Hi all. Blender noob here, but please don’t let that turn you off. I think I’m a relatively fast learner.
I’ve been working through tutorials and just generally having a good old time. I installed Blender last week and have been doubling the amount of time I spend using it every day since, so I’m starting to run out of day now.
For my first real project on any new thing, I like to come up with something that will give me good practice in multiple important areas of use. So this one will give me lots of practice with modeling and texturing, then I’ll be animating and doing some particle systems. The plan is to animate an Arrakis sandworm, from the Dune novels/movie/miniseries. The model I’m going for is my own imagining of them, mostly based on the original movie and the illustrations on some of the books, but isn’t really trying to duplicate any of them. This is an early render, with no environment (though I have already made a desert environment. Just not combining the two until the worm is finished).
From here, the next stage of the plan is to make teeth in that mouth. Still haven’t exactly figured that out yet, but I’ve got ideas. Then, I need a question answered: Is it possible to apply different textures to multiple parts of a single object? In other words, can I make the inside of the mouth look like muscle and stuff, plus have grungy worn teeth, plus have brown scales over the outside, without just unfolding the mesh and drawing up a handmade texture in Photoshop? Can I just use the built in texture generating tools to apply multiple colorations? Or if that’s possible, would it still be a bad idea because it would look bad? I don’t know these things.
Then, I will introduce the worm to his environment and animate him. I’ll have to rig up a spinal system of bones, which I haven’t exactly figured out yet (the bone tutorials so far have given me trouble), and a set for each of the three jaws. I’d like to be ambitious enough to animate rows of teeth individually as well, as was done in the miniseries.
After all that, I’ll need particles for the sand that the beast kicks up.
Hi all. Blender noob here, but please don’t let that turn you off. I think I’m a relatively fast learner.
Welcome to blender!
Very ambitious project, and a good start.
It looks like some of the normals are a bit messed up (see the black bits?), so go into editmode, select all the vertices and hit CTRL-N to point all the normals the way they should be going.
Is it possible to apply different textures to multiple parts of a single object? In other words, can I make the inside of the mouth look like muscle and stuff, plus have grungy worn teeth, plus have brown scales over the outside, without just unfolding the mesh and drawing up a handmade texture in Photoshop?
Yes.
You could use the UV mapping tool. What this does is create an unfolded mesh shape for you to paint on in photoshop. Then is applies the texture to the relevant bits of the model. Look for tutorials on UV mapping. This might be best to leave for now though, because it can be reasonably complex, particularly if you are not used to blender. Still, you seem like a person who likes a challenge
There is also a way of controlling which material is applied to which faces. However, I cannot remember exactly how to do this (though it will be the easiest option), so I will look it up after I get some sleep (4am…).
A bit of advice. Everything new you do, have a quick test on something really simple first. So, when you do the bones, get it working with just 2 bones and a subdivided box or something. This way any mistakes are very simple to see and it makes it easier to play around with features without worrying about your model.
A quick question, are you using a sub-surfed mesh? If so, all is funky. If not, the model you have is really high-poly and it will make it easier later to do it with sub-surfs now.
OK. Having taken your advice to heart, I actually just started over, because it was easier to apply correct techniques that way. I was kind of flailing a bit before, but what I got from my flailing wasn’t looking too terrible to me. So, here’s the new version:
I think it looks much better. Thanks for reminding me of recalculating norms. I did forget to do that. And, as I’ve discovered, contrary to the gingerbread man tutorial (which seems to be from a previous version of Blender), you have to recalc before changing your subsurf to any more than one level, or you end up with more bad lines than you started with.
Now, I want to make teeth in that mouth. But I’m not quite sure how to do it. I’m sure it’ll involve extruding some thing or another, but I’m not seeing it.
The way the mesh is made, there are simply edges extending from vertices around the edge of the mouth at an angle down into the throat. How to extrude pointy things from this, I just can’t see.
For the teeth, I’d add a new object and then extrude and form it into a tooth shape, and then duplicate it to make the rest of the teeth in the mouth. (The separate teeth objects would make the texturing that you’re planning, MUCH easier, IMO.) One thing to keep in mind when you get around to the texturing, is that the worm’s skin will have very soft specular highlights, or virtually none at all. (The spec setting’s very important in getting a nice looking material.) The worm’s looking fine, so far. I eagerly wait for your next update.
DwarvenFury
p.s. Welcome to elysiun! (Okay, you have 2 posts now, so I’m a bit late, but welcome just the same.;))
Thank you all for the welcomes. I’ve changed the mouth-view picture to something with a better angle. I made this thing with a throat. Or rather, I will be doing so. Right now it’s just a hole into the mesh.
