Cyborg Goat

InProgress

I'm trying to make a cyborg goat for a competition. My polylimit is 8000 tris. I'm not good at organic modeling, or texturing for that matter. The tri count so far is 5577, and i still have to make the arms. My drawing skills suck as well, but here's the concept. C&C is welcome.

InProgress

Finished blocking out the arms. I was thinking of putting a big hand on the other arm. If anyone has ideas, I want to hear them.




P.S: Sorry about the large image size.

cholden

Your goat is malnourished. The neck and horns here would likely snap in a head butt. It wasn't that noticeable before the bulky robot arms were added, but now he appears sick and weak. Let the mature, male ibex be your guide.

http://www.gvzoo.com/files/u2/Ibex.jpg
http://www.asianibexhunt.com/Midasian-Ibex-Kirgizstan2.jpg

SHEPEIRO

more gnarly horn pls

konstruct

I`d say bring up his stance a bit- raise the knees above the heel joint thingy for a more solid looking weight distribution.

InProgress

Thanks for the comments. I tried raising the knee, and didn't like it because it looked too frail at the legs and top heavy. I tried beefing up the chest and neck, still need to work on that. I'm not going to work on the head untill I finish blocking out everything (only have the joints and the giant hand to block out), but I have a list of what to do.

InProgress

So far, I've done the hand, the hip joints and a little tweaking. I've to do the shoulder joint, which will probably be like the hip joint. Also here's a screen of how it looks with it's stance raised, like konstruct said. I think I'm going to need to beef them up. Here's a general view of it, a pic showing the raised stance and the best version of the shoulder joint made so far (haven't had time to change it yet, damn personal life).

konstruct

Yeah its looking better. I did a model similar to this a while back, so I guess I have some investment in watching this develop.

I think whats making this weird, is you need to try and commit to some proportion conventions. - tall and slender, bulky and stout, etc.

right now the upper torso has a really classy, regal- tall and slender thing goin on. and the bottom doesn't really match. I`d either scale up, and elongate the lower half, or shorten, and make the upper torso more hunched over to match the scale, and weight on the lower half.

Justin Meisse

Is this a goat with cyber limbs or a goat-man with cyber limbs?

InProgress

Well, it's supposed to look like an ibex standing on it's hind legs. Those things on the side are some robotic shoulder implants, but it looks more like a goat-man with cyber limbs. Well, looks like I misspelled the thread name then.

InProgress

konstruct, I will make him more hunched when I'll do the basic rigging so the back will be almost flat. I've finished blockinh and I'm going to add details the next couple of days. I've redone the shoulder joint and added some pistons, so it doesn't look like an action figure. I think I'm going to remove the small piston above the shoulder joint.

First a view of the shoulder from the fornt, then from the back.

The hip joint from the back.

InProgress

Finally finished the low poly. I could have tweaked some more things, but I have only 2 weeks left and still need to learn basic sculpting, basic rigging and normal mapping. I added some polies as dummy objects for the pistons inside the body. Next up is unwrapping, which I hope to finish in 2-3 days. I haven't mentioned this yet, but the 'torso' is going to be leaning a bit formard, and I'll make him hunched some more when I'm oging to do the rig. Here's the final model.

Japhir

wow the last update improved this piece by a lot! great stuff! i'd try to come up with something to add a little more mass to his chest though, his torso seems kindof breakable IMO. Either make him really muscular/bulky or add some great techy bits to him. I really like the upper arms and the legs.

Microneezia

I think you should have his natural goat limbs shriveled and hanging but still on and existing. example have the shriveled goat front legs haning off the front torso like a T-Rex, just limp and a lot smaller than normal. Have the back legs hanging off the back rump and get a tail and ass in there. This way it will look like someone put a goat up on blocks and jammed this cyborg stuff into it, started controlling it with an RC or something. this would also give the opportunity for twitching overlapping animations with the character.

I think this will help sort out the perspective of the neck and torso as well cause I think something is amiss there... but maybe not...

InProgress

Great ideas, but unfortuntely I'll have to compromise and leave it like this as I don't have much time left to do the rest and, frankly, I've never created a texture in my life. And as you've seen, I'm not a particularily fast modeler. I'll probably rework it later, but for now I have to hurry up with the high poly and unwraping for the deadline. As for the chest, I'll probably widden it and make it bigger.

InProgress

A good friend of mine gave me the idea of rescaling the limbs to around 80% for the arms and 90% for the legs. I find it a little disproportionate like this, probably because I'm used to seeing it everyday with bigger arms and legs. What do you think?

theDEAD

I think the adjustments to the arms were definately called for. For me personally, it was looking a little funky before, merely for the fact that it looked like he could touch the ground while standing.

Now that you've got the length for the upper arm adjusted, I'd consider thickening it up to match the lower arm. From the frontal view it looks fine, but from the side view ... not so good.

Can't wait to see this finished! keep it up mang, good luck!

AnimeAngel

The proportions look much better.

InProgress

Then I'll make the shoulder a bit bigger. Since yesterday, I've been trying to make a decent normal map. I don't know where I'm going wrong, but it doesn't look good. This is the best normal map so far.

dbreak

hahahahaaaa, sweet model, scary as hell

John Warner

haha cool. IMO it would be neet to push the grizzliness of the mechanical part, and exadurate the innocence of the goat part. perhaps make a confused, bewildered, innocent goat head on top of a hideous machine.

looks neet. don't go too overboard on the texture size. that unwrap looks a little bit wasteful. also, it looks like the pixel density of those different sections are largely uneven. this is generally a bad idea unless you're doing it for a specific reason.

it looks like some of the polies on the model are useless. that small ridge you have running around the metal section on his back is a good example. it won't change the silhouette and it'll probably just end up looking jarring against your normal map. don't normal map something that should be done with geometry, and don't model something that can be done with a normal map hehe.

