Rhinull (rhino humaniod) - WIP

#1 Hey- that's great model already, even without texturing (makes me remember rasta-rhinos from "Beyond good and evil"). Please, do send screens when you will have it textures.

#2 Really nice job! I can't wait to see the textures.

One question - Sorry if you already stated it, but what program did you use for modelling?

Thanks,
Okashira

#3 Now that is one mean looking model. great job. :)

#4 Nice concept and modeling well dun!

#5 NIce work. The balance looks fine so far but his equipment(?) that you have yet to model may change that - or not.
Nice work and keep posting.

#6 Thanks a lot, everyone!!! Good boost to my confidence to keep at him. I'm still very frustrated with how I want him to look, but here he is so far. (Much more to go. Colors are pretty up in the air.) Next model I'll have a very concepted out plan going in. My instructor stresses the importance of concept work; darn it when he's right. /shakes fist

@ Radoslaw:
I wish I could find screenshots of those Rhinos so see what they did with textures. I just downloaded the demo to see if they're possibly in there.

@ Okashira:
I'm sticking with Maya since that's what the school teaches and it's what I'm most familar with.

@ Mike and Dave:
Thanks guys!

@ James:
Good point. I'm waiting on the equipment to see if I can get a Tesla coil type effect going between the two back pieces. If I can get that to work and look good I'll definitely keep in mind how heavy they're supposed to look and where that would best balance on his back. I also might scrap them entirely. He's a bit poly heavy as it is.

#7 Maya, cool. To bad I couldn't possibly afford it :D.

Anways, really nice texturing, though I would try and make the bones/tusks look more natural. Like add little cracks and dirt.

Good luck,
Okashira

#8 Your texture map is applied very well, I don't see any visible warping which has always been my weak spot. Good job so far, keep it up!

#9 Okashira - I was assuming that the textures were not complete yet... dirt, cracks, shading of various parts of the skin and so on would definitely improve it but I figured those were still to come.

#10 Agreed and those parts are definately coming as a last pass once I get his colors figured out. Right now he's base texture only; I just started beginning to dodge and burn skin shading in yesterday. When I get him to that point though please let me know if it's not enough of the natural stuff. I tend not to push things as far as I should, especially in texturing.

Cliff, I'm using a program that my game artist boyfriend heard about that's still in beta. It is by far the absolute best tool for UV mapping I've ever seen. Admittedly I haven't seen that many tools, but I can hardly imagine how it could be much better. It's called "headus UV Layout." The website is at... www.uvlayout.com/ (hopefully links work like images do, if not I'll edit this post to try to get a real link in.) All you do is setup what you want as separate UV shells in Maya by selecting all the faces of the area and planar mapping (overlaping is fine). Toss the shells anywhere as long as they're a little ways apart. Then export as an obj and drop the file into the program. It goes through every shell for you, making them all the same resolution and figuring out the best way to flatten them so that every poly gets the most correct amount of space possible. Then you save it, go back into Maya and fit everything into the 0-1 space. Ok, that's a crappy explanation but check out the site and I'll write down my actual procedure in a more readable way if you'd like me to. Since it's beta the guy is offering a free download to check it out and feedback. Won't be cheap when it releases, but it's bliss for now.

More updates late in the day, I hope!

#11 Thanks for the link, Sarah. Will have to keep an eye on it.

#12 @Sarah
Are you using the free beta of that uv layout thing or the $175 pre-release one?

#13 @Okashira:
The free beta. He's really fast about getting a beta key to you, but I'm in the PST timezone so maybe he's just awake then. :) I don't think it would be as useful for non-organic meshes, but for critters and humans I love it. If you try it out and have problems let me know (he has good forums too) and I'll email you the steps I use. I'm not sure if Blender exports to obj, but if it does give it a throw.

#14 According to their web page, they're in Perth.

#15 After much frustration here's my final draft of his texture. I'm going to start focusing on the voodoo known as animation now except for the changes I'll make from you guys' critiques.

#16 I like it a lot... only suggestion I think I'd make is that a darker circular area over the tummy and chest might look real nice. Might not too, hard to say... it's a somewhat "toony" approach, but that's what my design instinct says to me. Perhaps also on the bottoms of the hands, but those aren't going to be as visible, so not as noticable in game.

#17 Something like this? Hands and feet have small cartoony pads now, too. (Uploadit's upload page is down for me at the moment so I'm trying another way to host these. Please say if they're not appearing for you.)


Thank you for your critiques and feedback, by the way! I appreciate the help.

#18 Yeah, that's great. Definitely what I was suggesting. Maybe a thinner black border line around the darker sections, but otherwise I dig it a lot.

#19 Agreed, much better! I'm actually starting to like him now. :)

#20 Yeah, that's great. You've definitely reached what I would consider the "stop now" point.