Hello!

Thought I would do something else then human characters, so I fancied my chances at some horses.

Just got a basic sculpt at the moment, haven’t touched the head yet (starting that now).

Piccys:






Thanks.

Great start! Keep it up

Welp, I like it.

holy muscles batman!
horsies are grazers, they eat all day and all night and because of this they are fat and smooth, not lumpy and muscular

tadpole: Ha yeah, i think i went a bit overboard with the muscles (starring at horse anatomy pictures to much and not enough real life pics). But quick question - i'm going for a warhorse type of build, so wouldn't the muscles come through a lot more? or is that me just being silly .

Alos little update, head done, got some viens on the go as well:





Thanks

You might want to consider putting on even more bulk in the waist area. When I look at this, I see a skinny weak horse, not one built for battle. What kind of war horse are you trying to make? One that carries the carts full of weapons or one that carries the warriors into battle?

Also- the position of the eyes seems a little off...

It's looking good. Something about the head looks off, perhaps the eyes or position of the ears. The butt looks abnormally plump when compared to the overall weight.

I think you should probably look up different breeds of horse, and try to base the musculature/proportions off of a single breed.

You might want to look into the shire breed. They are very large, very strong horses. Another breed you might look into (less bulky, and more along the lines of your current model) is the Friesian breed. Google tells me they've both historically been used as warhorses, so they might be good to look into.

Nice work so far, agreed on the face and ass comments.

The face: there should be raised flesh (eye bag) This runs in the direction from the corner of the eyes to the snout but tapers off halway down the head. Also the snout tends to have a v-shaped depression at the top where it joins the skull. Ears could do with scaling up more.

The ass: the crease is running too far up it's back, it should be flat on the top there giving it a much sharper transition for the glutes area.

The legs: definition is too great in the lower half of the legs, front and back, this area is usually pretty smooth. I think you need to revisit the muscles in the upper half.

*If you want a war horse look at the shire horse, they are very stocky, sturdy working horses and the biggest too.

Edit: Fireflights, I missed that you had already mentioned the shire horse, oops!

Thanks for the comments guys, helped a lot (horses are so alien to me)

So it seemed like the Shire breed is spot on for what im going for, so i got loads of refs of them, then revisited the sculpt, and i'll add this - those horses are bloody massive!

It does seem a lot bulkier now, something a warhouse should be.

So, little update:





Thanks again.

reference image

HAHAHAHAHAH

hey man! I made a horse a while back. It's quite difficult isn't it?
Anyways, you can see my end results on my portfolio if you want.

I can tell that for your first pass you used that anatomy reference off the web from some famous artist. That's a good place to start, but like others have mentioned, it won't give you realistic end results.

It looks like you are going in the correct direction though. The key is to have lots of references from every angle imaginable, then decide which shapes and forms you are going to go with. You really have to balance the mass carefully in order to give him a real sense of weight. put a lot of mass in the torso area, and much smaller legs. The neck and butt should probably appear to be bulging out the most, then the front upper legs.

At the moment the head needs a lot of work imo, but you are probably going to get to that later.

Just keep playing around with the forms. It will take a while but you will get it.

haha

The anatomy looks good, but I'd suggest rather than beating around the bush hypothesising about whether it should be bulky or not, you should make it clear what your actual intention for it is
like, what setting and what use is it going to be placed in, then choose an appropriate breed.
you dig?

Remember that horses can't see straight forward. This is why people who deal with horses always approach from the side. So it would be more realistic to position the eyes looking towards the sides. Great work though!

Thanks for the crits guys. Perfect ref image as well achillesian.

Hey brad, i was actually hoping you would pop into my thread, i found your horse wip thread on here when i was looking for reference images on google, small world eh? I did try to learn from your thread which did help me out in some areas. But yeah horses are bloody hard! .I made a few tweaks from your suggestion too.

Update:

So got a few tweaks done, as well as adding the saddle/equipment. Going for a horse from the Roman era, Hence the funny looking saddle.





Thanks.

Ps, does anybody know why all my pictures ive posted here are turning out slightly different colours? My last post had the correct colours but this post and the first post have a slight reddish hue. I've done nothing differnet in between posting them.Damn colour management profiles!

Looking tons better, not too keen on that saddle though, even though its historically correct. Just looks too funky :P

There are quite a number of problems with your proportions, but first and foremost, fix the mouth! Horse lips aren't so persed like that, they are looser and hang down more.



Then, refer back to your reference and fix all those blobby muscles. This looks like great practice!

Also, the lack of arch in the neck suggests a donkey to me.

Hey all,

Got a little update. Highpoly was tweak slightly. Lowpoly done as well, unwrapped and baked. Tri count at the mo is 3,350, around 1,000 of that is going to be alpha planes for the hair, haven't shown them in the grabs though.

Got a few errors in the normal map which im fixing now.

Piccys:





Thanks

Update:

So i've started on the texturing, the diffuse just has a few more tweaks then it'll be finished, just need to add a bit more variation to the fur, and fix the seams which are showing through.

Getting a few problems with the alpha maps for the hair, but research tells me its just the order max draws the planes. Is there any other software out there which will render it properly?

Piccys:





Thanks

Another update:

Not to sure if i like the brown spots on the white horse, reminds me of a cow



Thanks

eyes are still pointing too forward.. and the muzzle dropping towards the nose seems a bit extreme

textures look very clean and sharp though

For some reason the nose strikes me as a little off. It seems like the top part of the head/nose is too high, too rounded. But it's nothin too major. Looks pretty good! Well done!