WIP: merman model

[Ross Smith]

** EDIT: 4/8/04, update has been posted on page 3.**

 

 

Hey there, folkses. I'm making strides in my first big Hash project. The modeling for my merman character is nearly complete -- by complete I mean "all parts are there", not "perfect". I doubt I'll ever get it to that point.

 

Anyhow, I want to make sure the proportions and overall look strike people well. Once I fine-tune that, I'll start decimating unnecessary splines and then -- *gasp* -- texturemap it.

 

 

I know the bottom of the tail ends a bit ... flat. I'll fix that.

 

Thanks!

 

--Ross

[Zaryin]

I think where the torso meets the tail could be a little thicker. I would also lengthen the tail area by a couple of feet or so. It's looking great so far.

[tobinjim]

Since the forearms are bigger than the biceps, I'd guess she eats spinach more than seaweed... is that part of the storyline? The shoulders are quite slender for a species that would likely have strong arms, no? And I agree with Zaryin that the hips should be a bit wider than the shoulders, unless those shoulds are the right proportion.

 

If you make her a nice creature, I've got a tank she can swim in!

 

Keep going!

 

Jim

[Ross Smith]

Thanks for the input, guys! Glad to hear from you, Zaryin, your input is always constructive. I'll try lengthening the body, too.

Hmmm... The shoulders do need to bulk up a bit, ja. I set out to make a character with a very specific design, back in the day when I was doing the sketches. Now I'm not so sure what it is I wanted.

To answer your question about the arms, Jim, my goal was to make a creature that was once human that somehow "developed" into this mer-creature. (Readers of HP Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" know what I mean.) In that spirit, I wanted to make the remaining "human" parts of the creature look wasted and wan, while the "fishy" parts thrived. I was going for arms that slid out and elongated, with flippers and large muscles developing towards the wrist to resemble a frog. Perhaps I need to look at more frogs...

 

Wider hips? Hmm. I wanted to make this creature androgynous, so's I could make males and females from the model later. Do you say wider hips with the impression that it is female? I'll try it and see.

 

Thanks all! I'll post a revision of the arms/hips situation later.

 

--Ross

[Zaryin]

I don't want wider hip! I think the hips are fine. I meant that the indentation of the of the torso where the rib cage ends is too dramatic. i think that area could be "thickened".

[Ross Smith]

Ah hah. That's logical -- just today my brother made the same observation.

Sounds like an improvement, then. :-D

[scooter]

I like the waist, personally! It exaggerates the rib-cage and makes the creature look more other-worldly.

 

I like the back-story of having the human elements emaciated and the aquatic-creature elements thrive.

 

I think it'll really pop to life with the surface images.

[Mike Lium]

very interesting model I like the head and the way youve done the body is pretty cool .

[DarkLimit]

Ross - this is a great model.. I like his head and arms he's comimg along nicely...

 

I look forward to more updates.....

 

BTW - my fishes would be happy to see him underwater

[Ross Smith]

I was thinkin' about that actually, DarkLimit. How many people do we have around here modeling scary icthyoids, anyway?

 

Thanks for the comments, fellows. That head took more than a month to model, Mike, so I hope it looks good! I could devote only five or six hours a week to it because of classes, but I'm proud of it...

 

I tried to fix the troublesome skin area under the ribs, and it looks better. I'll post something later today with these modeling changes and my will-be texturemap patch groups. Big-time excitement -- I've never really done UV mapping before.

[Ross Smith]

Alright, here's an update -- the tail is a bit longer (maybe not too noticeably), the fold under the ribs is a bit better, and I thickened the arms a smidge.

 

Also a close-up of the head, for kicks.

 

Whole body

 

The head

 

I suddenly realize that links are better than posting the whole pic. Hmm.

 

-- Ross

[Hutch]

I really like the head on this merman. The gills on the look great and I love that nose (or should I say nostrils?) Keep up the good work, I think this will be a great character.