Wells

I liked the larger arms. I'd have kept them the same size and shrunk the legs by maybe 1/3rd. You need something to spice up this character - playing with the proportions could do just that. As it stands he's pretty bland. All his parts are made of simple shapes that aren't very interesting to look at. A lot of that could be his posture, though. You've got him standing stiffly erect, with his elbows at 90 degree angles and everything facing directly forwards. try rotating his legs a bit, so the knees are farther apart and the feet closer together.

his leg anatomy looks awkwardly constructed, actually. do a google image search for Unguligrade legs and take a look at how they're constructed, how they support their weight and move.

his head could be a bit wider, as well. the arc of his neck-to-shoulders could be smoothed out, making it a bit more pleasing to the eye.

i like what you did with his spine.

you've got a pretty good start, but some extra love could really push this model into something special.

konstruct

First off, I want to say, this is no means meant do be like: "your doing it wrong"!! just more of a suggestions. (also I really like the idea of having a bewildered goat that has no idea of whats going on inplanted into some sort of battle harness.

with that said, this is a pretty quick and dirty paint over, I gave him more human proportions which might be what your trying to get away from. Its pretty important to model and pose all this stuff with some sort of sense of balance and sense of rhythm, otherwise the end result will end up looking stiff. Also I liked the big arms too- keep those!

Rens

Nice one Konstruct! that paintover shows alot of character!

Like Sectaurs said, "you've got a pretty good start, but some extra love could really push this model into something special."

Try to suckup everything people said, and mix it in there.

Keep going buddy!

InProgress

Well, then looks like it's back to modeling now! If I won't have time I'm going to skip th normal mapping part and start painting the textures. I have to agree with Rens, that paintover looks ten times better than my original concept. Thanks guys, for slapping me out of my stupidity.

InProgress

I'm almost finished with it, so I thought I'd post it up to show progress and advice on how should the legs be modeled, as now they look bland, not fierce at all. I have to optimize it as I passed the 8k limit. Also, every piston is rigged, except Maya didn't duplicate the relationship between the meshes at duplication.

konstruct

damn dude- you followed that paint over pretty closely, I`m glad I could help. I hope you took something from it and learned a bit about rhythm.

Now apply that same sense of rhythm to the front view- Try angling out the legs, so that the knees flow away from one another, and the inner heel joints come in towards each other.

Also, I like how thin your torso is, especially if your still going for the goat body, (Might be cool to have 2 goat legs coming out of the chest to slam this concept home.) but the shoulders are just far to close together to accommodate how wide your legs make the hips, so either do something about the width of those, or pop the shoulder joints outward, maybe making some sort of mechanical joint assembly to make it make sense.

Also your original horns were way cooler than my crappy paintover =P

InProgress

Hehe, good that I saved those horns and didn't delete them :P

I wasn't sure about how the legs should be placed, as I didn't like the fact that they're all facing forward, etc. Also, I thikn I'm going to make the shoulders bigger, as now it seems a bit too thin for my taste. Thanks again for the paintover.

InProgress

Update: my file got corrupted and I'm going to start over modifying the goat by using the screencaps I posted. Off to work.

InProgress

I finished my goat (again). Tri count is at 7966. I'm now off to unwrap it. I'll leave the head and torso last, so if there's anything I should change spit it out :P. For the colour scheme I'm undecided between 3 variants: desert camo (Capra Nubiana); mountain camo (regular ibex) and urban (no idea what camo should I make in this variant).

InProgress

Finally started texturing. As you can see, I'm shit at it. Finished all the fur (except changing the colour of the fur on the torso). I'm not satisfied with the head texture, but it'll have to do as I'm running out of time.

InProgress

Finished this darn goat. I'm not pleased with the texture, especially the head and horns. Appreciate all the help guys.

Xaltar

Reference is key

CookieKingHoi

If you redo the eye area I think it'd be fine.

Wells

there's very little information in your flats. you've just applied base overlays - a fine start, but it is only the beginning. I also think you might have been over-zealous with metal edge definition, it's ended up looking like you overlayed the uvs on top.

get some color variations, logical wear and tear, dirt and stains, different materials and colors. slap on hazard stickers, screws, bolts, vents, wires. have some fun with it.

InProgress

Actually I did overlay the UVs due to a sever lack of useable scratch brushes, and didn't have time to make one myself. Now that there's no deadline, I'm going to continue improving the textures. Thanks for the crits.

konstruct

hey man, the model turned out real nice- the hand could use a ton of work though,-

also I see you have a ways to go on your texture, but it looks like a fun model to practice on at least!

John Warner

ah man don't give up! the model came so far! this could be great with a great texture!

Japhir

did you read this tutorial already? might help with the metal part:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=373024
the skin looks very monochrome right now, and looks like some photo copying. would be nicer if you'd paint it in.

InProgress

I'm going to redo the textures, starting from next week, RL is getting in the way at the moment. Japhir, I used that tut and it taught me a lot of things. The skin was basically cloned to death, so that's why it looks monochromatic.