WIP-Cyber terrier.

aliqas20 · Jun 2017

Hi everyone

For this project I wanted to improve on my high poly or sculpting skills especially with organic assets since ive gotten comfortable with hard surface modelling. So I decieded to create a model based loosely off this piece of art I found .

Ive laid out what I want to achieve from this project and here they are:

Create a game ready asset which is suitable for rigging and animating on. This will be my first game asset as I usually make assets for visual effect projects in the past.
making sure that the poly's are at a suitable level as I know its crucial to get the correct amount of detail without having the mesh be too high in polys.
be able to create a realistic looking organic model in zbrush which I don't to often because I suck at trying to create anything organic looking and believable.
Use PBR workflow to create awesome looking textures, I'm use to texturing in photoshop but ive only started to get into Substance painter which is awesome texturing software which i wanna get the most out of.
And most importantly engage and get feedback of forums as I tend to just work away without getting that critical feedback especially when there could be somebody out there with a solution to a problem i'll be having.

Creating the Dog in Zbrush
As you can see from the artwork the dog I need to sculpt is Boston Terrier which works in my favour as there my favourite type of dogs

and I knew it wasn't a sculpt that had to be overly detailed. Started off by using Zspheres to create the base mesh and by using a ton of reference images this is the latest progress I have made so far. I thought it might be best to move onto the hard surface parts before I finalise the sculpt to see how the overall look would turn out.

Hard surface parts
I tried to create the hard surface parts from stratch but failed on many attempted so I just went back into Maya and have created the base mesh from there. I am currently stuck on the leg part as I can't choose or get the right look. The leg from the artwork doesn't look very interesting to me so i want to create my own design. The main influence for the design are industrial robotic arms, that way the designs are based in some kind of reality.

After sketching out many designs I quickly models two ideas to see what they would look like in 3D. I would really appreciate your guys opinion on which i should continue with. I know B looks slightly more detailed only because I spent more time modelling it but i prefer A for the curvier design which I feel resembles robotic arms or in this case leg. Or should I just create a new design?

jacopoS · Jun 2017

Hi, this looks like is going to be a lot of fun!

I would go with "A". I think it looks more functional and also the silhouette looks more appealing imo.

dlz · Jun 2017

Looks cool!
i would go with A too, it gives to me more motion sensation, B is very static, also you could add the tubes in b model to the A but dont make it like 90º angle give it more "flow" like in the reference images, more curvature.

aliqas20 · Jul 2017

Based on the helpful feedback, i chose to go with A and take it into zbrush to add some more detail. Here is what i have so far. Im working on making a low poly version of the dog mesh. using topogun for the first time. could always do with more feedback.

Also does anyone know how to create fur in unreal engine 4 or toolbag 3, luckily a boston terrier doesnt a long coat of fur so its not too important I could add a displacement map or something like that but it would be nice to know how to create good looking fur for a game asset.