Raptor

Hey there. A while back I started my first large scale personal project which was to make and animate a raptor, but I got frustrated and stopped working on it. Just recently I picked up from where I left off.

The raptor itself is based off those in the first Jurassic Park movie. I haven’t quite finished the sculpting yet because I’m still practicing that and I want it to turn out great - same with textures. But the base mesh and rig is done (for now, at least).

This WIP thread may not be updated very often, but I will try to post some updates here and there when I can.

Latest Update - The Raptor Pen
[ATTACH=CONFIG]445160[/ATTACH]

I think you did an excellent job on modelling the raptor, but the animation part is a little off. After every step, he takes a short pause, which should be much shorter if not taken out entirely as it feels like it disrupts the flow of the walk cycle. Also, the way the tail sways is unnatural considering the fact that the base of the tail is almost completely stiff while the tip of the tail is a lot more active. Another thing I noticed is that the top toe doesn’t move at all in relation to the foot. Just some things to keep in mind.

Thanks for your input. I’ve actually already created a new, superior and smoother animation which I’ll upload tomorrow and post here. The newer animation adds a lot more movement to the toes, the arms and the tail and overall looks a lot better. I’ll make the next video with all angles for a better view. :slight_smile:

walk cycle, second attempt

Walk & Run Cycle

The walk cycle is almost done but the run cycle needs a lot of work. Any thoughts/opinions are welcome. Mainly looking for opinions on the walking cycle.

Working on a new rig for the raptor to make animating it easier. Still a bit new to IK rigging. The arms and legs are both IK and the rig also has eye controls now - still trying to figure out the best way to do the eyelids, tail, spine and neck. Also planning on rigging the tongue.

I spent the last few days learning some more about rigging, ik, constraints, bone rolls, etc. to find out what’s best for my raptor. Working on the rig still and then going to test it out with some animation or a walk cycle. Right now I’m working on the weight painting.
Here’s the rig as it is right now, any comments or suggesions are welcome.
stc=1
No custom bone shapes yet.

Great work!! The run cycle looks right to me. But I don’t think the raptor’s body should bob so much in the walk cycle.

The Jurassic Park franchise has been criticized by scientists for their depiction of velociraptors since there are fossils that prove raptors had feathers. The raptors were just big ole birds that probably looked a lot like wild turkeys.

So you could use birds as a reference if you wanted the kind of accuracy that would pass the dino-geek test. If you watch the way birds walk, their legs and heads move but their bodies stay straight at a fixed angle relative to the ground, without any bobbing action or spinal undulation. The spinal undulation is what strikes me as off in your walk cycle.

G’Day, Great animation, I really like the run cycle. The walking looks good too, but if you are still working on it as Liasaurus said the body seems to be bobbing a little too much, I also feel that the tip of the tail is a little too whip like. Maybe accentuate the snake like motion of the tail a little more so as to slow down the tip.

Thanks :slight_smile: right now I’m working towards the more reptile-looking raptors in JP1, but after everything with that is finished I hope to make a more bird-like version of it with vibrant feathers (though I’ve never made anything with feathers yet) and bird-like animations :slight_smile:

A quick render of a new run cycle, still needs some tweaking. I think the arms need more movement and haven’t yet got to animating the mouth.

An update for the run cycle, mouth is animated now + more arm movement

My original plan was to use multi-resolution to do the sculpting to avoid needing to retopologize, but I’ve been playing around with dyntopo and like it so far. Might decide to do it this way and retopologize later. Also might decide to go back to multi-resolution - not sure yet.

Here’s the tail so far. Mainly just experimenting but I like the results.
stc=1

Some more experimenting:
stc=1

Not much to show from the last 2 days. I decided to stick with multires instead of dyntopo because my PC did not handle it very well at high polycount. I “retopologized” some parts of the base mesh and then re-rigged it with the same armature as in post #7 with minor tweaks. Today I finished most of the weight painting I needed to do and started unwrapping it by placing the seams.

screenshot of seams and armature
stc=1

I’m not very good at making textures yet but today I practiced a bit and ended up with this. It’s more of a a low-res concept of what I want it to look like in the end. Don’t think I’ll be able to go much further with details until I can refine my sculpting skills and get a good displacement map baked.
stc=1

Worked on sculpting most of the day. I also baked a test displacement map, here’s what it looks like. The face isn’t detailed yet.
stc=1

I continued sculpting today. This is my progress so far. Still has a ways to go - some areas need a bit more attention and I haven’t started the head yet. Getting in as much detail possible at this level (5) and then I might subdivide it once more to level 6 to add in the smaller scales, wrinkles, etc. though it will probably be really laggy. Any kind of feedback would be great.
some stats:
Subdivision level: 5
Verts: 2,523,967
Faces: 2,523,120
Tris: 5,046,240
stc=1
stc=1
stc=1

I’ve been practicing animation lately. Today I made this jumping animation. Any kind of critique would be very helpful. I didn’t have time to render it so I recorded the different parts from viewport. Enjoy:

Small update - trying out different methods of making very small scales. The screenshot below shows hand-sculpted scales using the mask and the clay brushes. The polycount is 9.9m at multi-res level 6. I’m also considering bump map painting for very small details like these scales instead to keep the polycount manageable
http://i.imgur.com/ZAhlxe7.png