Making a Husky Dog, need feedback please!
polycounter lvl 8
I'm trying something I haven't done before- modeling a game model for a husky dog. I've not big with organics, and I'm finding it quite difficult to find enough anatomy pictures of dogs, let alone huskys. So I've been using a lot of reference shots and guestimating. I'm trying to build some 'bulk' in to account for the fur of the dog, but he's starting to feel like a cow or pig to me right now.
I'm still massing right now, and will worry about edge flow later. Mass is my primary concern. If anyone could point me in the right way- suggestions, tutorials, friendly advice, some criticism- it would be appreciated! Thanks guys!
Pictures:
I'm still massing right now, and will worry about edge flow later. Mass is my primary concern. If anyone could point me in the right way- suggestions, tutorials, friendly advice, some criticism- it would be appreciated! Thanks guys!
Pictures:
Replies
Also, what about the head- do you notice anything off there? I know I don't have a nose in yet- I need to work that in.
wish I knew of a good organics site for reference other than just humans...
From the front, their legs are pretty straight from the elbow down (check out this lil guy). As for the head, I think the snort could be a little rounder, but you mentioned that you havnt done the nose yet.
Also on finding reference, Google image search is your friend!
Jellybee, yeah, google images is pretty awesome. But eh, I've started using flickr more recently. High def pics ftw!
I thinned out the legs some based on feedback.
I also attached the legs to the base of the mesh, and added planes for the tail, and other fur (chest, around the legs). It doesn't feel like enough though. I still need to look at the face, add some more planes for fur, and figure out how I'm going to texture him. Thinking I might bring him into Zbrush and see what type of fur emulation I can do in there.
Do you want to do a realistic model? or a more of a hand painted DOTA/WoW style?
The the back of the front legs have a big dip, creating a strange backward S look. You want to make it fairly straight from the knee down to the wrist.
The back legs knee is too high. Take a look at the legs on this husky to see what I mean.
That pic is going in my reference folder STAT. :P
I've rounded the face out a bit more like you suggested, pics should be coming later on today when I have a moment. Again, thank you.
I just ran an xNormal height to normal map on the texture, and have this as a result. The translucent grey parts are where the masked out fur will be, I'm thinking.
I also subdivided once, leaving me with 8000 triangles- not bad, if you ask me. I still need to texture the nose, and the skin around the mouth.
I'm thinking- would it be worth it to really sit down and learn sculpting with this kind of thing, knowing that fur covers a lot of the underlying musculature, but this technique I'm using might be taking away from fidelity? I'm aiming for a "stylized realism"... and I'm thinking maybe this doesn't look real enough. I could try painting the normal map too... but I doubt that'd look as good as sculpting.
Also the fur- would it better to use a lot of seperated quad planes, or stitched together planes? Right now I'm using stitched together planes.
Sorry for rambling... just needed to poke polycount for thoughts!
Truth be told, it was probably just a bad workflow that I would need to go in and re-work with a different approach. But I like the head a lot more this way. Did a lot of searching for dog faces to get it looking that way.
Edit: Found out the seam was due to one of my AO maps misbehaving around the seams. Fixed!
I think the knee joints have enough edge loops right now, but I agree the paws, and around the shoulder areas could definitely use more protective loops for animation. I'll look into it- good catch!
-snout looks too long, ears too big/wide on the head, back of the skull to small, shoulder area too large, hind area too small, from the front he is way too wide judging from one of the images earlier (hard to tell with your most recent updates).
-In dogs the upper lip usually droops down covering the underside of the jaw/lower lip.
-You don't want to really try and sculpt the fur like that... you can hint at it in your sculpt but the fur is really thin and it won't look right with this approach.
-you don't really have much going on in terms of the underlying skeletal structure. If you look at the first pic I posted you can see there is a lot more there than you might realize at first glance. I would spend a lot more time on the head, here are some more pointers... The brow should be well defined, underside of the eye, the temple, checks and back of the head.
I made a bunch of dogs myself. You can checkout some of my work for reference if you want on my portfolio. Hope this helps, and keep working at it! Animal anatomy can be super tricky. I'm a big husky fan btw, can't wait to see this finished!
I'm going to keep at it! It's just so hard to find good reference! Do you have any good places I can go to find reference, Brad?
My advice is just grab a shit ton of images off the internet from as many angles you can think of and really study the forms of the dogs. It can be frustrating because some of the references will be a lot different from others (even if you are only looking at huskies) but just do your best to sort out what fits best on your little guy. Good luck!
Thanks once again guys- I'll get back on it!