/Feb - Norm- swankymonkey
 

I cannot pass up an animal related project.

Just moments after this photo was taken both men were shot dead by a third man hunting for the elusive but unfortunately far from extinct DORK:
http://tenthchoir.com/warthog008.bmp

And, no, I won't be modeling bow hunting dorks in really bad camo ... the WARTHOG, silly!

Dave

Sounds original lol. Look at your thread name by the way.

oops! I meant NORM (cut and paste ya know)... maybe some one of influence can fix it for me;) ... Now who's the DORK!! HA HA!

Dave

Edit - Fixed it all by myself ... but, yeah I'm still a dork

cool head to model and good to see you back in dave :)

Glad you are in this comp. Swanky :)

Warthog is a great idea!

Hi guys!

Getting started roughing out the head
http://tenthchoir.com/warthog001.jpg
Its taken a bit of studying to grasp how these little buggers are put together. They have quite a bizzare jaw and skull structure.

Dave

Start good swanky!

Getting close to finished with roughing him out. Hes gonna need a lot more work around the eye socket, brow, ear, and those freaky choppers ...
http://tenthchoir.com/warthog_101.jpg
Also, I once hes far enough along I'll make his ears and tusks asymmetrical

Dave

Wow. That looks really great. I really like the way you'ver modelled the tusks and the nose. I would be curious to see a photo from below to show how you dealt with the mouth. Good work!

looks great nice modeling swanky :attn:

cool model and a nice clean mesh :)

it would be good to see the mouth area, or at least a side head view

Mouth area so far ...
http://tenthchoir.com/warthog_102.jpg

Looking good Dave, and a cool choise of model :)

soon Zbrush ??

Yeah, your model looks excellent. Great choice of animal and thanks for posting the side view of the mouth. Looking forward to seeing your progress.

By the way, I just checked out your September / October challenge. Excellent work. Very impressive!

Hey Arran! Thank you!

Vim- Yes ... soon Zbrush!

Blomkaal - You da man!

Heres a final update before the polycount goes off the charts:
http://tenthchoir.com/warthog_103.jpg
These Warthogs are strange little buggers. I think I need to study a few more good references before moving on but its damn close.

Looks good :) .

How do you render the model with the wireframe on it?

Some Guy- The wire frame is simply a comp of a black and white vector render multiplied over a mental ray render in PS. Let me know if you'd like a more detailed description.

Dave

Ok, thanks. :)
so do i render a vector render, a mentel ray render then in photoshop get rid of the while on the vector one?

I'm still hangin' out in Maya. No Z-Action yet. I'm having too much fun cutting in new edges and tweaking verts!

Some Guy- Heres a bit more in depth explanation of the wire frame render. Keep in mind, this is just how I do it. There may be many other ways to go about it. This is just what I've come up with and stuck with for now:

First render the model how you want it using MR or Maya Software renderer. Save that image (I usually use TARGA). Now either don't move the camera or better yet bookmark the view (view>bookmarks).

Next I select what edges I want to have show in the render (or just select the whole object) and harden the normals.

In the attribute editor set the camera environment to white.

Open up render globals and select the vector renderer and make sure 'fill objects' is unchecked and 'include edges' is checked. Here you can also set the edge weight and color.

Render and save (Here I usually use TIFF).

In photoshop open both images and paste the wire frame over the other render and set the layer type to MULTIPLY. Now you can set transparency to taste!

There are so many variations you can achieve so above all experiment like a mad scientist and have fun!

Let me know any new tricks you discover!

Dave

opps ... image:
http://tenthchoir.com/warthog_104.jpg

Looking good, :beer:
Thanxs for the explination :)

definitely cool swanky.. i like your modeling around the eyes..

:beer:

:beer:
Now its time to go to Zbrush for some final tweaks of the base mesh before smoothing.
http://tenthchoir.com/warthog_105.jpg

Hey Dave! You're doing an incredible work, as usual. Do you intent to make thousands of wrinckles in ZBrush? Or you'll concentrate on fur?

do you know why my vector renderer triangulates everything?