Anyway, Dwarven: I’ve been poking around with texturing cubes to figure out how I’m going to do this, and I did discover that knocking the specularity down helps. You’re right; I will be going for a dull, worn look to this. I don’t want it to end up like the worms in the Dune miniseries, looking all shiny. But I do want the uneven, worn look that they had to their scales, and, as I said, the massive, moving teeth.
One important question has occurred to me: The jaws are all single faces from the base to the tip. In other words, no extra vertices to use as joints for multiple bones. But I want those jaws to flex in, rather than just come together like a pyramid, you see? I’m attaching an illustration of what I mean. The question is, how can I do that, if the bones only work to move vertices? Or am I misunderstanding the bones?
The question is, how can I do that, if the bones only work to move vertices? Or am I misunderstanding the bones?
No, you understand correct. The best thing to do would be to subdivide the jaws or remodel them with more vertices. To subdivide them, select them and hit w then chose subdivide.
I’m putting together teeth now. Wow, I’m loving this program more and more. I found that I can make a much better looking tooth by subdividing a plane once and pulling it around than by using a cone. But I have a question, directed primarily at Ian, since he brought this up, but to anyone who can answer.
Ian, you mentioned parenting the teeth to the worm mesh, then later parenting them to the relevant bones. Can an item have more than one parent?
I’m going to put in more teeth out into the individual jaws, but I haven’t decided exactly how I want that to look yet. I’d kind of like to put in a second layer of muscles inside the jaw structure, instead of just leaving the smooth pieces I’ve got so far. But I’m not sure yet. I got to learn about the spin dup tool to do this. A bit frustrating to get the cursor in just the right place, but it worked eventually. I know the back row of teeth looks like it’s floating in the middle of nothing. That’s because it is. I’m going to extend the jaw ring down to make a throat, instead of just leaving a completely hollow mesh.
Ian, you mentioned parenting the teeth to the worm mesh, then later parenting them to the relevant bones. Can an item have more than one parent?
No, as far as I know you can only have one parent. You can use the constraints to get the same effect though.
What I had in mind was just to parent the teeth to the worm for now, then remove that link later (alt-p) and parent the teeth to the armature/bone. Since your worm will also be a child of the armature, this will have basically the same effect.
OK, I’ve run into a bit of a hitch here. Two problems of not being able to select things:
The layer that I have my camera sitting on has gone invisible. I know where the camera is, but I can’t do anything with it, and rendering the frame just shows all blue background. Normally, I know I could just reselect that layer in that bar in Object mode, but that bar with all the buttons for the layers is also not visible. So…wtf, seriously?
I’m creating muscle pads in the mouth for the teeth to sit on. It looks good on two of the jaws, but on the third jaw, I can’t do it. I’m doing it by extruding a region. Now, the mesh structure on all the jaws is pretty much identical (except that I’ve now made these pads on two of them), but when I try to select the same set of vertices on the third jaw, it doesn’t recognize half of them as being coherent faces. The edges connecting the frontmost vertices of the area don’t select, so I end up with a bump and a line way ahead of the bump when I try to extrude, instead of the whole area extruding. Any ideas?
Once this is fixed, adding the teeth will take about 15 minutes, and the model will be ready for texturing and rigging. I did a test rig on a simpler model last night. My animation was awful and didn’t go as planned, but the rig worked exactly as I thought it should. I just need practice.
Yep, you were exactly right about the removing doubles, thanks! Though, for some reason, I had to do it twice.
As for the other part…how do I correct that? I’ve tried just hittin / again and that didn’t do anything. Or at least, it didn’t do anything beneficial to me.
The layer that I have my camera sitting on has gone invisible. I know where the camera is, but I can’t do anything with it, and rendering the frame just shows all blue background. Normally, I know I could just reselect that layer in that bar in Object mode, but that bar with all the buttons for the layers is also not visible. So…wtf, seriously?
Are all the buttons in that row gone?
If the row itself has gone, hold shift and right click on the border of that window, the line between the 3d view and the buttons. Then choose “add header”.
You can also use the numbers 1-0 on the keyboard to choose a layer.
No, the row is still there. Just not that little box of 20 little squares to control the layers. I assume this is related to the problem, because when I go to camera view, it shows the same image I expect it to, pointing right at the worm. But if I render, it renders a blue screen. And I can’t actually see the camera or any of the lights.
Click that little hand and triangle thing. Same problem happened to me. It worked. However, you lose that whole easymove system. Might be something else, but I remember that being the trick for me.
have you checked to see if its on a differant layer? hit the “" key (just to the left of 1, not "'", "”. ) to see all layers, if you can see it then, select it and hit ‘m’ to switch the layer its on.
Well that’s the thing. It should be on a different layer. But hitting ` doesn’t make it show up. But if I hit 0, it still goes to the last camera view I used.
(Okay, you have 2 posts now, so I’m a bit late, but welcome just the same.;))
