Staffs Uni Ankylosaurus Project

A.Mehroke

Hi I'm currently working on a project for my Uni where we have been told to:

Design
Model
Sculpt
Retop
Rig
and
import into the UDK
to apply animations

... to a dinosaur.

Yeeeeaaaahhhhh.


So I chose the Ankylosaurus.

Here is my 3D base-mesh to give you an idea of what I'm thinking about:



And here is the ZBrush progress on each of the assets:
The front legs have already been splayed in the model to make the modeling and eventual rigging easier. So they will look shorter than the back.

At the moment I think these are all too high poly to get in one ZTL file but I'll give it a go soon to see how it goes.

I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas of how to improve and also extra things that could be done.

Thank-you

MrNinjutsu

Nice start, maybe you could create some artificial horn for the front as extra protection? I'd get some great resource of dino skin and similar skin typed animals for folds etc.

pseudoBug

The seat cushion folds seem to be made as addition sculpts. I think if you sculpted them more as subtractive "creases" it would read much much better.

littleclaude

Nice detail but I would go back to the basic low poly model and get the look a feel in shape.

A.Mehroke

Thanks guys I'll deffinitely look into getting proper references for things like the dino skin and the cushion folds.

@ littleclaude, could you ellaborate on going back to the base mesh? I am going to export the sculpt and do a retop because the model is eventually going in engine.

Thanks again.

A.Mehroke

Update on geometry and Polypaint:

Its pretty obvious that the mask by cavity has been left on by accident, so the dark crevices are a lot darker than they should be.

Here is a un-masked skin shaded view:


Any advice from everyone would be great thanks.

A.Mehroke

Update:

Hey guys here's the polypaint work completed so far I know there's a long way to go yet but I want to hand paint all the textures.

Here's the dino with spikes and all:

I know the the back spikes are way too yellow and over saturated for the rest of the color scheme of the model. This will just be simple fix though.

I've been told it all looks a bit too safe and that I should try to throw in a splash of adventurous color... I'm thinking I might do this with the war paint or something.

Here are the armourments that are going to be draped over the dino like in the original block out:

I'm trying out hand painting everything for the first time so any advice would be great.

I know i need to work on things like the golden helm adding detail etc, this will all be done in Photoshop after the retop and the unwrap.


Thanks for looking guys.

l.croxton

Wow how awesome is your university :P. Which one is it btw if you dont mind me asking . I am fellow student myself 3rd year and we have not really had the oppertunity to do anything as awesome as this .

Keep it up and it looks pretty cool

darthwilson

@l.croxton - It's Staffordshire University

@A.Mehroke - Good progress!

Two things I would advice trying before you continue..

1 - Check that you can project your polypaint onto the low poly mesh/diffuse map

2 - Check your diffuse map in your targeted engine (UDK as you said). The outcome in polypaint will look a lot different in UE3.

You can mention this testing in your university report and it'll get you some marks!

hope that helps

A.Mehroke

@ darthwilson

Yes it's Staffordshire, its really good for this I think. I love the course.

And yeah I'm creating the base mesh for everything at the moment should be done with in a few days and then I can unwrap them and project and get it in engine as you said.

But thank-you for reminding me because I often forget that stage and do loose out because of it, so that helps a lot.

A.Mehroke

Hey guys here's a quick update on the retop and on the orientation.

For this project I'm working to a 12,000 Tri limit so any modifications I make will have to be under 500 Tris because I'm currently on about 11,500.

A.Mehroke

Here is the progress so far: this is the low poly unwrapped mesh with just the diffuse texture data applied. No Normal map, no specular map.

There are a few seam stretching problems on the inside of the legs where they join the torso and the alphas don't have an alpha mask applied so they are squares of brown. But this is just to see how the diffuse is looking before the import into unreal to see how it looks in engine.



At the moment my main issue with the model is the top arches look very straight and boxy which throws it all off a bit. I think I have enough to smooth them out a little bit which I think will definitely improve the flow of around that top section.

But let me know what you guys think.

Thanks

A.Mehroke

Here is the Dino in engine, I think it' looking alright.

I did forget to check Two Sided in the material and haven't applied the opacity maps yet but I'm sure that'll get pointed out.


But this is my first try at hand painted textures. None of the textures are photo-referenced and they have all been created by me in CS5.

So here's a few on the images, let me know what you guys think it needs.

And after I realised I'd left two sided off I applied it just to check that worked and it does!!




Yay a Roof!

A.Mehroke

Oh forgot to mention this is just the diffuse!!

No Specular, No normal

Captain Salty

This looks good, well done! I'm impressed. I look forward to seeing spec and normal maps.

Oh by the way, I also go to Staffs Uni!

Parralax

Good to see i'm not the only staffs uni student searching Polycount.

Looking good, are you planning on animating the box to sway as the dinosaur is walking? wood just add a nice touch to the final asset.

A.Mehroke

Yeah I am, I was asking about making some wires and cables sway as well or applying ragdoll to them but it's a bit much just for a game mount. But the animation should be a lot of fun.

A.Mehroke

Update:

Here is the progress so far in engine:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqv2Ez_ELLg"]UDK Ankylosaurus WIP - YouTube[/ame]

Now I need to rig it and animate it.

A few extras that could be added would be things like charms and ornaments to be hung off parts of the equipment etc. Just more dangley bits.

But let me know what you guys think.