The rig is mostly done just tweaking some of the aim constraints I set up for the shoulders and kneepads, hence why they look a little weird right now. Also just cleaning up some general skinning things but I wanted to get a pose out there.
Just as a crit on the model side, there's quite a few normal map seams, and most of the edges seem to have been razor sharp on the HP. Time constraints permitting, I think these would be way more eye-popping with some chunkier HP work and cleaner bakes
consider using a particle effect? not sure how complex of motion you need for the individual fish, but you might get what you need with a simple particle generator, with a long particle life and some positional constraints and specify your fish mesh to be used as the particle.
2 helper bones and lookat constraints (or 4 to prevent cyclic dependancies). One bone at the ene of the cylinder, one at the end of the ram. The ram bone looks at the cylinder bone and the cylinder bone looks at the ram bone. 100$ skinning of each section to its own bone.
Depends on platform, and what other constraints you have. Reading a 1K texture is faster than a 4k, but those individual meshes can't batch. This is one of those instances were you need to profile to figure out exactly where your bottlenecks are and go from there.
Nice selection on concept, and great exection. Like others have said, it would be great if everything was completely done by you, but I can understand time constraints. Just make sure you revisit this one when you have time. I'll be looking forward to it. :)
Uhm... create the lace details all on a straight line (ie, not curved like the dress). Then go to the dress itself, select all the edges on the outside where you want the laces to go, then make the selected edges a 'shape' and then go back to the lace and use path constraint.
When using marmoset to view models with textures with normals/spec, is It best to add lights to the scene or use the starting skylight to make all your texture intensity from, then add lights? Help is appreciated If anyone understands me, sry if it is already mentioned, time constraint. :)
IIRC, csSlide is now replaced by the Constraints options (Edge). Orionflame 3's Chamfer has a "Connect" option that recreates the original edge between the new chamfered edges, similar to the old Chamfer Solid. Alas OF3 is not free... but OF2 still is, and it might have that tool.
Yeah, and about the poly stuff... - select an edge then Ctrl-click the vertex button. - Select two or more adjacent edges and hit Connect. - To slide that new edge, use the Connect dialog instead of just the button, and use the Slide spinner. Or, use the Constraints, set to Edge.