While watching the game I'm trying to multi task on 3D stuff. I'm having limited success. This is both in terms of my work level, and the product I'm producing.
My biggest frustration is the Parasaurolophus. While I'm happy with is proportions and build (really a carry over of the Corythosaur... though Parasaurolophus surprisingly has a WAY longer neck than other Lambeosaurines when I started looking at references...) the colouration of this beast is driving me up the wall.In fact trying to get "realistic" looking shaders and colour schemes as a whole is starting to try my patience. While I'm sampling my colour palette from photographs of various natural things I have in my library (man I love being a shutter bug), getting them into agreeable patterns is not happening for me so far. The Corythosaur organically fell into place, where everything else (probably because I'm thinking about it too much) is just not happening.
To shake things up, I swapped over to fixing my Ceratopsians again, starting with Styracosaurus. Using references from Ryan's reclassification of Styraco I'm quite happy with the results.
I have to say I'm quite surprised with how flat Centrosaurine frills are compared to how curled most people tend to draw them. I might have to do a quite AE post about this...
So overall this guy is getting to be in prime shape for Mark 7 conversion (once the puter store gets in my RAM upgrade).
Again look how flat that frill is. I've had a certified Ceratopsian expert (doing his PHD on them) check it, and he agrees with it. So cool.
I think I'm off to a strong start with this Gorgosaurus shader, but it is not finished. There is debate about the brown bands along the back. Any thoughts on any or all of these.
4 comments:
Good to see ceratopsids with the correct hand arrangement (five fingers with only digits I-III on the ground).
Nice spotting, I didn't even mention that change in the post!
I'm starting to think I need to catalouge (and get science inclined people to send me these sorts of things) all the little details that people get wrong in their reconstructions. The amount of reading I had to do to properly understand how a Ceratopsian foot is put together was kind of embrassing for the scientific community. I'm a palaeo-buff, and even I nearly gave up.
I personal think someone who is a bit more tech savy than me, should go through and rewrite some of this stuff in more common langauge (mind you I LOVE Thomas Holtz's book, but he neglected to go into feet and hands for the Ceratopsians). The instant you describe fingers and toes as a "digit" with attached "I"s you zone me right out. All I needed was someone to say the outside two fingers don't touch the ground "tada" I get it done!
It doesn't help that several major studies on ceratopsian hands were published after Holtz's book, and didn't receive much attention. (It took four years for Senter's paper on Psittacosaurus hands to show up on Wikipedia!)
Totally with you that someone should put together a comprehensive guide on dinosaur restorations. There's some good stuff on theropods (DinoGoss, for one), but not so much for other dinosaur groups. Wikipedia of all sites has one in the works (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dinosaurs/Image_review/To_Do_List#Guidelines_for_dinosaur_restorations), but that page hasn't been updated since forever.
Sorry for the slightly technical language back there, I often do that without realizing it (and I usually try not to)!
you already know Parasaurolophus is one of my fave ones!!
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