3d mega-pidgeot progress
posted on: Tuesday, 6 October 2015 @ 8:38am inStarting work on my entry for The Great Pokemon Sky Race Collaboration. I need to do another version of 3d-fyn (because the last one blew up while I was fiddling with something, probably the rig, and then I reworked Base’s rig anyway) as well. 3d-fyn will be riding Flashwing (pidgeot from my Pokemon Yellow game) in mega-evolution (I think mega evolutions are kinda dumb really, however mega-pidgeot form is theoretically big enough to carry 3d-fyn otherwise we’d need an enormous pidgeot).
Build list
- Flashwing - completed as much as it’s going to be for purposes of collab
- 3d-fyn - in progress
- modified Skybax saddle (if you don’t know what that is, the Dinotopa books are worth reading)
- parachute pack (it was in the Sky Race rules, all riders have to be wearing a parachute :)
So far I’ve dynatopo sculpted the head from a cube.
I’m half-expecting a plethora of pidgeots in the race as that would make sense from a Pokemon world point of view. On the other hand I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if the common Pokemon are sparse and the legendaries dominate :)
2015 Oct 10 | 0002K14x
Finished the basic sculpt (or will be when I finish smoothing out the bits and pieces I missed when I took the screenie). I misplaced the middle toe to begin with so it became the first toe. I’m going to fix that in retopo as moving stuff around with the grab brush and then having to resculpt it can be a bit painful.
2015 Oct 14 | 0002K18c
Retopo was done with mirror modifier which has since been applied:
I found an awesome ‘dragonscale brush’ by DennisH2010 on Blendswap. I couldn’t get it to work following the instructions on a dynatopo sculpt but it worked nicely after simply appending the ‘Brush’ in the texture folder on multires with 5 subdivision levels.
Now flats are done, just need to make it look pretty and stick some feathers on it so it looks less like a giant chicken.
2015 Oct 17 | 0002K21x
Seems like texturing is one of those things I’ll have to work on. I scratched together a quick image map with intention to make it prettier if I could get everything else working. I could have gotten alpha transparency working (it wasn’t but I’ve done it before, just a case of remembering how) but I could not for the life of me work out how to stop this weird shiny thing happening with my double sided polygons. Then I had my usual tantrum about polygon feathers and refused to listen to myself about how knowing how to do polygon feathers is a useful thing for when I can’t/don’t want to wait for particles to render and appended one of Avi’s feathers.
Struggling with feather transluscency but not sure if it’s to do with the feather material or the light (currently there is only one as I’ve been too lazy to add more). I should probably also adjust the primary feather material so the purple is just on the broad side but I like it like that and also the cartoon mega-pidgeot only has four primaries.
Above is the node tree for the primary feathers. The secondaries and tertials use the same tree without the colour ramp. Tail next, then coverts, then insano-head-feathers, then downy feathers. And I may have to do separate progress blogs for 3d-fyn and the modified Skybax saddle as this one will get way too long if I put them i the same one.
2015 Oct 18 | 0002K22n
I’m supposed to be performing somewhere today but due to my shoulder still being bunged I’m stuck here instead as I can’t drive. Tail feather primaries done. Same node tree as the secondaries with an image map containing the colours on a uv map driving the diffuse colour.
I should probably mention that the feathers are on ratty settings so they don’t take ages to do a test render.
2015 Nov 16 | 0002L23p
I have been kept very occupied by a paid website gig which has many blocking problems which took way too long to resolve. I’m very cranky about that. In that time something seems to have happened in the rendering engine between Blender 2.76 and 2.76b, it seems a lot faster. Managed to finish the two layers of top and under coverts finally.
Also fixed up the eye and wing arm shapes a little bit. Next up, allula feathers, tail coverts and downy feathers then need to get crack-a-lackin’ on 3d-fyn and the saddle. Bit worried about making the deadline due to the massive setback.
2015 Nov 24 | 0002M03r
We have tail coverts.
A texture painted UV map which I actually did ages ago (I love painting directly on the model, makes things so much easier):
Tried out thick and ribbon line segment shapes for the downy feathers and ended up going with thick as the way the ribbons handled light made a strange overall effect.
Hopefully it’s long enough. Currently combing down the guide strands and it’s taking for freaking ever, keeps sputtering and lagging and the brush will regularly not realise I’ve let go of the switch I use for the left mouse button and will happily just apply strokes wherever the brush happens to be at the time. Also Sprat reckons it looks like a very hairy human.
2015 Dec 04 | 0002M13z
Executive decision made, I will finish this thing even if I don’t make the deadline (though I won’t work on it quite as strenuously if I don’t make the deadline). If I can get rigging done tomorrow and 3d-fyn done within a few days then I think I will be okay. I’m not quite sure what’s going on with the down especially on the front as in one of the million times I had to do the recombing the particle edit turned the down almost black (a lot more than the above screenie) so I can’t really see what I’m doing when combing.
Only included the topmost layers of large coverts to keep render time down. I’m going to give combing out those “squares” a couple more goes before giving it up as a lost cause for now, and the bird is going to be wearing a number on most of its chest anyway. Tomorrow’s plan is to rig and do a couple of final type tests, then get cracking on 3d-fyn and the saddle.
2015 Dec 05 | 0002M14x
I couldn’t come to terms with the crazy mega-pidgeot hair so I made feathers.
Scrambling to do the annual photobook project in time to send back with my aunty who’s going home for Christmas, may have to express it the way I’m going. Will be working on rigging in between photobooking til it’s all done.
2015 Dec 10 | 0002M19b
It poses!
Done all I’m going to do for this thing for now. Has the most basic IK rig because FK posing is horrible and haven’t done morphs for the feathers so they’ll open and close nicely with the wings. It will be flying in the still with wings out so should be okay, and I need get cracking on 3d-fyn.
This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License