Mudbox werewolf head

petemc

Hi guys,

I have long been inspired by the incredible work on this forum and I've at last decided to contribute where I can. I'm a technical artist/generalist with about 10 years experience in the game industry and TV and have recently begun teaching Mudbox at the Irish School of Animation. I needed to come up with an interesting project for my students to work on so this week, inspired by my fondness for 80s horror movies I came up with this (WIP):

The base mesh was created in 3dsmax and the rough textures and sculpt work done in Mudbox. I'll be adding to it in the coming weeks before the class finishes up at the beginning of May, there is an early turntable of the model on my blog, here

Yesterday I added some hair and fur in Max and did some post work in Photoshop:


I'll be posting updates as I progress.

Pete

Fomori

looks cool. The hair looks pretty straight. I'm pretty sure with Max's hair there's kink or frizz parameters that would take away some of the straightness. What platform is intended for the model? Is it more of a for film thing or illustration?

nathdevlin

Hi Pete,

I wish BCFE was teaching sculpting packages when I was there I guess the course has changed a bit since 2004.

The hair and fur worked well. I feel the teeth are too wide for the mouth to close but does not matter if this is purely a sculpting exercise.

http://www.animalspedia.com/images/wmwallpapers/Snarling---Wolf-1.jpeg

petemc

@Fomori Agreed, the hair is pretty much default settings with a quick gradient map for length weighting, I spent less than an hour over lunch on the lighting, hair and post work. This is intended as a "target render" of sorts for my students, i provided them with the base mesh and an ambient occlusion render of my sculpt and it is now up to them to put their own stamp on it and work something up, with full creative freedom, ultimately ending up with a nice still image.

@nathdevlin Hey man, thanks for the feedback, indeed the teeth do look pushed out - I took some cues from this and took it further

http://markosun.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/american-werewolf-in-london-lifesize-2.jpg

So for animation purposes this would not work well. Also I am teaching in the evenings at BCFE, so sculpting packages still have not made it into the day courses as far as I know

nathdevlin

Teeth make more sense now It'll be good to get the students to post the results up if they're willing. It's good to see what different directions people will take it in.

petemc

@nathdevlin I'll certainly ask them, see if they're willing! I think I recognise some of your work, did you post on gamedevelopers.ie a few times?

nathdevlin

I have done with my roman character, username was vertexmover. I'll need to post my new stuff up there at some point.

petemc

Ah yes I remember you, I post as "pete" on GD.ie.

petemc

A lighting update, lit and rendered with HDRI in Vray in 3dsmax. I have yet to add a proper mane and extend the model to include a neck and shoulders, but before that I'm going to retopologise and export to a game engine. There are some more lighting tests on my blog http://petemcnally.wordpress.com