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Making a Husky Dog, need feedback please!

polycounter lvl 8
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Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
I'm trying something I haven't done before- modeling a game model for a husky dog. I've not big with organics, and I'm finding it quite difficult to find enough anatomy pictures of dogs, let alone huskys. So I've been using a lot of reference shots and guestimating. I'm trying to build some 'bulk' in to account for the fur of the dog, but he's starting to feel like a cow or pig to me right now.

I'm still massing right now, and will worry about edge flow later. Mass is my primary concern. If anyone could point me in the right way- suggestions, tutorials, friendly advice, some criticism- it would be appreciated! Thanks guys!

Pictures:
husky1.jpg
husky2.jpg
husky3.jpg

Replies

  • Dazz3r
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    Dazz3r polycounter lvl 12
    I'm no expert and if I'm wrong I stand corrected but would it not be better to make one contiguous mesh instead of the legs being separate?
  • fifftyframes
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    fifftyframes polycounter lvl 9
    How odd. I just ran into a problem with texturing a dog where I have separate legs and body.
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    You are correct, but as I said, I'm massing it out right now, and not so worried about edgeflow at the moment. I'll eventually have it flow as one mesh. :)
  • JellyBee
    The general shape is looking good. My only comment is on the legs. Huskies have quite lean and sleek legs and the legs for you model are a tad on the chunky side when viewed from the front.
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    I can see that. Do you think it's the entire leg, or just the forearms/lower legs?

    Also, what about the head- do you notice anything off there? I know I don't have a nose in yet- I need to work that in.
  • Brian "Panda" Choi
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    Brian "Panda" Choi high dynamic range
    Might be easier to bang and sculpt into this with ZBrush if you have it.
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    was thinking about it- would make sense eh?

    wish I knew of a good organics site for reference other than just humans...
  • JellyBee
    I can see that. Do you think it's the entire leg, or just the forearms/lower legs?

    Also, what about the head- do you notice anything off there? I know I don't have a nose in yet- I need to work that in.

    From the front, their legs are pretty straight from the elbow down (check out this lil guy). As for the head, I think the snort could be a little rounder, but you mentioned that you havnt done the nose yet.
    Also on finding reference, Google image search is your friend!
  • Desperad0
    DO you want to try the techinique where the furry tail is made of many planes instead of one solid shape, like they did with Last of Us? That might look nice!
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    I was thinking about it Desperado, I have seen some people pull it off really well. That, or I might use a combination of both, using a tube for the top of the tail.

    Jellybee, yeah, google images is pretty awesome. But eh, I've started using flickr more recently. High def pics ftw!
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    Husky4.jpg
    Husky5.jpg
    Husky6.jpg
    I thinned out the legs some based on feedback.

    I also attached the legs to the base of the mesh, and added planes for the tail, and other fur (chest, around the legs). It doesn't feel like enough though. I still need to look at the face, add some more planes for fur, and figure out how I'm going to texture him. Thinking I might bring him into Zbrush and see what type of fur emulation I can do in there.
    husky4
    husky5
    husky6
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    Really not sure where to go from here. Hurm...
  • BARDLER
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    BARDLER polycounter lvl 12
    What is your end goal? I think knowing that will help you move forward.
    Do you want to do a realistic model? or a more of a hand painted DOTA/WoW style?
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    I suppose a stylized realism, and a game model. Doesn't have to look exactly like a dog (to the point where I fall into uncanny valley)- just more of an iconic, generic look. Starting to wonder if I need to sculpt this dude, considering I want to emulate most of the fur with the texture, and I haven't found any good tutorials on making fur with Zbrush (yet...)
  • JellyBee
    Its coming along, but I think the legs now have a different problem.
    The the back of the front legs have a big dip, creating a strange backward S look. You want to make it fairly straight from the knee down to the wrist.
    The back legs knee is too high. Take a look at the legs on this husky to see what I mean.
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    Oh, wow- how did I not pick this up?! Thanks JellyBee- suppose I must've done those while trying to thin out the legs and combine them to the base. So glad you picked those up- always a good reason to get feedback!

    That pic is going in my reference folder STAT. :P

    I've rounded the face out a bit more like you suggested, pics should be coming later on today when I have a moment. Again, thank you.
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    Alright I'm back again. Took me a while to decide what technique I wanted to try- I tried making fur by sculpting (in Mudbox, mind you) using a type of crosshatching S technique, but nothing came out looking right. So I tried texturing it using Photoshop and Mudbox with a collection of gathered fur textures I had.

    Husky7.jpg

    I just ran an xNormal height to normal map on the texture, and have this as a result. The translucent grey parts are where the masked out fur will be, I'm thinking.

    I also subdivided once, leaving me with 8000 triangles- not bad, if you ask me. I still need to texture the nose, and the skin around the mouth.

