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dogpoop

Hello polycount,
I have been a lurker for roughly a year now, and have decided to come out of hiding by posting about a small prop. I am making shit, dogpoop to be precise.

I currently have a blocked out shape, with a texture that I had lying around applied to it. Here is what I have:

snCvoHs.jpg?1

For those that are interested, i do have a couple of references lying around, but they are kinda smelly.

Thanks in advance.

Replies

  • Sean VanGorder
  • Swizzle
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    Swizzle polycounter lvl 15
    This looks like shit.
  • skyline5gtr
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    skyline5gtr polycounter lvl 9
    That is actually not how it looks, you have it designed like Ice Cream lol
  • iheartmyself
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    iheartmyself polycounter lvl 5
  • aajohnny
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    aajohnny polycounter lvl 13
    I must admit that dog has some serious pooping skillz... getting it swirly and all that.
  • gsokol
  • Gav
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    Gav quad damage
    Not a bad start, but here are some ways that you can improve if you choose to keep working on this or if you find yourself making a similar asset:

    -Consider Screen Space:
    Generally speaking, this asset will only ever be on ground level. That being the case, this asset has way too many tris for such a minor asset. The argument could be raised that all portfolio assets should be created as hero assets, but I'm more in the camp of appreciating art assets in context.

    -Fecal anatomy: It's very rare to have such a soft serve style curl to an animals feces. Unlike us, they aren't practicing the art of an unbroken log and are just trying to get food out of their body to obtain more calories. It's all primal, really, and the shape of the feces should match that action - a dog would be stopping and starting constantly leaving a result like this more often than not:

    dog_feces.jpg.opt442x331o0,0s442x331.jpg

    -Chemical Makeup: Pay close attention to the digestive process and it's results when it comes to feces...pieces of food undigested, fiber strands, and in consistent cracks / sectioning will result in interesting textures. also, based on this shot, I think you should re-examine the spec/gloss values to more accurately resemble the real world if you are using a PBR workflow.

    -Diversity: There are many different variations to dog droppings, based mostly on diet and breed of the animal. You could make a set showing variations cheaply with texture swaps or constant color multipliers. Or, even consider making a pack of animal feces that a designer could use as props.

    Good luck, and thanks for posting.
  • lon
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    lon polycounter lvl 6
    Omg, good starting... but THIS EXPLANATION /\ OPENED MY MIND! LOL
  • Pedro Amorim
    that is the best shit critic i've seen on polycount
  • Gannon
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    Gannon interpolator
    Your model says stylized but your texture could lean towards realistic? What do you want from this piece?

    Post texture flats. Maybe we can help develop the texture if we set up some nice tiling horizontal UVs so you can vertex blend the variations like Gav mentioned. Or if you just want this to be the show stopper piece in the middle of the room you could uniquely unwrap it and use 3dCoat or something to paint it a bit more uniquely.
  • Dantert
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    Dantert polycounter lvl 10
    ....can you make a tutorial about it?
  • MattyWS
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    MattyWS polycounter lvl 11
    moleman, you will forever be known for the first piece of art you posted here, I hope you know that. :P You'll go for job interviews for artist roles and they'll be like "Oh shit you're the shit guy!"
  • Jerry_Royals
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    Jerry_Royals polycounter lvl 3
    no metaphors here.
  • Dill-n
  • tynew
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    tynew polycounter lvl 9
    I think Gav hit the nail on the head. If your goal is to become a shit artist you have to make sure you understand the anatomy of poop. Buy some books on it, or better yet learn to love 3D scanning. Try scanning other animal poop or your own poop to understand the forms better etc.
  • felipealves
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    felipealves polycounter lvl 10
    Glad to see someone else making 3D poops too. I've made one last year!

    I would recommend you to put some corn on it. To give more visual interest.

    Looking forward for you progress on this crap, good luck!

    :)
  • CandyStripes05
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    CandyStripes05 polycounter lvl 9
    ice_cream_poop.jpg

    stick a spoon in it and call it a day
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Could you show us some of your refs? Looks more like an ice cream logo than dog poop. People here have already provided some pretty solid refs.

    Also your textures still have a ways to go.

    Keep it up! Love seeing progress shots.
  • BagelHero
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    BagelHero interpolator
    Wow. I honestly don't know why I thought it might be anything else...
  • achillesian
  • The Rizzler
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    The Rizzler polycounter lvl 9
    Photogrammetry + shit = the future
  • Legion_studios
  • moleman
    I should probably have mentioned that my original goal was a more toonlike form of poop, which is why it looks like ice cream. But now I am mesmerized by the possibility to make a couple of different realistic shapes.


