Carnivorous Plant

feanix

Working on a carnivorous plant that bites a player when they get too close for school. Zbrush progress shown below. Am going to have a kind of amorphous mound of vegetative matter with these sticking out all over the place. About 85% done with retopologizing it (not shown).

LlamaJuice

Looks neat, just one thing to note when you go to actually ground him, make some other stuff around him so that he "blends" with the ground. If you put small plants and such around him it'll help with that.

HonkyPunch

All I can think of is Fallout 2.
Just got done fighting some carnivorous plants...
nice, though.

Gallows

I'd love to see him textured.

feanix

Here's the low poly model. It's 888 tris.

I'm not sure about my unwrap. I'm trying to avoid obvious seams but it's kinda tricky with such a convoluted shape.

feanix

Done with the bake. I'm about 80% happy with it. In general its okay. just the gaps between the teeth bother me a little. But this bake came out a lot better than my recent attempts with other things (god damn you cylinders, BEND TO MY WILL).

Progress. Low poly model, textured with a 512 normal and AO generated with xnormal. Still at the numerically unlikely 888 triangles.

MikeF

hey looking good, nice bake. MY only crit would be that the inside of the mouth lacks depth even with the NM applied, rite where the upper and lower pallet meet the gums could benefit from a couple more edges

achillesian

side view silhouette needs more interesting stuff.

feanix

I was thinking about a crest of spines. I can add those with a single plane and some alpha tho.

Pedro Amorim

Don't forget to lower the opacity of the normal map to 50%
or else it won't look good in modo's viewport.
It's a bug modo has.

feanix

bitmap wrote: »

Don't forget to lower the opacity of the normal map to 50%
or else it won't look good in modo's viewport.
It's a bug modo has.

Reeeeally? Didn't know that! Thanks!

Pedro Amorim

yeah.
if you have it at 100% it will display at double the strenght.

It will only look good on the renderer. but on viewport it wont.

therefore the need to lower it to 50%.

feanix

Thanks a ton for that info. One of the really great things about places like polycount is the tiny bits of stuff you learn you wouldnt ppick up in books or tutorials.

Here's a textured version. Please excuse high spec, I'll work on that the unreal model tomorrow.

feanix

They usually aren't the size of suitcases either. :>

feanix

Here's a WIP vid. I know the animations awful, but it carries the idea across.
http://vimeo.com/8610282

Gallows

Not too bad at all, one thing I would do though is deform each mouth piece to sort of bend with the motion, I think it would look pretty sick animation wise. But keep it up dude!

9skulls

That's awesome! The model itself looks wicked, but imho the texture might be a bit too colorful.. like there's something too much in it, I dunno if it's the large white part that makes it or what. Anyhow, it's only my opinnion :f

Kinda off-topic: I'm trying to do a high-to-low-poly test with a character I'm working on, so I'm in a need of advice from all the pros out there: what would be the best workflow to create a high-poly model, the lowpoly model and the actual normal map from the high poly model? And should I create the normal map in 3D Max (software I use) or in some external editor like xNormal or such?
Thank you!

feanix

9skulls wrote: »

Kinda off-topic: I'm trying to do a high-to-low-poly test with a character I'm working on, so I'm in a need of advice from all the pros out there: what would be the best workflow to create a high-poly model, the lowpoly model and the actual normal map from the high poly model? And should I create the normal map in 3D Max (software I use) or in some external editor like xNormal or such?
Thank you!

I first created a blocky shape of the plant in Modo using subd modelling. I then imported that into ZBrush and sculpted the detail.

To create the low poly model I used 3D coats retopology tools. You could also use Topogun or 3DS Max's Graphite Tools for this. I unwrapped the low poly model in Modo (i like how it unwraps). I used xNormal to bake out my maps. I used 3DS Max to create a cage mesh to help me create the right normals for in-between the crevices.

I like to use xNormal cos it's fast and can deal with very hghpoly models (in the millions).