    I'm thinking- would it be worth it to really sit down and learn sculpting with this kind of thing, knowing that fur covers a lot of the underlying musculature, but this technique I'm using might be taking away from fidelity? I'm aiming for a "stylized realism"... and I'm thinking maybe this doesn't look real enough. I could try painting the normal map too... but I doubt that'd look as good as sculpting.

    Also the fur- would it better to use a lot of seperated quad planes, or stitched together planes? Right now I'm using stitched together planes.

    Sorry for rambling... just needed to poke polycount for thoughts! :)
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    Tried again to sculpt the fur with the overlapped S technique. Rendered out AO and normal map, laid it on top of what I already had- this is the result. I think it looks pretty believable?

    Husky8.jpg
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    Sculpted the face... one for hairs, and once doing a reproportioning. The reproportioning bit I actually moved the verts of the low poly face around in, and commited those changes to the dog in Maya, then ran the transfer maps. The sculpting the hairs I just did a transfer, no poly pushing needed. One thing thats really agrivitating me right now that I can't seem to get rid of is that seam on the neck where I changed the verts around on the head of the dog.

    Truth be told, it was probably just a bad workflow that I would need to go in and re-work with a different approach. But I like the head a lot more this way. Did a lot of searching for dog faces to get it looking that way.

    Edit: Found out the seam was due to one of my AO maps misbehaving around the seams. Fixed! :D

    Husky9.jpg
  • tynew
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    tynew polycounter lvl 9
    Are you going to be adding alpha maps for the fur? I'd strongly suggest it. I'm also no expert in character/animal modeling but if this dog isn't just going to be standing still, wouldn't you need to add functional edge loops around it's knees and joints? Those areas will be deforming when rigged and it may look funny if there are no supporting edge loops.
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    Yeah- I'm planning on using fur planes with alpha maps, just trying to decide where they would be. I had a few of them placed (pics up in the post) but set them invisible in the last few posts. Still trying to decide how I'm going to do it- need to play around with it. I know the tail is going to have some, as well as around the face, but otherwise I'm not sure where they will be.

    I think the knee joints have enough edge loops right now, but I agree the paws, and around the shoulder areas could definitely use more protective loops for animation. I'll look into it- good catch!
  • silver_hoodlum
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    silver_hoodlum polycounter lvl 4
    increase the number of polygons for ur mesh, unless u want it too lowpoly
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    I see a bunch of issues honestly, I suggest you just keep working on the sculpt till you nail some stuff. Here are a couple of key pointers...

    -snout looks too long, ears too big/wide on the head, back of the skull to small, shoulder area too large, hind area too small, from the front he is way too wide judging from one of the images earlier (hard to tell with your most recent updates).

    -In dogs the upper lip usually droops down covering the underside of the jaw/lower lip.
    _origin_Neliels-ieskats-par-3.jpg

    -You don't want to really try and sculpt the fur like that... you can hint at it in your sculpt but the fur is really thin and it won't look right with this approach.
    HighPoly_GermanShepherd_Huge.jpg

    -you don't really have much going on in terms of the underlying skeletal structure. If you look at the first pic I posted you can see there is a lot more there than you might realize at first glance. I would spend a lot more time on the head, here are some more pointers... The brow should be well defined, underside of the eye, the temple, checks and back of the head.

    I made a bunch of dogs myself. You can checkout some of my work for reference if you want on my portfolio. Hope this helps, and keep working at it! Animal anatomy can be super tricky. I'm a big husky fan btw, can't wait to see this finished! :)
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks for the feedback BradMyers82, it's really appreciated!

    I'm going to keep at it! It's just so hard to find good reference! Do you have any good places I can go to find reference, Brad?
  • TheStylin
    Wow i think you have done very well to adapt to what people have said and so far your husky really looks like it is coming to life. Good luck :)
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    Another thing- would it help me to look at dog anatomy across the board, or of huskies? I don't know how different canine anatomy can be across the range of dogs.
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    Personally, I would just study huskies, because there should be enough references of them out there. I would just google/images for them, that's what I did at least. At the time that I made the German Shepard, (3.5 years ago) I actually owned a husky myself. I also looked at him for reference too which was helpful. The most difficult part that I remember was the mouth area, since I also had to include teeth/gums and what not.
    My advice is just grab a shit ton of images off the internet from as many angles you can think of and really study the forms of the dogs. It can be frustrating because some of the references will be a lot different from others (even if you are only looking at huskies) but just do your best to sort out what fits best on your little guy. Good luck!
  • Rooster128
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    Rooster128 polycounter lvl 8
    I have quite a library of husky photos taken from flickr and google images now, that I used for massing him out- the problem is the fur often hides the muscular. I've tried looking up canine anatomy too, and haven't found much dealing with just huskies. I've tried looking for wolf pics too, since I figured the similar shape would help.

    Thanks once again guys- I'll get back on it! :D
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