Dragon wip

Yea that was what I was explaining (badly). the seems to come out of the middle of the finger/thing instead of lying on top of it.

Usually the digit gives way to the claw which comes out of it, say you scale the digit down at the very end and extrude the claw outward. Don’t forget to crease the subsurf at the start of the claw.

fingernails on a Dragon really doesn’t look right, I remember a Mother Goose and Grim comic where they showed human like hands on a pair of Dragons and just didn’t look right.

I took another look at the photo, and played around with the model. How does this look?

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It is better but still has that whole finger nail look. Have the finger/thing wrap around the whole nail/claw/thing so that we can only see what extrudes out of it.

Take a step back to get it right. Remove the nail entirely. Then round off the finger as if you would make a cartoon character with a round finger cap. Make sure there is a double-quad at the finger cap ( gives you a hexagon sort of ). Then extrude the double-quad displacing it slightly into the finger tip and scaling slightly down. Then extrude again out of the finger and rotate it a bit ( also scale it a bit down ). Then repeat this step up to 2 times. The last extrusion should reduce to a point ( ALT+M -> Center ).

Good idea is to squeeze the claw in the X direction before doing all the successive extrusions. This way you get a thiner claw which fits better the way real claws are.

I agree with Odjin except for the join point part. Leave the last extrusion the way it is just really small. This will look like a pretty sharp point but will not produce artifacts when using subsurf.

Try to achieve something like this-where the talon pushes out the tip. (Yes, I googled “dragon foot”.)

http://images.elfwood.com/art/e/l/eleri/dragon_foot.jpg.rZd.31588.jpg

Just imagine how such a foot is constructed. There’s the finger bone which ends in a claw. Where the finger bone goes over into the claw is slightly thicker so muscles and company can be attached. The skin then ends at the place the claw starts. This shows it a bit better ( I don’t find my old reference image anymore and the other comp is currently off ).

Wow, thanks, you guys are amazing. :slight_smile: Is this what you were going for?

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A lot more like that, yes, only the end of the claw could be sharper, and crease the subsurf when you use it so you get a good appearence of the claw coming out of the foot.

What did I tell you?
Here is Cyborg Dragon!

Yea, that’s more like it.

Hehe, yeah, he’s back… and my hiding trick worked. He noticed NOTHING :stuck_out_tongue:

Do as CD told you but don’t use the crease feature. Add another loop cut where the claw extrudes from the toe and push it really close to the edge that defines the toe tip. This will give you a sharp edge that doesn’t result in weird artifacts.

Progress! I’ve fixed up the claws, and am wondering how to make the toes “flow” into the feet.

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At first put the fingers more narrow. They are too far apart. Finger bones move all the way back into the wrist. Your’s though point past it into the void. Feet are more V shaped instead of U shaped.

Yea, odjin’s right. But you got the claws right to me!

his ankles look very weak. they are really thin and the shape of everything is still a bit blocky. Are you modeling from reference you should draw all this stuff out before you model. Look at real animals for reference on how the feet connect to the legs. you have no sense of bone and muscle or structure so its making you model look unbelievable it doesn’t look like it could really exist .

lol Ghost3D, that was a little harsh! Anyway, I found a few images of dinosaurs, which closely resemble dragons. You can see the way the muscles are built up along the legs.

http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/040531.rugops_02-sm.jpg

Be careful if you compare a dragon straight away with a raptor type dinosaur. Those are made to walk on two strong hind legs with the front legs reduced to the bare required. Dragons on the other hand are four legged and the weight is distributed evenly across all limbs. Their legs are nowhere as muscled as a raptor leg. Furthermore they are rather light weight ( to allow for flight ) so huge muscles are a no-go anyways. Important is more the overall look than getting lost in huge muscles. Defining them a bit is good but not exaggerate too much :wink: