Tournament #2 - Black Robe VS Witchy - RND 1
 

Alright, this tournament round goes on for 5 days. It will then go on for one day after that, when it will be voted for. If you vote for one, please vote for the rest of them as well. Also, if the next day there are not at least 3 votes on one side, the mods will judge the winner. Have a great time and this round is on:

Underwater Creature :D.

Textures are a must.. but can be as little as lamberts and blinns :P. The two battlers for this thread are:

Black Robe
and
Witchy

Have a great battle!

DO NOT VOTE UNTIL BOTH FINAL RENDERS ARE IN

http://64.180.100.76/public/personal...ya/tourny2.jpg

Best of luck Blackrobe! Allow me to start us off- I am really looking forward to seeing your cartoon crab!

I decided to go with a cartoon fish based (but with a few added features) on this picture I found on the net;

People who have seen my workflow in the past know I start in funny places (normally boots but the fish doesn't have any which is rather inconvenient) so I decided to try out a nurbs eye tutorial I found on the net for my fish's cartoon eyes.

Working on the basis of a tutorial I have followed in the past (it was for an elephant, I made a camel to accessorise a game map, have a horse WIP, and now a fish, handy technique!) I laid out the basic shape and have started pulling verts. Once I have the basic shape I shall start more splitting to improve the shape and add details.

The smaller picture at the bottom is a quick smooth of my basic mesh with a little texture I knocked up in PS, definitely not final (took a few minutes and is dreadful) but I wanted to see how it looked striped as I rather like those clown fish thingies.

Hey its coming along good man! One thing i would suggest though is either go with that same approach, which is kinda hard to get smooth.. or start from a sphere.. because its a fish if you flattened it a lot.. then added a lattice to it and started scaling to your image you could probably get a lot more of a smooth effect pretty quick.. then to add on the tail and the fins, hair thingy... you can do that after by extruding from your general shape.. or continue with the lattice :)... anyways, it looks quite good in that picture, but its your decision if you want to try to get a more smooth effect. Ok, just my 2 cents.. cya

YAY!
 

Glad to see its started now :) Ive done a bit but Im just in after my exam, was easy :) Well here is an unsmoothe render of my progress.Sorry for the watermarks :( Damn PLE!:banghead:

HEre is a smoothed version with one leg done and the claw/arm almost finished...

Oh no!M, is it essential that we post concepts because my scanner has broken, my bro dropped a book on the screen and split it :(:(:( Its gonna cost loads to repair or get a new one :'( ARGH! Sorry

Done some work on the shell and leg.Still need to finish off the claw/arm and the rest of the legs. Loadsa stuff to do actually....Heres a new unsmoothed one.

and smoothed, sorry if Im posting too many pics, sorry to the 56k'ers! :)

Looking good! Perhaps his body might be a bit thin? Claw is nice!

Thanks for the suggestion M;I think I shall stick with the fish this way for now, I did think of a sphere and might fall back on that if this does not work out.

Ye I actually thought that, I need to thicken it up a bit.Maybe make it a little higher and chunkier...thanks for the suggestion.I'll get the other side done and then start on the details.

New render with both sides done :) I'll just post the smoothed version.Hows yours coming along Witchy?

Witchy, when smoothing uncheck Keep Edges.
Might give your fish better looks.

Good luck to both participants.

Good tip thanks adl!

Didn't know that one. That and a better overall shape should help with the old smoothing. Cheers.

Have not done a thing to it today as just got in from work, but you have scared me again Blackrobe so I shall fire up the old Maya and go to shortly!

Yours is looking really nice, good shape in the legs.