[Zaryin]

It's looking awesome! I would still extend the tail more, but that might just be my personal preference sneaking in there and not what would make it look better .

[Ross Smith]

Alrighty then, on to texturemapping.

For some reason I am leery of rigging... maybe it's because I've never really done it before. Hmm. So I'll map him first.

 

Here's some work on the scales. Let me know what you think.

 

Scales, far

Scales. close-up

 

Also... See how the scales there suddenly stop, so they look like sequined hoochie pants? Yeah, I made this texture with a tessolation. This comprises the color, spec intensity, spec size, bump, and diffusion. (3x scale):

 

 

A tessolation makes it rather difficult to do any sort of non-abrupt transition to another texture. Does anyone know what I'm talking about/has anyone done something like this before? I'm thinking, scales giving away to skin, like the gradient of a beach to grass.

Anyway. Thoughts, comments, and help are most welcome.

[Zaryin]

Are you dacaling or using a mat? If decaling I would make a texutre blend using alpha to blend it together.

[Ross Smith]

That's an excellent idea. I'm decaling, so that should work fine. Thank you, Z!

[Guest mrsl13]

Really liking your model...keep the updates comming, I like watching how models progress.

 

Mike

[JohnArtbox]

Coming along nicely Ross, have you thought about photographing a fish, or scanning an image, for the scale texture? The texture you have at the moment is very regular, contributing to the sequin feeling.

And seafood's good for brain development too

[Noel]

Looks cool.

Just a note. Your scales look upside down to me.

[Ross Smith]

Hehehe! *imagines laying a fish on a scanner*

I know that's not what you meant, John, but the funny image came anyway.

 

Proof that your vote counts!

 

Zaryin, since I'm using a decal, I took you up on the idea of an alpha layer. It's sort of a messy trick, what I'm doing, but it works perfectly. After I apply the tessolation to the whole set of "Tail" patches, I take the loop of uppermost patches. I flatten them for a UV stamp, and with some photoshop-made masks based on those stamps, the scales appear to "give way" to another texture (yellow, at present -- later, it will be skin). The pics should clarify. Anyway, thanks for the input, it helped me remove an obstacle.

 

John, I Googled some fish scales and remade my tessolation based on a good photo of a fish I found. It isn't an actual stamp from the fish, but I think it looks a whole darn lot more fish-like, at least.

 

And Noel, I figure you're right -- so I flipped the direction of the scales.

 

Here's the current output:

 

New scales, 1

 

New scales, 2

 

The odd "yellow scales" at the top will be fixed. That's just an artifact of masking out only the color channel. I used bump, diffuse, spec intensity, and spec size as well. Bump is actually controlled by a different graphic, the same tessolation but with much stronger gradients, in B/W, than are provided by the color one. Seems to make all the difference.

 

What do folks think? Are these scales keep-able?

Thanks again for reading!

 

--Ross

[Hutch]

These scales look alot better. Not at all like "sequined hoochie pants" anymore

[sonofpat]

Great Work.

 

I love the face especially the nose and the gill slits.

The scales look much better now but they end too abrupt at the torso.

 

BTW What is a tessolation?

 

Luv

Pat

[JohnArtbox]

"fish is only one of the things I've laid on my scanner."

In the search for textures I've scanned ox hearts and steaks for medical jobs, leaves, fish and feathers, buttocks... no wait, that was for the Christmas party .

Seriously it can be a great way to get a texture, and doesn't produce lots light cues like digital photos. If you are after a realistic finish, this is the easiest way to get it. You get all the natural imperfections and details that exist in reality.

Just make sure you gladwrap the scanner

And claim the meal on tax.

And don't forget to delete the buttocks photo before posting your textures on the web

[Ross Smith]

Not that kind of laying! Besides, a scanner would be rather awkward for that. Why not just use a camera?

 

You're pulling my leg, right? You haven't actually scanned ox hearts and slabs of meat -- have you? If you have, though, more power to ya...

