[WIP] Jurassic Park inspired Velociraptor

Arizia

Greetings Polycount, for my Uni assignment i am going to be constructing an accurate representation of a velociraptor as based in the Jurassic Park films and any current video games, in other words its not going to be 3 feet high with feathers :P

Here is the base mesh currently ready for importing to zbrush:





Here is the side image reference that the base mesh was based on:



I am currently struggling to find any decent reference for muscle forms for a raptor. The best i have found currently is only a concept and still a side view:



If anyone can find any useful reference i could use that would be great. Any critique on the current base mesh is greatly appreciated.

Twister3

You don't need muscle ref for raptors but for animals that look like one. Take emus or cassowarys for example. I'm sure you'll finde some pretty decent ref.

Arizia

Hmm ok thats a great tip thanks for the quick reply

DWalker

The legs appear stuck-on, rather than growing naturally from the torso. It's especially noticeable from the 3/4 view near the hips.

Arizia

Here is where i'm at with the sculpting of the muscle forms so far from what i can make out in references:





DWalker with regards to the legs are you referring to the underside of the legs or the thigh area?

Arizia

A little bit more progress on the sculpt, i'm not too sure how far off the form is yet. I think the neck might be too short and perhaps the leg muscles are too defined. Any feedback is appreciated.

DWalker

I the original 3/4 view, the top of the hips are quite wide, flaring out in an almost straight line from the spine. An ostrich is probably the closest living creature to the look you want (a cassowary is probably closer to a real velociraptor, but nobody seems to like chicken-sized monsters...). Try to look at some anatomical references for large flightless birds.

izu

If you want it to look as in the movies, why don't you get a bluray copy and study the source directly? Why make it difficult for yourself.

Production molds and the behind the scenes footage could be invaluable to get a good view from different angles.
http://www.yourprops.com/1-1-Resin-Velociraptor-Bust-other-replicas-movie-props-Jurassic-Park-1993-prop-31980.html

https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/blog/jurassic-park-evolution-of-a-raptor-suit

Also, I would step down a few sdivs and nail the big shapes first before going too much into details.

Arizia

Thanks again for the comments, i hadn't seen some of those references from the movies those look very useful thanks.

I had seen that ostrich picture after one of the above comments but i didn't quite realise the shape at the top thanks.

I'll get to work on some of this

Arizia

Ok quite a bit of change to the form now, legs have been reshaped to hopefully show they are connected to the body better, arms have been lowered and the arm socket reshaped, eye socket has been moved and resized however looks a little creepy now so may still not be right.

A little unsure how to quite get the shape of the chest and underside.




Thanks for all the help so far everyone, hopefully i'm not too far away now so i can start on the scales xD

Arizia

Sorry to bump this but would just like a bit more feedback on anything i might have missed with the form. I know there's still some issues with the hands, arms, chest and probably the neck. The sooner the muscle definition is finished the sooner i can start the detail so any comments are appreciated

Plyomet

The main issue I notice in regards to the legs that others have mentioned is at the front of the leg where it connects to the torso, if you look at the image DWalker posted above, there is a pretty obvious and exaggerated overlap where the thigh and torso meets. Your sculpt in ZBrush greatly improved that from the original polygon model, but maybe pronounce that undercut even more?

Arizia

Yeah the wasn't defined too well thanks, i've worked on it a little bit now and it should be closer to what it needs to be. Unfortunately the topology under the legs is pretty poor and i can't find a great deal of reference for how the underside of the legs might connect to the torso.



I have also been looking a lot more at the bust of the head from the jurassic park movies and working on adapting my sculpt to better match that, here's where i'm up to so far:



Still a way off yet, mostly working on the inside of the lip and the gums. Teeth etc need to be re-positioned so are hidden for the moment :P.

Arizia

Made a LOT of progress now on the form for this, thanks to everyone for the help so far. Basically just a bit of work to do on the hands and give some more shape to the eye and will be starting scales work later tonight.






If anyone notices something i might have missed please let me know asap before i start detailing

ElectroNugget

Looks really cool man. I'm a huge fan of JP, and this is a great model.

If I have one critique it's that the fingers are all the same length. I'm pretty sure the middle finger is longer than the other two. If nothing else, it would look more interesting if they were of different lengths.

Arizia

Haha i'm glad you like it, i am literally re-positioning the fingers as i'm typing this and trying to give them some form now so you weren't the first to notice but thanks

Arizia

Quick update just to show what i've done with the hands before i move on. Re-positioned them to a more interesting pose which also allows me to model them easier, given them a bit more thickness and now added some scales onto them with the standard ClayTubes brush. I haven't refined them with the hPolish or anything yet but i personally think like they look fine as they are from a distance. let me know what you think.

Arizia

Here's my starting work on the scales for the head. Focusing on the major scales i see in references atm. They are probably a bit too big and need to be redone.

