Behemoth update

[John Keates]

Hi there, It was suggested to me recently that I should do some more work to an image that I entered into a Hash comp. a while back so here it is:

 

 

 

Here is the original:

 

 

 

I hope that it is an improvement.

 

Any crits are welcome.

 

John

[drpenguin]

Thats... so... Awesome! it reminds me of a videogame boss

[Ross Smith]

No kidding! That's awesome!

 

Are all those white lines on his face and body some kind of complex reflection, or are they painted designs? Since he looks to be both metallic and monstrous, it could swing either way, and I'm curious enough to ask.

 

Really imaginative!

[John Keates]

Thanks for the comments.

 

The lines are painted decals. I was thinking of making them non-metallic but went with the "anodised" look in the end.

[pabloschmid]

hey man, this model is crazy, very nice!

there is so much detail in it, my suggestion is to improve the background, to give him more detail, the texture of the ground looks very pc like, unrealistic

I hope you're not angry, I played with your pic in photoshop and I think you can get more atmospaere out of it, I don't know if that what I have done is what you're looking for, but perhaps you understand what I mean and you're alittle inspired

[DarkLimit]

John thats an amazing model.....I like your creativity and the details u put into it..

Is it possible to get a Shaded / Wireframe render of him.....

 

keep up the great work...

[zandoriastudios]

That is freaking me out!!

[KenH]

Wire...frame. Wireframe. Wireframe!

[modernhorse]

Outstanding work John ! I think he / it appears much more grounded in your new one.

 

I'd love to see this sucker battling something. Even if it was Thom.

 

Doug

[KenH]

One thing I notice is the foreground rock appears to be floating.

[John Keates]

Thanks for the comments guys.

 

pabloschmid

 

Hi there. Yes, I think I see what you did - played with the curve gadjet to make the image more punchy. Actually, I did some of that myself but, looking at the image here it looks like I posted the wrong one

 

I agree that I need to work on the floor to make it look more natural.

 

zandoriastudios " That is freaking me out!!"

 

He he I will take that as a compliment.

 

modernhorse

 

I'm glad it is an improvement. I am rendering an animation at the mo (will take a while with those soft reflections etc). It shows him/her looking terrifying (hopefully). I plan to do more with this in terms of animation but I have to work out how the hell it walks about.

 

KenH

 

Well spotted about the floating rock, I put that one in there for you . Err.... I saw it but just didn't correct it. It can be pretty hard grounding those things when you have a disp map on the floor.

 

I will get a wireframe together once my animation render is finished (probably tomorrow).

[Eos]

Great! It looks like taken out from the Matrix universe and put into Dune context!

[KingSalami]

too cool, great improvements and pure insanity, love the bumps, and added textures

[heyvern]

Thats... so... Awesome! it reminds me of a videogame boss

Video game boss????

 

It reminds me of an old boss I use to really have....

 

Thanks for the nightmares... and I thought the night terrors were finally over.

 

 

Vernon "AHHHHHHGGGGG" Zehr

[John Bigboote]

SWEET! Will the new Setup Machine have a rig for it?

Nice work....AWESOME detail! Inspiring...

[John Keates]

Hello Mr Bigboote,

 

"Will the new Setup Machine have a rig for it?"

 

I can't imagine that the Anzovins would go to the trouble

 

Here is a description of the rig: **WARNING - RIG TALK AHEAD. Skip it if you don't like reading stuff that should have pictures**

 

--------------------------------------------

 

The whips and the legs are seperate objects. They are put together in the choriography.

 

I thought that it would be good to control their sizes, placements and direction in such a way that they can be controlled with a pose and actions so I made a bone for each whip (in the main body model) and changed the scale of the bones in a pose.

 

I then used the old orient-like and translate-to constraints allong with a scale like to make the whips sit in place on the model.

 

The bones that the whips are constrained to are children of bones that point inwards (actually, with the magic of offsets, this probably wasn't necessary) These "pointer" bones pointed inwards to a null in the centre of the body (there is a seperate system for the head whips). When the null moves, the whips rotate.

 

I didn't want all the whips moving at the same time. I thought that it would be neat if the first whip to move was the one that was at the front of the movement. In other words, if you have a line of whips in a row going from left to right and the whips are facing up and start moving to the right - the whip on the right is the one that starts moving first. If they move left then the left whip moves first.

 

I wanted this automated so I had to set up a system where the offsets for the aim at constraints varied depending on which direction the null moved.

