Virtual Reef Aquarium

[Scottj3d]

I haven't been splining for a while so last night I decided to get some practice in. My motherboard on my modelling PC went south but I was able to salvage my model files by slaving the harddrive to my internet PC. I have been wanting to make a virtual reef aquarium. I made this lionfish in a few hour's but still have some tweaking to do as well as decaling. I thought it looked pretty good so far so I decided to start this thread and get some feedback. The color pics are mostly for reference and are what I could find on the web.

 

And an anemone using an image file with hair. Can't seem to figure out how to get the tentacles (hair) to taper towards the tip like they should. I went with hair for the tentacles for the ease of getting a good quantity of them without having to model them. I'll try modelling them as soon as I finish transferring the vidcard ect. to this PC. Dont think my 64 meg gforce4 is up to the task as I am used to my 6800gt.

[NancyGormezano]

very nice start - am looking forward to seeing more.

 

As for tapering the hair - click on thickness in Hair Emitter - time line should show % along x axis - zoom out so you can see from 0 to 100% - go to 100% in the timeline and type in desired thickness in emitter property. (Eg. at 0% key in 1", at 100% key in .01")

[Eric2575]

Wow, can't wait to see that lionfish with decals/textures. Lookin good.

[Scottj3d]

Heres the first color decal test for the body. Definately need's improvement. I kinda whiped it together just to see if it would take ok(got alot of fold's around the gill's and lip's). I'll redo it and use selections to get better detail for the stripes. I plan to use cookie cut's for part's of the finnage. thank's for the tip's on the adjustment's for the hair Nancy! I'll give that a shot as soon as I get V11 in this PC.

[Kamikaze]

Very nice, looks believeable to me.......I can already see them in an underwater (where else...LOL) scene.

 

Michael

[DarkLimit]

really cool fish.......I look forward to ur progress.....

[Scottj3d]

Here's a little update. I'm modifiying the pectoral fins and should have an update with them decaled soon. The dorsal fin will be modified to make the transparent areas at the rear of the fin soon. This is about 5 evolutions of the decal here.

[Luxo]

This is looking great Scott! Very nice texures. I'll be watching this thread----

[Zaryin]

Wow, he is really coming along. Great job so far.

[DanCBradbury]

that's an amazing fish model. are you unraping the fish to do the decaling? looks real good scott.

[Scottj3d]

that's an amazing fish model. are you unraping the fish to do the decaling? looks real good scott

 

 

Thank's Dan and everbody. I'm currently using V10.5 and I have created groups for the right and left sides and I flatten them manually in a pose (as per Jim Talbot's tutorial's) I have group's for the body and so far the dorsal fin and a decal for each. I select the right body group, hide everything else and apply a decal then the left and restamp the same applied decal. Just repeating it for the fins but the nice thing about the fins is I only have to stamp once and the decal shows on both sides. I'm hoping the fin ray's and scale's can be done with a bump decal.

[Scottj3d]

Nancy, I went back and tried the timeline adjustment as you suggested. This is more like it. I'm just bouncing around playing with my projects. Thanks for the tip!

[Roger]

The anemone looks good, although you should stick w/ the thicker tentacles w/ the tapered tip. There are anemones with thinner tentacles, but they don't look quite like that.

 

 

The lionfish is pretty good, however the fins are generally longer. There is a Dr. Axelrod's (I think that's the name ) marine atlas which you should be able to get from a library.

 

However.......there are several different types of lionfish, but it looks like you are trying to model one of the volitans lions, which have the longer fins.

 

Looks good though.

[dreamin3d]

Hey Scott,

Really cool man! Love the lionfish! Not very many of us still using good ol' v10.5. I just bought v13, but I'm holding off loading until I can finish a little bathroom radiosity project that I started over a year ago. Sorry to here your computer whoes . Been there, done that. Glad your back up and running. Sounds like you have limited time, I understand that too.

 

I post this picture with the utmost humblenees, along with this offer. This is a forgotten project of mine from 2003 that I will never do anything with. It was to be an entry into the stereo contest if I could have made it work, I just didn't have time. And so, like so many of my projects it just sits on my hard drive waiting for a good home. There are (4) fish and (5) different sea plants. I modelled them from a painting, don't even know if they really exist. They aren't as good as what you're getting into, but if you'd like I'll email the project to you, for your use. You're welcome to it, my gift. Don't see very many folks modelling sealife of late.

 

[attachmentid=18425]

 

Cheers and Peace ,

Rob Shematek

[Scottj3d]

 

 

I post this picture with the utmost humblenees, along with this offer. This is a forgotten project of mine from 2003 that I will never do anything with. It was to be an entry into the stereo contest if I could have made it work, I just didn't have time. And so, like so many of my projects it just sits on my hard drive waiting for a good home. There are (4) fish and (5) different sea plants. I modelled them from a painting, don't even know if they really exist. They aren't as good as what you're getting into, but if you'd like I'll email the project to you, for your use. You're welcome to it, my gift. Don't see very many folks modelling sealife of late.

 

[attachmentid=18425]

 

Cheers and Peace ,

Rob Shematek

 

Thank's Rob! And they do exhist, (the one on the right is a trigger fish and nice economy on those splines) In the middle is an angel and on the left could be a sponge or coral depending on how you decal it (pun intended). Actually I have revamped the PC I have been running AM on and have my 6800gt back in action. Just built an SLI based system with two vidcard's but am having the "you know what problem with you know who's chips and driver's" I have an email out to them and am awaiting an answer. I'm interested in your offer. I'll PM you my email but I believe it's also in my profile.

 

The anemone looks good, although you should stick w/ the thicker tentacles w/ the tapered tip. There are anemones with thinner tentacles, but they don't look quite like that.

 

 

The lionfish is pretty good, however the fins are generally longer. There is a Dr. Axelrod's (I think that's the name ) marine atlas which you should be able to get from a library.

 

However.......there are several different types of lionfish, but it looks like you are trying to model one of the volitans lions, which have the longer fins.

 

Looks good though.

 

Thanks Roger. The tentacles on the anemone are hair with an image file so I am still tweaking it. It looks more like the tentaclles of a tube anemone than a condylactus but I might be able to add a cp to the "hair's" to better adjust the taper to be more towards the tips. The lion is a volitans but is still very much a WIP and will have plenty of changes by the time I finish it. I can duplicate better with pen and paper than with splines but it'll get there.