Hey there.

For our current Uni assignment we have to create a Next-Gen Game Character. I have chosen to do a Rock/Crystal/Armoured Gorilla. The idea being the Gorilla was once a young strong/warrior who, as he has aged, as been afflicted with a 'rock disease' that is taking over his body. Some of the rock would have grown over the armour he used to wear.

Concept Sculpt (not the actual model, just a quick sculpt to get ideas and work on proportions):



Concept with a bit of photoshop (white lines = armour ideas):



I also want come big crystal extruding out of his back.

Have to work on Orthographics before I model the base mesh (coming soon).

it looks like the fur has grown over the rock rather than the rock grown onto the gorrilla, could have bald patches where the hair has fallen out around the rock, would help sell the disease rock disease look

Originally Posted by paintforge

it looks like the fur has grown over the rock rather than the rock grown onto the gorrilla, could have bald patches where the hair has fallen out around the rock, would help sell the disease rock disease look

Great idea, I'll definitely try to implement it. Might even add balding where the ooze has burnt away the fur or something similar.

Having spent this afternoon carefully measuring King Kong's buttocks (glamorous job), I can tell you that your gorilla anatomy and proportions are long way from correct. You mentioned this is just a test piece, but before you finalise anything, you need to take a few steps back, grab yourself a lot of good gorilla anatomy references and then make sure you've nailed the body's structure. The gorilla looks every bit the enormously powerful beastie that it is, and it'll be important to get all your parts the right size and shape and fitting together properly so you can adequately portray this.

Pro tip - Do a search for the plasticized gorilla from the Body Worlds exhibition. you'll be hard pressed to find better anatomical reference.

Originally Posted by Jackablade

Having spent this afternoon carefully measuring King Kong's buttocks (glamorous job), I can tell you that your gorilla anatomy and proportions are long way from correct. You mentioned this is just a test piece, but before you finalise anything, you need to take a few steps back, grab yourself a lot of good gorilla anatomy references and then make sure you've nailed the body's structure. The gorilla looks every bit the enormously powerful beastie that it is, and it'll be important to get all your parts the right size and shape and fitting together properly so you can adequately portray this.

Pro tip - Do a search for the plasticized gorilla from the Body Worlds exhibition. you'll be hard pressed to find better anatomical reference.

Thank you. Yes one of my biggest hurdles has been getting his proportions correct. It seems Gorillas come in all shapes/sizes like humans so every picture I looked at seemed a bit different than the last which made it a bit tricky for my amateur eye.

When I do the base mesh for the actual model I'm aiming at proportions more similar to this (over my current concept):



Thanks for the image from the BodyWorks exhibition, didn't know about that and I'll definitely use it as reference. Oh and I should definitely get my hands on King Kong/Rise of the Planet of the Apes for reference too.

Edit: Found this on the BodyWorks PDF:

The plastinate of the lowland gorilla (gorilla gorilla gorilla) is a ’silver back’, i.e. a fully-grown male gorilla. These have an average height of 1.70 m. Female gorillas reach a height of 1.30 m. The spread of the outstretched arms of a male is between 2.00 and 2.75 m, its chest circumference corresponds approximately to its height. Silver backs weigh between 160 and 275 kg, twice the weight of adult females.

Should come in handy when modeling

Some progress (yes the anatomy is off but I got sick of playing with it and have time restrictions).

Even so...





Still got a bit to do on him before retopo.

Did a test bake on my low poly (still working on the retopo, as you can see his hands/feet are missing and he still has a few holes in him).



Pretty happy with how it came out considering. Still a bunch of stuff to fix in it (artifacting and such), looking forward to texturing him.

Pretty much finished texturing him for now (few tweaks to go)...



Original texture that I started over with (because I didn't like it haha): http://i.imgur.com/K2kOv.png

Here he is in the Gamebryo Game Engine with a cubemap:

http://i.imgur.com/SWICg.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/91yHC.jpg

Pretty much ready to Rig now.

Finished with the textures for now (may make minor adjustments over the next week, but can't see me changing anything big). The fur is lacking a bit I think, but it'll do.

Also noticed my Photoshop Script kept saving my TGA's out as 1k maps instead of 2k maps, looks a lot sharper now that I found that out.

From the front:


From the back:


I've also started on his rig (sadly I suck at rigging):

Finished his rig, weights still need to be fixed up, but it works for the most part... poorly. I'm no rigger and this character was a challenge for me. Still, a great learning experience.



A fellow student may provide a better rig for him later (better rigger), so I'm looking forward to that. My one is very unfriendly for animation at the moment.

Good job, rigging is a pain. I can imagine those stones giving you a lot of pains haha. Would have been nice to see some hair planes as the silhouette is abit flat.

Originally Posted by desktoppirate

Good job, rigging is a pain. I can imagine those stones giving you a lot of pains haha. Would have been nice to see some hair planes as the silhouette is abit flat.

Yeah I still want to do those planes, I might go back and redo them at some point I just ran out of time to do them . And yes the crystals do stretch a bit in extreme poses >_<

Here's a beauty render in another pose: http://i.imgur.com/H6SzR.png

Why don't you try making the fur like in Shadow of Colossus? Just had a normal map, and voilà ! Some animals in Vindictus (A free Action MMO) use the same thechnique and it works really well. I tried it myself it's easy to setup, and gives good results.

Pretty much everything is shown there : http://wiki.polycount.com/HairTechnique

Originally Posted by Felixenfeu

Why don't you try making the fur like in Shadow of Colossus? Just had a normal map, and voilà ! Some animals in Vindictus (A free Action MMO) use the same thechnique and it works really well. I tried it myself it's easy to setup, and gives good results.

Pretty much everything is shown there : http://wiki.polycount.com/HairTechnique

Good idea, however would I need to reskin my mesh to the rig for this to work (do all my skinning again)?