Jramauri- How have you been? Thanks for the compliment! I will be using Zbrush mostly for painting the texture. I will model some of the major wrinkles in Maya and some in Zbrush just to mix thing up a bit. Most of the wrinkles will be bump mapped. I think I'm one of the only people on here who doesn't have Maya Unlimited so I won't be using fur but instead I plan to make whiskers and some of the mane using skinny little polys. The more bulky hair will probably be tackled by using alpha maps.

I'm on my way to check out your thread to see where you're at with Bjork!

Joopson- Dude! You just need to make sure to select 'outlines' instead of 'entire mesh' under: RENDER GLOBALS>MAYA VECTOR>EDGE OPTIONS. With this selected only outlines of objects and poly edges with hardened normals will show.

Dave:)

Great modelling so far dave, the detail around the eyes especially :)

Unfortunatelly, my project is stopped for a while, since some jobs has appeared to do. But I hope I can go for it next days.
Hey, do you know the ZBrush Fiber Brush? Maybe it could be a good thing for you to use. You can import your model on ZBrush, and paint over it with Fiber Brush, to mimic the fur. The only problem is that it will be a static image, not a 3D object. But as the main task here is to make a realistic final image, it could be a solution.
Another thing it's Maya PFX. If you intent to make fur just in some areas, it's a good tool. I think you could make some tests with it.

hehe that is one crazy animal .. I like it :)

once your done you should mount it on your wall and claim you killed it with your bare hands when you were out trekking in Africa, a great story for the kids.

Dae

Thank you for the suggestions Jramauri! I've never really messed around much with paint effects. May be the ticket!

Dae- LOL! I don't know which is a more frightening about what you said. Having to kill a wild warthog with my bare hands or the idea that someday I would have kids:eek:

Well, I'm still pulling polys around in Maya. It doesn't help that all the refs I have of these piggies seem to differ. Sometimes drastically. Though I am much happier with this new incarnation. I still have plenty of time to have fun ... right?
http://tenthchoir.com/warthog_107.jpg

I know exactly what you mean - you dont realise how different each animal looks compared to another until you have to do something like this :eek:
Great work on the head, and the mesh is excellent. The only thing that I can see is that the forehead looks a little too stuck out compared to the height of the eyes. Thats only going from looking at your reference pics :)

It looks great swanky... post us a smooth version!!! :attn:
So, are you gonna model all the hair in Z-brush?

T1ck135- Thanks for the observation! I'm neck deep in re-tweaks and at a stage now where I'm feeling comfortable enough with the overall shape to start cutting in more edges. This is the part of modelling I relish the most. I love re-routing edges to allow the variations in the topology to flow together. Its very zen! "Ohmmm"

Mayafreak- I'll probably create the hairy bits using alpha mapped polys and probably quite a lot of hand modeled (and duplicated) whiskers. Should be a hoot! Heres your smoothed request:

http://tenthchoir.com/warthog_108.jpg

Thanks again, guys!:beer:

Dave

Many thanx swankymonkey.. it looks very nice. :attn:

I like your comment about zen..
Kind of like throwing pottery or sculpture..3d modeling
has the same effect for me.

Yeah its great cutting in new loops and seeing if you can get rid of the 3 and 5 sided polys after. Makes you think more about the topology of the model :)

I like the pose, it reminds me of the alert nature of a mother, not sure if she's seen a cheetah in the scrub, great work :beer:

as a side note, does anybody do sculpting or pottery alongside using maya? It sounds intriguing.

Exxxcellent Smithers!!


Jay

nice comment mr. burns ;)
but anyway, swankymonky, you are one of my favorites so far!

nice modelling and some nice renders i like ur way of doingthe wire renders and they work really well

good luck