Apr 9, 2010

You posed Raptors?!?

I returned to the Raptor today for a little bit.

Here is where I left it. Looking depressed, or caught in an extreme gravity well. I'm not sure?

I had my suspicions she was slightly off anatomically, but couldn't exactly compare her easily to any of the skeletals kicking around.
So I decided to correct this skeletal by Gregory Paul. It is a relatively easy procedure within photoshop. My only complaint about it is that this particular copy of the skeleton (I scanned from a book) seems to blur whenever I rotate piece of it. Oh well. I didn't need it to be too fancy.

My suspicions were correct, but not where I thought they'd be!
I was worried the arms weren't the right proportions, but it turns out apart from the first finger I was dead on! Pretty good considering I had just measured it from eye balling a book...

However last night I'd actually mucked up the proportions of the torso and neck. They were probably correct, but I'd thought they looked to short so I stretched them. Oops.

Readjusting them, and enlarging the skull we had a perfect match!

I might do a quick tutorial on ART Evolved about this technique, if people are interested. Not that it is that hard.

4 comments:

Albertonykus said...

That's an interesting method!

Peter Bond said...

I actually thought this was an awesome method! Nice altering the skeleton! Cool!

I know he's not finished, you may want to curve his back to match the skeleton (or perhaps the feathers will cover it?)

Nice!

davidmaas said...

Interesting.
I tend to avoid modeling the base mesh in positions where the joints are fully extended (i.e. the arm here). If you model them slightly bent, it is more difficult to rig, but deformation is much better, as the edge loops are spread out in a more intermediary point of possible rotation.
Likely also a question of software technique.

Weapon of Mass Imagination said...

Albertonykus- Interesting fits my criteria for a tutorial. Consider it done :P

Peter- Awesome even more fits my criteria. So consider it triple done ;)

As for the back I might muck with it later. I posed the feet and arms with rigging shortly after this post. DUDE! Way better than the old model!!!

Feathers will be the topic of my new post. I'm clearly getting better at them. I only wanted to throw my computer through the window twice (compared to the usual 10 times when dealing with 3D feathers :P)

David- It is indeed an issue of software. Carrara is not the most ideal for rigging and posing organic models. It's more for mechanical modelling. That's why DAZ also produces Poser.

The rigging system in Carrara I'm finding works, but not ideally. Part of why I've never tried animation is that I can not rig any of my animals as a singular "skeleton". It causes very annoying distortion where limbs link with the body, that I've never been able to overcome.

As of such I rig my animals in parts. Each arm, leg, and the body are rigged seperately, and then I just rotate the limbs around, floating by the body basically. Not truely connected to it.

If a limb is already bent too much in the modelling process then the distortion caused by rigging is extreme if you try to bend the other way. This is particularly an issue on necks and tails (knees and elbows don't bend both ways :P). I straighten out the arms now due to my finger and fore arm scales (which are objects, not shading). If the wrist and elbow are bent I get way more distortion on the scales when I pose them.

After playing with the toes on this guy (in particular keeping the big toe straight before rigging) I've found a lot of success. Due to this I'm starting to contemplate on my next model have the toes "hang" straight down (like the fingers) before rigging.

All interesting stuff. I think we should correspond about doing some cross comparison posts on ART Evolved ;P