 

There is a percentage pose where the offsets of each bone are set so that, at one pose extent, one bone leads (has a smaller offset with this offset increasing as you go allong the line) and at the other extend, the bone at the other end leads. I used zero-slope on the channel to blend the enforcement from one extreem to the other (each bone gets two constraints which each are at 100% at iether the start or end of the pose and at 0% at the other).

 

Then I made another null which follews the main controll null (that the bones aim at) with an offset.

 

There is a bone anchored at the main null which aims at the second null.

 

The bone has a smart-skin which controls the "offset" pose so that, when the controll null is moving up, the offset pose is effected so that there is less of an offset on the bottom pose.

---------------------------------------------

 

 

The words are all swishing around in my head now so I will stop writing. I wonder if it made any sense at all. Hopefully it was of some use.

 

John

[John Keates]

Here is a wire for you. Note the whips - you can use a cross-section of 3cps for greater efficiency.

[John Keates]

and here is a link for an animatoin of her looking scary!! (and yes, she scares the willies out of me to). Copy/paste it into a web browser.

 

http://www.gackland.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/whipper snapper roar AVI cine 75 15.avi

[nimblepix]

Freakin' incredible John.

I especially love the little weight shifts on the legs in the animation.

 

Tons of good stuff goin' on here!

 

How about throwing in a size reference.

[cosmonaut]

Coming along very nice John. That thing is crazy looking. And congrats on the contest win as well, I liked your piece the best. What've you got planned for this character now? More animation? I'd like to see her attack something...

 

Kevin

[Ross Smith]

Thanks very much for the rig explanation! Very impressive. Sounds like you control all the tentacle movements with basically one null, right?

[robcat2075]

Wow! Very cool motion on that bug. If they do a Starship Troopers III they should get you on board.

[Flog]

wow dude, this thing is freakin' scary, I'd hate that running after me.

 

I really think the best part is you put it in a scene and scene where something spider like would be, looks like a centipede/scorpion monster and the environment is so fitting!!!

[John Keates]

EDIT: repeat post

[John Keates]

Thanks for all the compliments fellas

 

Ross,

 

"you control all the tentacle movements with basically one null, right?"

 

Right, apart from the head which has a separate null. If you play the movie through slowly then you will see the "cascading" movement allong the tenticals. First from top to bottom and then from bottom to top.

 

Oh, one thing that I forgot to mention is that, for the rubber pipes at each side of the body at the bottom, I used the nifty dynamic constraint feature where you can IK the end of a chain to a null. This would be great for many applications such as chains, ropes, saliva etc. It realy was a gift as I had previously set up my own rig which didn't work so well as there wasn't so much detail in the movement.

[heyvern]

I just noted something, and this is not a crit just an observation.

 

The head has a kind of "Chucky meets the Terminator" look to it.

 

I can see it now: "Chucky: 2030"

 

p.s. I heard the original Chucky movie's rejected title was: "Charles, the very mean doll!"

 

I love that animation! Great movement and weight shifting.

 

Vernon "I made that up" Zehr

[John Keates]

" The head has a kind of "Chucky meets the Terminator" look to it.

 

I can see it now: "Chucky: 2030" "

 

He he he... Vern, you are one of the few people an any forum that can make me laugh out loud. I will never look at my creation in the same way again. In fact I find it hard to look at it at all now that it has become ten times more scary.

[mtpeak2]

Hi John.

 

I'm having trouble viewing the clip. I've copy/paste into browser and I get a 404 not found. I wanted to see how it moved. Cool model.

[mtpeak2]

Nevermind. I was just copying the underlined part. Got it working. Cool.

[heyvern]

In fact I find it hard to look at it at all now that it has become ten times more scary.

Now you know how I feel when I get up in the morning.

 

 

Vernon "AHHHHHHGGG" Zehr

[gschumsky]

Crimini (pronounced cry-mi-nee)! That is one mean looking mama (?).

Dig the movement of the tentacles/whips, and the weight shift is very nice.

 

Vern: Not to worry. To me it looks like it's only a few inches tall (alhtough when we find a scorpion in the house once in a while, that's pretty scary at first). In thatcase, either : hit it with a shoe...over and over until it's well embedded in the carpet, or b: grab it with a pair of pliers and squish it (fun!). I'm thinking with this guy the shoe trick would do well.

[Ross Smith]

Heheh! Pliers? That sounds brave. Wouldn't you risk a stinging to get that close? Or are the handles on your pliers a few feet long?

[gschumsky]

No. I use needle-nose pliers and grab it by the tail. Then remove the stinger with scissors or wire cutters. Or, most of the time just flush it down the toilet (kill it first so it won't come back up through the shower or tub).

 

Unfortunately, haven't seen any tarantulas around lately, and thet tend to take care of scorpions before they come in the house.