Bird Enough?

Been working on my Ornithomimid a lot more (still can't say why or for what).

This is the current state of the heavily retooled head.


These are not the final textures, but I'm wanting this to be the final version of the model (apart from the eyes bulging a bit and no soft tissue inside the mouth. Be fixing them soon).

Opinions? Bird like enough? Ornithomimid enough?

Wedding

Things have been quiet on my blog as of late. I've been kind of busy...

Last month was completely consumed by the wedding. Me and R had decided way back that we were going to have a destination wedding if and when we got married. It was the fairest way with both sets of our people being on other sides of the world.

So our destination was the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia. I could go on, but I'll just let the pictures tell the story...

Scaling the Gorgosaurus

In between preparations for the big day I've managed to sneak in the odd bit of
work on my Gorgosaurus.

So here is the Mark 6 status on this fella. The latest improvement (besides adjustments of the lips and limb to digit connections) have been the incorporation of the feet and hand scales into the texture maps themselves. Before this I'd always just lined the fingers and toes with scale objects. While sort of achieving the effect to an extent, the objects always looked for forced and they never rigged well.

I think he is pretty the awesome.

He definitely has junk in the trunk!

Thoughts or input?

New Head, Lips and All.

After a long morning of errands I earned a quality lazy afternoon watching two hockey games. For the record if the teams logo is finned I'm cheering for them (aka the Cauncks and the Sharks, in that order of priority).

While enjoying my hockey I am casually working on my various Dinosaur projects. Today saw the Gorgosaurus get a lot of TLC (especially during the Bruins/Flyers... couldn't care less as to who wins).

I'm very pleased with how the shader is turning out. Just the digits to go now.

He might look a little funny, but that's cause I'm going with a new trend in Theropod reconstruction after a brief conversation with Phil Currie. That being lips. In his opinion, supported by lip ridges on the skulls, Theropods needed to cover their teeth to keep them from drying out and cracking.

So I put them on this guy (I had put them on Larry, but he hadn't really appeared on Traumador since), and it just looks odd. This is more due to tradition.

Its not that he is packing. Check out those pearly whites.

I was surprised how much I STILL had fix this guys head. Considering how much work I put into the Lillian model a year ago I was saddened to see how many more modifications I had to match this Sloan version of the skull.

So approaching the end of this revision of my Albertosaurine model. Hopefully this week my RAM upgrade will be showing up, and I can resume trying to learn to Vertex and Displacement modelling.

Any thoughts?

A possible Pattern

While my efforts to define my 3D Dinosaurs style into a more realistic look have been all over the place, I think I've finally hit upon a winning look for my Gorgosaurus, which you can see above.

Thoughts or feedback (keeping in mind I have of course only textured the body and leg... the remainders of Lillian's texture will be reworked shortly).

The Works

While I may not seem the huge sports fan (and overall I'm not), certain competitions can really reel me in. Among those are the Olympics and the NHL playoffs. This year the Stanley Cup tournament is turning into quite nail biter as my current favourite the Vancouver Cauncks battle their way to close victories.

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.

First round of Mark 7

So took my first pass at real vertex (in particular displacement) modelling. Fixed up the shoulder blade area to satisfaction. An unforeseen side effect of displacement has been a substantially increase in memory usage with the model. Which I get while I'm displacing, but this effect continues once I reintegrate the changes into the Vertex mesh. The way I understand it once I use the memory to go through with reintegration (man does it slow down the computer) this should make the changes permanent, and the computer shouldn't have to track them beyond the mesh (which isn't too memory costly in proportion to displacement). In good news I have some money from my B-Day and a 1 year inspection coming up for my computer. I'm going to double my RAM to try and combat my recent memory issues with this and environments. I also played with the skeleton rigging to see how far I can push it. This is NOT the shoulder improved model. Anyways the battle goes on.

Posing for success

Alright so today's toil all added up a few minutes ago when I played with my skeleton rig. Turns out I got a LOT done. Apart from the feet posture (which admittedly throw off the effect, but this was a 5 second play around with everything) I think it is getting there. Next steps include displacement modelling (veins and wrinkles), and trying to figure out UV map alignment.

Reinventing the Wheel errrr Corythosaur

So with an entire afternoon to progress on my Corythosaur what did I get done?

I just repainted it! Grrrrr...



Okay that is a lie. I actually put a lot of work into remodelling the leg for rigging and posing this guy. That than required a tweak to the leg shader, which got me thinking I should do something with the tail. Which of course lead too a shader chain reaction as I than needed more striping everywhere else. I also got around to fixing the crest's texture like I'd meant too. Very please with it.

Corythosaur best of my "current" abilities

Alright. So after a day of toiling on the Corythosaur (well technically evening, spent the day with R doing chores), I've got him to the best that my current strong 3Ding skills can conjure. While I feel he is looking pretty good, there is still a long way to go before perfection (and I plan on really pushing myself this time). Here he is compared to one of my anatomical references.

Yes, that IS a Gregory Paul I am using. My reasoning, unlike how Mr. Paul played it in his insane rants, is I have in fact paid the man for the use of his skeletals, and use them in any way I deem fit. I purchased 5 of his books solely to acquire his material as references, and last time I checked buying something is indeed a form of "compensation". If the idiot didn't want me looking at or using his skeletals than he shouldn't have bloody well been SELLING them to me in the first place!!!

So yes Mr. Paul I am referencing your skeletals, and if you don't like go F%$* yourself! I bought it from you for the price you put it out there for fair and square! Had I broken into your house and stolen them, or even gotten the books out of the library that would be one thing (assuming you can copyright a reference in the first place, you crazy @$$), but I owe these books. So I can do whatever I damn well please with them (so long as I'm not DIRECTLY profiting off your work, which anyone sane person can see I am not. My stuff other than being a Dinosaur isn't the same as your own).

Ah there that feels much better. Sorry about that aside. I needed to stick on to the man. No disrespect to my fellow ART Evolved member Zach for his "No Gregory Paul skeletals were referenced for the production this illustration" meme, but I just can't accept giving into the bullying of a man who I paid for the reference material he was selling to me...

So you'll notice right away I customized Mr. Paul's skeletals as per my usual procedure. I feel it meets the general proportions and parameters of a Corythosaur quite nicely. Especially given how much variation and diversity has been found within the genius.

Here he is from all the key angles. Feedback on general proportions and anatomy would be appreciated.

Areas I know need work are the face around the eye, the shoulder to arm attachment, and the tips of the beak.

Here he is from a few more angled points of view.

As per some of Matt van Rooijen's suggestions I've revisited the eyeball itself. I'm not sure if I like it this emphasised or not, but believe it or not that colour is directly inspired by an elephant's.

There has been a number of criticisms about my scaling approach. I will probably try to test a more realistic version of scales tomorrow (which really just require the scales to be smaller), but one of my interested palaeontologists was specifically after my "non-realistic style". So I'm going to leave this particular shader in the running, till I get feedback from the intended recipient.

I have one quick question for those out there in the know.

While many artists in modern times (and Charles Knight) seem to restore Hadrosaurs with dorsal ornamentation such as a fin of soft tissue or knob like projections is there actual evidence for this? Looking through available photographs of Edmontosaur mummies and Dinosaur Park Duckbills with skin impressions, I have not found a single reliable example of anything coming off the back. Am I missing something in the Brachylophosaur mummies (which I haven't found any useful references for) or is there a difference between Lambeosaurines and Hadrosaurines? As far as I can tell Corythosaurus would have had nothing coming off its back.