Bush viper

[jackal]

Bush vipers are so stunning I had to make one in blender. It’s my first finished artwork featuring an animal.

composited / viewport :

composited / render :

behind the scenes :

first I poly modeled the head

then placed the scales

body scales are arrayed along the curve

branches were sculpted with multires modifier :

leaves and the twig in the foreground use image textures, other materials are procedural (snake scales, eyes, branch in the backround)

tried making a procedural material for the twig, but wasn’t satisfied with the result and ended up drawing a seamless texture in krita (using bark images)
procedural / image texture :

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2BnPRv

[Luigi.exe]

That looks really cool! The scales look great, and I’m interested in learning how you did them. Did you use an array modifier, geometry nodes, or something else?

[jackal]

I placed scales on the head manually, and as for the body, I actually borrowed the technique from this timelapse: https://youtu.be/33KrPbStjcc?si=1z3t8MhJUrzyZAYB.
Arrange the scales like this:

Curve modifier - use bezier circle as a curve object to make a ring:

Array modifier:

[Luigi.exe]

Ahh, okay, I’ve seen that technique before. I want to do Dragons with scales on them, and I’m hoping to find a method to automatically place scales on less… uniform body shapes. Using a simple array modifier makes sense for your bush viper since snakes have a simple body shape that just tapers into a point at the end.

Thanks for sharing!

[IPOTR (brian)]

the background is quite realistic

[sundialsvc4]

Don’t think that I wanna encounter any of these critters while walking in the woods!! But the render, and your breakdown of the steps, is fantastic.

[Okidoki]

Very nice how you also showed how to “put something into the background”… and that also only this is needed

[jackal]

Just tried making a node tree that would place scales and use curve tangent as a direction in which scales flow:

Scales are instanced on the mesh, scaled based on face area, and rotated based on the curve tangent - that’s basically the whole node tree

It’s not perfect though, combing curves (hair particles) doesn’t work as expected on some areas of the mesh (faces that are directed along the positive Y axis have to be combed in the opposite direction)

PlaceScales.blend (1.4 MB)

[Luigi.exe]

That’s so cool! Thank you so much, especially for including the .blend file. I’ll definitely look at how you set it up and whenever I get to making those aforementioned Dragons, this will definitely help.

[jackal]

Let me know how it goes! (:

[Okidoki]

Reptilianne