My Pretty Crab-Thing

DGB

Been a little while since my last post - but, since I have some free time now, I decided to start a new creature model, as seen below. I began with a quick Zbrush sculpt and then did a paint-over to flesh out some of the colors and details.





So I was trying to get something that was a cross between this -



And This -



- essentially an aquatic equivalent of The Conduit's Scarab enemy with some inspiration from crabs and isopods. Any thoughts?

Jambokk

Cool idea. Reminds me of a Tyranid Lictor. http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m490332_99060106044_TyranidLictorMain_445x319.jpg

njc6425

cool concept

BarnabyJones

>.> [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykWPyaqbebo"]Crab people - YouTube[/ame]

DGB

Ha ha, well, on a more cereal note, I've gone through a few variations in the helmet and torso sections; I want to make sure I'm going in a good direction before I detail the rest. The first attempts came out too mechanical looking - like the one on the left. The latest one came out a little more organic. What do you all think? Also, I think I might do away with the feelers in front.

DGB

Progress on the lower torso and pincers.

_DeadPixel_

Looking cool, I think you should make his posture look a little more "Heavy". Looking forward to this guy

DGB

finishing off torso and starting on forearms. As for his posture, I'll probably play around with it a little more once I get it into Max.

DGB

Decided to go with a different color scheme for now, though I might change it back later on. Mostly done now with the basic shapes for the normals although the legs aren't quite all the way there yet. Hopefully I'll have all of the armor pieces done by monday.

konstruct

COOOOL

maybe getting some bright blues and red/oranges in there would be fun to play around with?

DGB

We'll see; I've seen some pictures of some really colorful crabs and other crustaceans out there, after I'm done with the sclupting and exporting I'll probably start messing around with the colors some more in Photoshop. Thanks for the support, though!

DGB

Finished sculpting the armor-finally! Now I'll go over it and do the final polypaint! There's only one pincer right now because it's easier to sculpt that way...

njc6425

cool stuff man!!! do you mind filling me in on how you did the armor ? Im doing a similar sort of character at the moment, and have just switched from my dynamesh to regular polymesh, and slowly refining forms and what not, but i feel i will struggle with the exoskeleton so any help would be great

DGB

Basically, the tools I've been using the most for this are the hPolish and DamStandard brushes. After I've built up the basic forms (1), I go back and forth with hPolish until I get a definite edge (2). It's a little hard to see, but next I pop out the edge some with the DamStandard set to Zadd (3). After that, I can smooth out the edge some and go back in with TrimDynamic or hPolish to make the edge a little more visible (4). Color accents along edges help, too.

There are likely other, better ways of doing it - but for me I feel this is an effective enough "hands-on" approach using the basic brushes.

If you're looking for something a little more stylized, then check out this tutorial by Orb. I believe he has a link here to a custom brush that's great for making crisp, clean grooves and ridges.
http://vimeo.com/26399689

Hope that helps!

Bobbetybob

Model's looking really good and that's a nice quick little tutorial, thanks for that.

DGB

First texturing pass in Max-Diffuse, Specular, Normal and Emissive. I sort of wish now that I hadn't gone overboard with the spine-things, though. Guess I'll see how it looks in UDK...

@konstruct: Thanks for the advice, earlier. The default texture looked a little too dark, but with the contrasting colors it's a lot more readable than before.

njc6425

the emissive maps make it really pop

DGB

@njc: Thanks. The emissive map was a lot of fun to work on!

Got the tri-count down to about 8,500 and put it into UDK. Might rig it and animate later on, but as far as the modeling and texturing is concerned I think I'm about ready to call it done, unless anyone has any final thoughts on it?