DWalker

If you're going for the style popularized by Jurassic Park, you'll probably want something like this:


A more realistic portrayal would look more like those of their descendants:

Arizia

Hey thanks again for the quick response DWalker, are you making reference to the skin detail or the shape of the eye? I intend to shape the on my sculpt a bit more before i add scales to that section. Heres another update of where i'm up to with the detailing, i swapped from adding scales with clay tubes to instead cutting them into the mesh and then rounding off the shapes.



If anyone else has some critiques on the scales and if i'm going the right way with this that would be great

EDIT: I'm using a similar reference to that first image in your post for the sort of "loops" for the scales and such.

Link = http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/8637/26670004c.jpg

Chase

Oh man I wouldn't sculpt the scales out by hand but it does look good. Why not use an alpha?

Arizia

Thanks for the nice comments , i agree it is hard work, the last additions are about 3-4 hours worth of hand cramp xD. But the reason i'm hand sculpting at least the ones on the face is because it does give a nicer effect than the alphas, more randomness and you can better match the key scale lines in my opinion such as the smaller sections around the nose.

No way do i intend to hand sculpt the whole thing though o_O, i actually have very little time left to get this sculpt finished before retopping for my assignment hand in end of tomorrow : /. Planning to use some form of alpha or the scale brushes within zbrush for the body, what i am unsure about is the best way to get the cracked skin look you get across the whole body easily. At first the only thing i could think of was the rake brush but its far too destructive and creates too wide cracks for what i was after.

If anyone could help by directing me to how i can a similar effect to the skin detailing in this example that would be a huge help:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=318198

Arizia

Update again, I think i'm realizing why you were surprised i decided to hand sculpt the scales on the head now. The effect is quite good in my opinion however i'm not sure its worth the increased time or literal physical pain it causes trying to do it ><.

But anyway the head is nearly finished, then i need to find a much quicker way of doing the body, more than likely going to use scale brushes within zbrush unless i need my own alpha.



Any advice for how i can finish quicker would help haha :P

Lavitz

The only thing I can suggest is to make a stitch like brush with a scale alpha and then with a decent lazy mouse stepping setup and create the patterns. Here's a video going over the stitching brushes: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpaOrzbMLHU&quot;]zbrush EZ-Stitch-brush-001 - YouTube[/ame]
Though this only seems useful around the eyes and mouth areas, and it may look repetitive.
Maybe using masking for the shapes of the scales and then a deformation modifier to make them inflate or something.
Hopefully this helps at least a little, I'm pretty new to zbrush myself so I don't know too many tricks/shortcuts.

Arizia

Yeh i knew the only real way to get scales easily would be with alphas, they said as much in my lectures xD. I think i found a way to get a nice effect (hopefully) using some of the standard things within zbrush.

Ive used the ScalesLizard brush from zbrush to create a base for the faint scales on the body, i will turn this down on the layers settings to make it just a light surface noise.



Next i will go over the top of the body using a standard alpha in zbrush with the standard brush to cut in some wrinkles. I found with the slight randomness of the alpha and the sharpness of it it is much more effective than rake or slash3 to get the cuts i want .

Effect with some slight smoothing applied:


Alpha used:

Arizia

Hopefully i'm just about done with the sculpt now thanks to these, here's a shot of what i've done with the body. Scales and wrinkle lines have been made to roughly follow similar patterns to muscle structure and examples from jurassic park screenshots.

Arizia

Made some quick scales for the top of the feet, they aren't very detailed but i'm a little pushed for time now and the amount of geometry available is also very limited. Some more planning would have been good for creation of the base mesh or some use of remesher.

Chase

Came along just nicely I must say. You should polypaint it when you get the chance i just started learning about that whole process. It's a trip

Arizia

Will definitely be polypainting it as part of the texturing process, they went over it a bit in the lecture specific for dinosaurs and showed us some interesting stuff with cavity masks etc, makes getting a detailed texture pretty easy :P

Arizia

Hey guys i know its been a short while since i had any updates for this but i have plenty of other work im struggling to get through as it is xD

I'm sort of stuck at the moment with colour theory for the polypainting process, i'm not by any means a good texturer and i haven't done a lot of painting in the past but i would like some opinions on the sort of colour styles i should be going for.

From the reference i've been looking at i have a general idea on the sort of patterns i should be following but like i said how to utilize these with the sort of colours i want is proving difficult. I'm after a blend of some deep blues and vibrant greens as these are my favourite colours and they compliment eachother so why not? :P

Underneath is an example of some of the patterns i am trying to replicate and then a couple of my attempts for colouring:

Body stripes reference:


Attempts:


One of the main comments i got after this one was that the colours were perhaps a bit too saturated, so i quickly tried another iteration with a change of blue and green colouring with some additions of some purple shades.




Like i said i'm pretty inexperienced with this so feel free to be as critical as you can, it didn't take too long to generate either of these as you can imagine. I have about a week left to sort out the whole texturing process for this and finish up my progress on a CAT rig and some simple animations ^^. I will post some shots of the retop mesh and what i have for the rig soon hopefully.

Arizia

Quick shot of the retop and CAT rig, not showing the skin yet tho as its pretty bad atm xD