    @ isaiah sherman, @ Gannon,


    its an texture that tiles in all directions, and that is mathematically applied to the object, any seams that exist through this process are hardly noticeable due to the low image resolution combined with the stupidly high texture resolution.


    PWHI2pu.png
    one thing that would quickly improve the texture quality is to make harsher cuts into its surface,


    @Gav,


    awesome feedback.


    You are rigth when it comes to the specs of the prop, I think I want to set a maximum of 200 tris for the set.
    YkWnCVO.png?1
    As it is now the polycount is way to high(370 tris), as there is also a lot of intersecting geometry. This can probably be fixed by retopoing the shape as a whole, which would also make it possible to leave the underside of it open.
    I am leaving this shape as it is, and I am going to focus on a more realistic approach of this. This means I will be doing a couple of shit sketches, and will finally force myself to properly learn what PBR is.


    @ Dantert:


    the shape is made by creating a curve in the desired shape, and then haven the mass of the shape decided by another curve, which is revolved around the length of the first one.


    @ swizzle: it sure is,


    @ MattyWS: im perfectly fine with that. XD


    @ achillesian: he should be.


    @ felipealves: corn sounds good, or maybe some red pepper.


    and a big thanks to everyone who replied, it is a huge confidence boost for me, aand there was some funny shit between them.
  • Francois_K
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    Francois_K interpolator
    370 Triangles 1 Cup
  • EarthQuake
    Your geometric density is all wrong, as the poop swirl gets larger the silhouette gets less sides. This is totally backwards, larger circular shapes should get more geometry so the silhouette holds up.
  • WarrenM
    Consider dynameshing this and getting a nice, organic silhouette happening.
  • erroldynamic
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    erroldynamic polycounter lvl 18
    Nice handpainting technique but I would consider scanning it next time if you wanna keep up in this industry.
  • Parnell
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    Parnell polycounter lvl 18
    Years ago a fellow artist bought fake poop and fake barf and hid it around the office. We thought it was pretty cool but were a bit disappointed in how fake they were. In response to this, some other artist/designers decided to reciprocate and we found brownies in the pantry and formed them into incredibly realistic poop. To the point that we were spritzing them with Windex to keep them moist.

    I also knew a dog down the street that had intestinal problems and would poop like this if you were lucky. Typically it was a giant fountain. Anyways, it was a boxer breed so the distance the poop fell created more of a cow-pie look.
    With your piece there's little to know gravity applied to the poop. Poop is warm went it comes out and thus softer and more pliable especially if it comes out as "soft serve". Think of the distance at which it falls out and lands. I guess what I'm saying is this just doesn't feel authentic. I'm not saying it has to be hyper-real, but it should be believable. Material, weight, shape, etc.

    Anyways, sounds like you are on the right path with all the other crits.
    B

    PRO-TIP:
    Be careful when looking for specimens to study. If you live in the city (ie: SF) not ALL the poop on the street are from dogs!
  • Deathstick
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    Deathstick polycounter lvl 7
    You might want to consider making a baked physics simulation for destruction and player interaction if you really want to make it stand out from all the other shit out there. Just something to consider when you're done polishing the heck out of it.

    A typical scenario where the player blows shit up would probably be pretty easy to do (swap the shit out with other smaller chunky fragments of shit, with their own baked animation playing as soon as whatever variable you use to detect the shit being blown up changes. You could probably set it up with 0 programming using unreal engine 4's blueprint system.)

    Perhaps if a player steps on the shit you can have a set of skeletal bones flatten out the mesh, and maybe do a lerp between two sets of textures (one being the current one, and the other being shit with a footprint on it. A normal map might help sell the details on this) If Unreal Engine 4 ever gets around to supporting vertex baked animation you can probably do some pretty crazy effects. Detecting the player stepping on the shit could possibly be a collision volume that simply changes the Boolean on collision with the player, which triggers the animation.

    And one last nugget of an idea might be to figure out how to create the visual effect of what it would look like if the shit hit a fan. I'm thinking it would probably be a combination of the above two with some particle effects for additional visceral detail.

    All of that might be a little out of what you're trying to accomplish, though I think everyone else covered the critiques pretty well with regards to the shit model and textures.
  • Suba
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    Suba polycounter lvl 5
    And the shit-man was born.
  • Rory_M
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