Meet Invictus

# 1 13-09-2006 , 08:52 PM

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Hi all, didn't know whether to post after seeing some of the stuff on here already. Although I've been into 3D modelling for years I've never really done anything serious. So after buying a load of SM tuts over the past few months I decided to start the Dragon tut, this is the first organic model I have attemted.
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Wraithe

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Last edited by Wraithe; 01-06-2007 at 05:30 PM.

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# 2 13-09-2006 , 08:53 PM

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Invictus continued

Somequick renders with a basic 3 point light source.
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Although I think the mesh looks clean for the most part:
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There are a couple of points on the mesh that I am concerned about:
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The areas I have circled, will these cause issues during texturing? The end of the horn I will definately sort out as I had this come up while modelling the ears. But as for the other areas? I'll probably end up doing some more detail in the mouth, upper and lower pallettes, and a tongue.
I started work on the body, I've added two front legs to my dragon, the body will also have some horns (spines) on the ridge of it's back.

Well, hope you like it, advice, concrits welcome.
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Wraithe

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Last edited by Wraithe; 01-06-2007 at 05:31 PM.

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# 3 13-09-2006 , 09:31 PM

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very nice ..I love the dragon ..good work ..very nice. ..wish i could have gotten some of that detail when i did it ..cant wait to see more work

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# 4 13-09-2006 , 09:33 PM

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No they won't be a problem as long as you have a good UV map.

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# 5 28-09-2006 , 07:09 PM

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More work

Ok, haven't been on Maya for a while, but since my last post I worked more on Invictus.

Started on the body and rear leg.
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Added a front leg and joined both legs to the body.
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Worked on some muscle definition, I definitely need to do some research on animal musculature. Also added basic toes.
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Did the toe nails and a little foot detail. Needs more though.
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Worked on the wing.
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Attached the wing to the body, also did the skin in between the wing limbs.
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Today I'll be working on defining the body/wing joint area, giving the wing itself dore detail as well as the leg muscles. I do need to research some animal muscles though so any comments on that area in particular would be much appreciated.

HOW I WORKED Obviously there are some fundamental differences to Invictus compared to the SM dragon, he has front legs for a start, and more horns on the head. Also some of the ways modelled by Kurt in the tut I did differently, just personal preference really, for example, he used a boolean operation....... on the toes I think it was, I try not to use boolean. Also the way he models the wing skin usng the edges of the already created wing. I didn't like this method so I just created it using 3 planes and joining them together and converting to sub-D's.

PROBLEMS - Some edges are non-manifold When I joined the wing to the body and tried converting it all to sub-D I came across an error, something like "Some edges are non-manifold", it also suggested using Cleanup to sort this problem out, I tried it to no avail, I went through the vertices, edges and faces to try and find the problem. I even detached the wing, converted them seperately from the body and it was ok. Re-attached and had the same problem. Then for some reason I ended up checking out the normals?!?!?! This is where the problem was. The normals on the wing were facing inwards (work that one out :headbang: ), so I reversed normals, then re-attached, converted and everything was ok.

Wraithe

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Last edited by Wraithe; 01-06-2007 at 05:32 PM.

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# 6 29-09-2006 , 11:14 AM

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More detail

Worked on more detail last night. Defined the wing limbs abit more, put horns on the ends of the limbs. Gave Invictus some Dragon hide armour, one piece covering the whole of the top of his body, some plating on his neck and chest, added some horns to his back and defined he tail.

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Should be adding some more plating to the underside of his tail, debating whether to add a few more horns to his back, down his tail, more detail is needed on the rear foot, then some more muscle definition, especially on his underside. I'll be copying the rear foot and using that as the front one as well once the detail has been added. Overall just defining his shape. Abit worried about the poly count, 2682, as a poly model and that's only half of him user added image

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Last edited by Wraithe; 01-06-2007 at 05:33 PM.

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# 7 29-09-2006 , 11:41 AM

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The front legs look perculiar to me, the upper looks like a shoulder to forearm, and the lower look like hind legs, neither one or the other. Isn't this modelled in subD's ? Think you mistyped your polycount as well, 2500 is very low, even by gaming standards today.

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# 8 29-09-2006 , 12:07 PM

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Why it looks like that

Yeah the front leg is bothering me, BUT! I haven't really concentrated on that are much, the top half (bicep) is supposed to look like an arm rather than a leg, so I guess this dragon will have limbs that can be used for walking and holding things, some dinosaurs were able to do this. And even modern day primates.
The lower part of the front leg will definitely be changed, there isn't much detail on it, and the detail that there is was only so I could get an overall feel for what I was going to do with it. I'll be getting all the detail done for the rear foot, duplicating it over to the front. I will be making the ankle area thicker as well so it is more akin to a forearm and I will also add a thumb to the front foot/hand.

