Dinobird: Render

Renders of the bat wings using Maya mentalray.

Renders of the feathered wings, again using mentalray in Maya.

I'm not sure which of the two I prefer, the feathered wings blend in with the rest of the model better than the membrane wings and I also feel that I have painted and textured them to a higher level than the membrane wings, they also add more colour however the membrane wings have a much more prehistoric look to them.

For now this is finished however I plan to still work on this model and add alpha mapped feather textured planes to blend the wings and the body better and also some long colourful feathers maybe on the end of the tail and at the back of the head to give more detail. I plan to do the same with the camel model.

Dinobird: Membrane wings: Paint and opacity

 I had some problems with the lower and thiner parts of the wings where any paint would seep through to the other side making it difficult to get a clean look. To fix this I first tried using orient to surface with the reasoning that this would select only the side of the mesh that I wanted to paint however this didn't work as expected. After this I used flood from camera so the paint would be evenly distrubuted across the wing mesh which is the only mesh unlocked. This worked well and produced the above effect.

These are my references for membrane wings, I have used the top and bottom for projecting and reference of the top of the wings and the middle for the incandescence of under the wings.

I have also edited the colours on the top side of the wings, I'm not sure I like how this looks however so I may return them to their original colour. I have also discovered opacity layers in Mudbox which I have used to make the skin between the limbs semi-transparent. I will test this when I export the model to Maya to see how light travels through.

 

Here I have changed the colour back

I might try and add some holes to the wings making them look a bit more worn and aged as well as maybe some scars.

This is the current state of the membrane wings version of the model

I removed the feathers from the end of the tail as they looked strange so I flattened and smoothed the end into a point more like a lizards tail, I may add more feathers using Maya planes to both the back of the head of the dinobird and the end of the tail.

Dinobird: Membrane Wings

I thought it would look effective to have the membrane wings transparent in the areas which would be just skin so I exported the Mudbox mesh as an .fbx to Maya and applied different materials to it. On exporting back to mudbox this didn't carry over so I will continue painting the wings as a solid object then maybe add an opacity map at the end.

Dinobird: Wings

Today I have been aligning and fixing the distance between the mirrored wings (folded feathered) in Maya so I can import the highpoly export and the low poly for UV's so I can then paint in detail. To do this I used an export of the dinobird body and inputted distances till the right high poly wing aligned then did the same for the right low poly and then the same for the opposite left wings but inputting minus.

 

Added detail to the black and undersides of the wings, now need to refine the underside detail and add detail to the coloured outside

 

I then added normals by using the layer of feathered detail from photo reference.

 

 I think that the sculpted feather are interfering with the feather normals so I will smooth them out to allo wmore detail to show through

Dinobird: Eye

 

 

Added a sphere for the eye and painted it in.

Also painted in more detail to the beige front feathers so they look less flat

I've been interested to see how this would look with membrane wings instead of feather wings, these aren't finished and could do with being posed in a more natural position, prehaps dropped a little or maybe folded. I will most likely continue the feather texture over the backs of the wings with the inside being light blue skin, maybe with a orange or red pattern to match the bill.

Dinobird: Painting and Normals

Today I have painted in the rest of the textures (minus the tail which is only roughly done at this point) and created a normal map so that the feather and beak appear more detailed.

Normal map made in Photoshop using the NVIDIA Photoshop plugin

 

 

Dinobird: Painting

The face so far, for now this will be the base detail. Later I will work into this in areas like the mouth crevices. The eye here is just a texture and I will be adding textured spheres to fit under the eyelids.

I then added feathered detail to the main body, next I will add scale-like skin to the stomach and under the tail in the same blue colour as around the eye.

Dinobird: Sorting Out UV's

Today I have had a lot of issues with Mudbox starting from the retopology tools not working (I would select a target poly count etc and Mudbox would process the retopology process however the end result would very clearly not be retopologised as the poly count and layout would remain identical as though it had just been duplicated. I also had issues with importing UV's not replacing the Mudbox generated UV's, this appears to be due to a slight UV overlap which has since been fixed however the version of Mudbox on the university machines still has issues with retopology and I still can't access the mudbox community or use the image browser so I will be doing the majority of texture painting using my copy of Mudbox 2015.

In Roadkill I cut out the UV's and adjusted them so all were selected

In Maya I then relaxed and used 'layout' so the UV's fit the UV space more effectively

Painted in some flat base textures, when I can use the image browser I will be able to get a better effect

Dinobird: Detail update

Added more detail to the model by adding feathers by creating a stamp using the image below.

I also edited the eye to look more like a reptile using the following image for reference

Dinobird Progress

 

 

I have been looking at the structure of wings such as where the bones are, the arangement of the feathers and how the feathers sit when the wings are in different poses such as being folded. The bottom image is particulary helpful as it outlines the base shape required in the geometry and shows where overlaps are on a folded wing which will be the pose of my model. I may redo the wings in a way that would allow me to animate them to realistically relfect the folds of a birds wings since this would be an interesting study of anatomy and would be good practice for making game ready models.

 

Today I altered the geometry to match the reference images better, I will need to find a feather stamp to add the details of the feather in, alternatively I could create my own feather stamp in Photoshop however I will need to watch some tutorials first to ensure less mistakes.

Dare to be Digital

Over the previous week I have been working on concepts for my team - The Toasted Wellingtons Dare to be Digital pitch

Promo art

Possible enemy. Chose the king vulture as it is from South America and is depicted in ancient Mayan art

 Here is our pitch video: http://youtu.be/mJYJP_vupas

Dinobird

Been struggling with the model of the house so I've decided to take a break and do a Mudbox sculpt of a creature. As I did a camel last time I thought I'd try something different and make something from my imagination. I thought I'd make something avian so started with the Mudbox T-Rex model, removed its arms in Maya and bridged the gaps. I then made a wing model in Maya using this image for reference on how the wing would fold: http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs4/i/2005/141/4/b/Folded_Bird_Wings_by_keaalu.jpg

I was half thinking of making a more bat-like pterodactyl wing but thought a feathered wing would contrast better with the hard surface of the face.

Sculpted into the wings in Mudbox.

The wings aren't finished at the moment and need more working into

Texturing and crashing

Been having issues texturing the building. Realised I have over complicated things for myself so I will rebuild the tower using two cylinders which will be cylindrical mapped and scaled then duplicated and resized. While doing this Maya crashed so I decided to do a quick Mudbox sculpt of a hollow log for a change of scene. The textures used look fine however my UV's weren't right. Unfortuantly Maya crashed before I could get a decent screenshot of both.

 

Mudbox has also crashed on me on patching a hole left by retopologising.

Added windows and doors

Added windows and doors will combine the geometrey and unwrap the UV's and then import into Mudbox to sculpt extra detail which can then be baked down in a normal map to the base maya model. I might apply base textures in Maya and then paint more detail in for Mudbox or I could just paint in the texures to give the model a painterly feeling like the concept art it is from.

Building: Low poly progress

 

Progress so far - Low poly model of the building. Since there was no back view I added an extra part of the building to the back

I've added basic elements to the pulley system, the next parts I will make are windows and doors with the intention of them being modular (where possible)