Sturgeon fish WIP
It's late and to be honest I've out done my capacity to look at this objectively. The screenshots are screendumps out of Mudbox but the base mesh is ~10k and the maps 4x2k
The intention isn't to follow any particular breed of Sturgeon and as such I was pretty loose with details. So far I've just generated what I can of the texture with modifications of the baked maps. It has Diff, spec & gloss applied currently and is at Sub-division level 4 so normal maps are kind of irrelevant.
Note: The texture is has a pretty dark base. The lighting and specular setup in mudbox is causing the lighter shade. I'm compensating for the eventual use.
I'm not very happy with it overall and am looking for suggestions on what to improve so please be suggestion heavy!
The intention isn't to follow any particular breed of Sturgeon and as such I was pretty loose with details. So far I've just generated what I can of the texture with modifications of the baked maps. It has Diff, spec & gloss applied currently and is at Sub-division level 4 so normal maps are kind of irrelevant.
Note: The texture is has a pretty dark base. The lighting and specular setup in mudbox is causing the lighter shade. I'm compensating for the eventual use.
I'm not very happy with it overall and am looking for suggestions on what to improve so please be suggestion heavy!
Replies
They are a boneless fish, using a boney plated exoskeleton instead of an actual skeleton, the main places for these plates are down the back (external spine) and down the sides. But also the gill covers and a small area ontop of the head is plated too. Would be nice if you gave these plates more spec and a slightly different diffuse pattern, to help seperate them from the flesh a bit better.
They are, like i said, PLATES, not spikes! Look at the silhouete of this White Sturgeon, and how the plates are very flat:
Also your pectoral fins seem a little sharp, they are quite rounded in real life.
Doesn't look like you've given your sturgeon any feelers around its mouth - they are quite a key feature of this fish! Also, the mouth itself is telescopic, would be nice to model this into your model to allow some interesting idle animations if this were to be animated.
Also, i would model the gill covers slightly more open too, for the same reason.
If you are aiming on making the fish look wet, i suggest increasing the brightness on the gloss map (if you have a gloss map, if not, make one!).
All the refs i've posted have been of the white sturgeon (the biggest type!), there's plenty others out there but they all look pretty similar (besides some of the fresh water breeds which have long faces), so i wouldn't worry about breed like you say, but there are a few characteristics of the sturgeon that stay the same no matter what.
For colour reference I was loosely chasing the following:
The reason I'm not following any actual species is this is for a pre-history themed world. I probably won't end up doing the mouth thoroughly, although I do have a fold or 2 visible, is beacuse this will be out of water intended as a hero prop, caught by a prehistoric man.
What you're saying about the plates is interesting. Do you feel that I'm on the way with the texturing? That is to achieving the plate like look? Where would you suggest I go to improve this? Also, the forehead bumps are white due to high spec. I think I didn't boost the spec on the side plates enough though.
I like your idea about higher gloss to make it appear wet. I'll experiment with that for sure.