The model is polygonal, I do convert to Sub-D only to see how it will look smoothed, once all the detail is done I will do a poly smooth on it as I did with the head.

As for the poly count, I guess because this is the most complex model I have done I was worried about the count. The render time jumped up quite abit once I had smoothed it.

Thanks for your input, much appreciated.

Wraithe

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Last edited by Wraithe; 29-09-2006 at 06:39 PM.

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# 9 16-10-2006 , 09:36 PM

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Abit of advice

Hi all, was wondering if I could have some advice if pos please. Still doing Invictus, I nearly binned him, I was unhappy with the body mesh so I redid it and all the work I did on the armour was in vain:headbang: . I'm trying to work on the muscle definition around the legs and it just doesn't seem to be coming together the way I want. I have been using the sculpt polygon tool, and seem to end up with slight imperfections in the skin. The only way to resolve this seems to be by moving individual vertices which is very time consuming. So if anybody has any advice on a workflow I could try, it would be much appreciated. I did also read a book on hyper real modelling which gave me some ideas, working to muscle flow, but that would mean starting the body from scratch user added image

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Here's some images of the muscles so far. Ignore the feet and toes, I was concentrating on the biceps, forearm and rear thigh/shin.

THESE IMAGES HAVE BEEN REMOVED BY WRAITHE

Regards
Wraithe

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Last edited by Wraithe; 20-04-2007 at 02:23 AM.

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# 10 30-10-2006 , 02:17 AM

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those areas u circled, they lookl ike 3 sided poly's. When texturing, if they arent 4 sided you might run into problems. Not all the time but you want to stay away form them so i would go back and look at ya mesh and figure a way to turn it into a 4 sided but get the results ur looking for. good luck and i like the twist u added to this dragon. I did it along time ago and i want to finish it up since i want to learn texturing so good luck

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# 11 30-10-2006 , 03:58 AM

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To be different

Hi, thanks for the reply, I did actually go back and sort out the triangles a while ago, some areas I couldn't though, i.e. the tips of the horns, tail and ear tips, but I'm not anticipating any probs in those areas.

My main prob I'm having at the min is the muscle definition, I got every dragon figurine I have and looking at them for reference, and also captured images and footage from the film Dragon Heart to give me a guide somehow.

Admittedly I haven't touched him in a week or so, I needed some chill out time user added image

, unfortunately I only get a few hours a night to mess about with maya. I have been reading up on rendering and lighting as well, I have only done basic texturing so this is like ..... a major project for me. Had a visit to Ireland as well and got some good shots of a ruined castle which I will use to composite Invictus into. I'll get thereeventually.

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# 12 30-10-2006 , 04:33 AM

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hey man if you dont mind, could u email me your ref images. Ive been looking for some but i cant find many good ones. If you can, email a .zip at ejmattison@yahoo.com. thatw ould be great. anyways abouy your muscle definition, just play around with pushing and pulling of verts, thats all i do to get an idead og how it looks. i never used the sculpting tool before so im not sure how it looks but i usually just mess with the verrts alots

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# 13 30-10-2006 , 05:24 AM

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how about a screenshot with both parts of the body together. user added image

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# 14 30-10-2006 , 11:34 AM

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Will do

I'll get some SS to ya when I get home from work, I'll get some stills from the footage I got from the film, if you're after images of figurines that will have to wait til the weekend....sorry. Because this is the firs organic, after reading up on hyper real models I ended up rebuilding the legs trying to go with how I thought the muscle flow would go. I used a combination of switching between poly's and sub-D's, pushing and pulling vertices and extensively using the sculpt tool.

I'll get a few images up of both halves of the modell when I get home tonight, wires and renders.

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# 15 01-11-2006 , 02:14 PM

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Hey Turbo, sorry about the delay in getting them files for you. Hope they're of some use, let me know if there are any specific areas of the body you want and I'll see what I can do.

Here's some images of both halves, I think I ballsed it up, I wish I had kept the original dragon I did. The head is till a poly for now, the body I converted to sub-D just to see the smoothness. But it will be a smoothed poly once completed.

THESE IMAGES HAVE BEEN REMOVED BY WRAITHE

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Last edited by Wraithe; 20-04-2007 at 03:06 AM.

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