Advice needed on my magma sloth

minorthreat

Edit: In attempt to recycle, I'm going to turn this into an improvement thread, caus I don't wanna create multiple threads following the same general theme.

So I need to really work on making this mesh deformable. Some things deform with the skeleton well, but for the most part there's alot of awkward stretching. Here's a random collab of screenshots.

The shoulders are the weirdest, especially when he lifts his arms up.
If you guys need any better angles just let me know.

teggs

Hi, I believe you are having problems with your deformation because of your topology. I am still in the process of learning this all myself so I do not feel comfortable doing a paint over showing you how to improve your edge flow- The last thing I want to do is point out something and give you advice and it be wrong. So instead I will just send you a list of links that I have found helpful and hope you can use this information to improve your character model. Good luck- Keep working at it.

http://www.pig-brain.com/tutorials/tut02-01/
http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/learning-mesh-topology-collection/#header
http://d2g1zjdg4phkb4.cloudfront.net/MrmuUZiJIkuGuWxhC7Bu-0JmtP4=
http://www.hippydrome.com/
http://www.3dtotal.com/index_tutorial_detailed.php?id=495#.UHYkLBUxprM
http://facaelectrica.wiki.zoho.com/Topology.html
http://www.asepulveda.com/2008/07/topologies-in-production/

minorthreat

Those links were incredibly useful, thank you so much!
I decided to take a temporary break from my magma sloth in order to touch up on many things, mainly topology and texturing, so I tackled my first ear.





I'm surprised how much I learned in that study, I'm getting excited. That was my first attempt at realistic texturing. One cool discovery I made was to change the color of the baked shadows. The ear has red shading which looks really organic, while the piercings have blue shading, making them seem lifeless. At least that's the way I perceive it. It was also my first time painting feathers so they could probably use improving.

That video about the blender conference inspired me to do this, but I had too much trouble following his instructions so I just did it based off of reference images from google. Constructive criticism is always welcome!

Now to finish up the mesh on the magma sloth so I can begin texturing.

EDIT: also could a mod change the name of this thread to "Minor Threats Improvement Adventure" please, I'd really appreciate it, thank you.