I’m not real happy with back legs, but trying them out in a few different ways, I’m not sure what to do.
The face is something I’m happiest with (eyes are placeholders by the way as I will be adding more pixar-esque eyes later).
Edit: Forgot to mention that I plan on rigging him, and possibly animations (animations a big maybe, but we’ll see). So perhaps that can provide some fodder for how to reshape so that it deforms well. I might use softbodies some as well if I animate.
Alright I went through and tweaked the modelling a little bit. Small cosmetic change, but big change in topology, and I’m much happier with this new topology. Also reduced the size of the horns and plumped her up a bit. Still not 100% on the shape of the back leg, but I think its getting there.
Update below with Render and Wires:
One more thing. I started considering what I’m going to add as far as “accessories”. I know I will be adding a bow to one of the horns, but not sure about the following accessory:
Even though this isn’t generating much interest, I keep chugging along.
I’m happy with the modelling now, and are going to move on to rigging and texturing unless anybody can point out any areas I might want to take a look at as far as tweaks. Debating whether or not to use particle fur on this. I just wish you could use a UV map to color fur.
Did some quick tweaks and made the face a little more “cowish” (put some sags in and its a slightly more boxed than previously).
Also started to lay out bones for the rig. Nothing final, nor any ik or other heirarchies set up yet, just starting to lay them out. I figure if I rig first and see something I want to change on the model it will be easier, since I am done with major topo changes, than if I went to texturing next.
Hard to see the mouth tweaks in the render, but they are there.
I spent the last couple of hours rigging it, and the last couple of days reading up on how to do so. I’m still not completely happy with it, and I got some issu es to work out on the shoulder and hip movement. I chose to opt for the foot method Basse described in the 2005 conference tutorials, as well, mainly because I wanted to have a non-realistic control over the hooves, so they could behave a little elasticly, even though I probably won’t use those controls for the render, but animations later.
Any suggestions for how to rig parts of it better would be much appreciated.
Next up after becoming more happy with the armature and skinning will be facial animation stuff. I’m going to look into driven shape keys, though I might do armature stuff, not quite sure yet. Texturing/Fur will come after that.
I really don’t know if this will matter, but just thinking of rigging as the “skeleton” of the model: in real cows the spine is suspended from the shoulders and the pelvis, between them it sinks rather than rises.
I have no idea whether this will make any difference or not. My experience with animation is limited to playing around with a couple of tutorials.
Ok, finally got some time to update this. I’ve finished the rigging and skinning, and moved on to textures and fur. Decided to go with armature animation deformation for the different parts of the face, btw.
There is a UV Map under the fur, but it really doesn’t do all that much good since the fur hides it. Oh well.
I’m still addressing the issues associated with the fur, especially on the face (ears and eyes) and lower legs and on the end of the tail (I probably just need to reduce the amount of particles and tweak the curve guides). Also still trying to figure out how to go about applying color variations to the fur (i.e. black patches). Still experimenting with OrCo mapping for it, as it seems that procedurals are going to be a little hard to control. Any suggestions are welcome.
100,000 Fur particles on the main body is really starting to choke me on render times, as the one below took 8 min 36 sec.
Textures on the hooves and utters are not final, just place holders until I’m more satisfied with the fur.
Orinoco: Taking a look at a cow spine on google, you are right, except that it is a little more straight from the shoulders to the hips. It does appear that the spine is kind of floating between the two though. Right now I’m happy with the rig, though, so I probably won’t be changing it.
I’ll try to add a stronger light from the right for the next render as it is a little dark in this one.