Thanks witchy, Ive given it a rest for a couple of hours... I do have a social life after all...sorta :D

Well the girlfriends gone home and now I can get back to work. Ive lifted the shell up a bit to give it some height.Also started on the details by giving the shell the bumpy bits around the edges....You guys think it looks ok? Also not the evil red eyes :D

Again, sorry for posting too many pics, M if this is too much then please tell me to stop or remove them from the posts.Do you guys think this is ok?Ive made it a bit taller and narrower.I need to know if it looks good to continue working on it, thanks :)

Hey blackrobe.. pictures are great! Maybe out of 5 posts, instead post 4.. you know? Like its not that big ofa deal but for the server it can rake up.. i think. Anyways, the crab is lookin great! Sorry to hear about the scanner.. and you do not have to post refrence images. Anyways, everything is lookin good and one thing though.. the legs seem too long too me.. i like the size of the pinchers (nice and big ;)).. but the legs seem that they should be a bit shorter and instead of sprawled all the way out, curved in like a < shape :). Anyways, other than that.. its comin along great.. and i love the red eye idea, make that plate behind the eye black for sure. Anyways, other than that.. you could add some funky stuff on its shell if you wanted to :). YOu have done a lot though already..keep up the good work :).

thanks for the tips on the legs i knew there was something wrong witht them :)

Here is a VERY quick texture test, plain lamberts all over.I know it looks too red/orange but I just wanted to get an idea.I think that I'll UVW texture it if I have time to learn how to do it.Also I pulled tghe legs in a bit but I dont think I'll make them like <''> if you know what I mean...

I think we have a winner 8). Looking very nice.

Couple of updates; unsmoothed and undetailed wire showing basic shape in place;

More shape and smoothing.

Fish is working his way towards mutant-hood- he's going to have hands instead of fins and the odd accessory. No pics of that yet though 8).

And last one, with an eye.

Sorry, it didn't attach the image 8).

thats looking really good witchy, cartoony, nice :) The eye is is pretty cool.Anyone got any ideas how to make a glowing texture that I could use for the eyes?Would I have to use a special lighting system?Im crap with Lighting and textureing :(

just use any texture and the attribute additor >special effects increase the glow intensity
thats what i did for my crab's eyes

cool thanks for that :)

way to go to both of you guys-

Witchy- how did you go about making that initial shape? from a box? or did you use the create poly tool then the split poly tool?

also ... :) does anyone know if there a way to work on a low poly half while a subdivided instance of it udates...? (did that make any sense?!?! I am quite tierd now...)

BlackRobe- I hear ya about the PLE watermark... but hey its free right? I will paying of my copy of Maya for the rest of the year :D

H!

oops... "for" my copy!

yes you can do that. you duplicate your poly object with instance, then you scale the duplicate -1 on x so that they are "connected". now if you work on one side, the other side updates. and now you select the copy, and go to convert->polygons to subdiv options. and there you check "proxy object".

now if you work on the poly version of the one side, the subdiv version will update. only problem is - that you still see on the subdiv object the wireframe. you cannot hide it, as that will hide the poly object as well. and you must not change the subdiv object to standard mode as that will delete the duplicated poly object, and thus the connection of the poly object to the subdiv object gets lost.

maybe there is another way - but this works really easy and good

hope that helps

edit: this only works if you do have subd - as you need at least maya 4.5 if you have complete.

You could try also this:

• Create a Poly cube,
• Convert to SubD,
• Open up a second Perspective window,
• Space-click Poly proxy (or something don´t remember the name exactly) in one of the windows,
• On that window click Show and uncheck SubDs,
• On the other window click Show and uncheck Poly´s.

You should have two perspective windows, one with a poly cage, and one with the subdivision updating. No need even to create instance copies. All done with the same object.

Thanks for writing the PM Howard, I´m currently looking how we could approach the tutorial idea.

wow, adl, that is a great trick :banana:

as i said - maybe there is another way. in maya there is at least 2 ways.

Now, if we could only figure out a way of killing the banana. :cool:

Perhaps the fish and the crab can take him :D

Thanks for the comments and another great tip adl thanks.

The fish body was done with the create poly tool followed by the split poly tool in logical places, then some pushing and pulling, then simplifying the mesh and tidying it up before mirroring it to create the whole. I initially did the same for the tail but I wasn't happy with it so I started with the body and then extruded the fin and tail afterwards. One smoothing iteration then got it smooth as I wanted it and I softened the mirrored joint edge to stop it being a visible line. It's not a very remarkable model but I think it is coming on OK.

Thanks guys- I will try that. I was becoming very frustrated sub'ding and undoing.

H!

Couple of updates;

Had another one but it has moved on since, so deleted it to save space. :)

Lastly, making a start on textures (compression has blurred them a bit but you get the general idea).