 

True that it would be easier to get the natural effect by scanning real life. I guess I'm trying to get a handle for how textures work generally, too.

 

Whoops! It's tesselation, not tessolation. My bad.

Pat, a tesselation (my fast and loose definition) is any geometric shape that can be laid in a grid, or like tiles, with no space between the shapes. Hexagons and squares tesselate, for example, but octagons do not.

You may have heard of M. C. Escher, an artist famous for his tesselations. He's one of my favorites, actually. He was really on the ball with the "math and beauty" idea.

 

Anyway, here's a little divX post. It just shows the scales in motion. More input is most welcome.

 

Li'l divX post!

[JavierP]

Hi Ross,

Nice work! Your model is coming along nicely. Quick question though..... are you texturing your model with that colored background in the modeling window? I ask because, I often find it distracting to have color in the modeling window when texturing. Also, because of the way color works your eye ends up compensating for the abundance of one color by causing neighboring colors to be tinted by its complement. I've never liked that green that AM defaults to because of this. Of course everbody works differently I suppose. Keep up the good work.

 

Javier

 

Oh yeah and there are tesselations that don't repeat also like Penrose and kite and dart patterns; and you're right Esher is really good, if not the best.

[Ross Smith]

Javier, that is a very interesting recommendation. To answer your question, that is not the color that I model or texture with. I have the default "Hash blue" in the modeling window, and I typically render in the choreography on black. This time I decided to use the gray background to help this rather dark texture stand out.

 

Anyway, thankee for the input and support.

[Ross Smith]

Heya folks. I'm still hackin' away at this fellow. After getting real frustrated with texturemaps, I turned to rigging. I really enjoy rigging, it seems.

 

I wish I had a presentable texture-mapping job for you, but I'm not even that far yet... Would anyone have some good advice regarding displacement maps? I think I want to use one for the near-skeletal ribs on my dude.

[Rodney]

Woaah! Another blink and I come back to this.

You've made some great progress here.

 

I like the improvements you made in the scales.

One thing you can do near the end of the process is create a decal to stamp over the scales to give them additional differences, wear etc. Turn up the transparency so that the effect is as subtle as possible.

 

John's suggestion of scanned scales would be fun to try BUT I like the look you are getting even now.

 

If you aren't going for the realistic look so much as fantasy you are right on track. If realism is the goal... scan those scales.

 

Keep postin'

Rodney

My World In Progress

[Ross Smith]

Arrgh... I'm having a helluva time trying to rig the shoulder on this dude. I have the tail rigged just perfect (thanks, ARM!), but the shoulder has me stumped...

Maybe I just made it wrong. I don't know when to use fan bones and when to use smart skin. Advice, anyone? Links to good tuts, perhaps? I couldn't find much for this on the ARM.

Thanks.

[modernhorse]

Search this forum for Smartskin and you'll see a good description of what Will Sutton (aka Zandoria) does.

 

I too have had little luck with fan bones setup so far. But this is all brave new territory for me. Best of luck.

 

Doug

[Ross Smith]

** UPDATE **

 

So! This character is basically all rigged, and modeling is as done as I'm gonna do it. The next frontier: UV mapping. I haven't posted on this guy in a while, and I wanted to show y'all my progress.

I kept asking myself how to make the textures more interesting. I had an idea. He's supposed to be a sickly, frightening sort of character, so he'll have a lot more detail (and be a lot uglier) if I cover him with warts and sores and things. Nasty, I know. Luckily for you I haven't put many on him yet.

Anyway, some pics. All my texturemaps are done in Macromedia Fireworks.

Merman, front

Merman, back

Merman, tail fin

The tail is all done. I'm proud of it.

It took forever to come up with a solution to the Waistline Problem, that is, good transition from scales to skin. I have done his back up properly, but the front and sides need more work.

His skin won't be yellow in the end, I don't think. Though I do sorta like it.

Thanks for looking.

 

--Ross