Dragon

[Rinne]

I didn’t really work a lot in the past, so I got up to a new project, only with the aim to increase my skills a bit…

I’m especially heading for Texturing and lighting on this one, as especially texturing is the thing that my works lack of! But I use this project to also get familiar with blenders new Animation system (which is very good, as I think).

This is a small rig test of the dragon I’m currently working on:

the body:

and the current textures:

I will first of all head for better Bump-and Displacement mapping, and then go to the colored textures…

I hope it looks like some progress already,

Regards----Rinne

[Robin]

Awesome. But I think the arms that hold the wings is thin.

[Rinne]

Thanks Robin,

the arms were planned to be very thin, but I agree with you that they were too thin, so I’ve widened them a bit!

Here’s an update, did some Fixes, completely new rigging and improved textures! I’ve also added some details, like the horn’s on the neck and head, and lower teeth!

Here’s another render, rigging still has to be optimized!

[kat-II]

Can you post a shot with more globally even lighting as you can’t really see the details atm, you can do the moody shot once you’re done modelling!

[womball]

The model is turning out awesome! Are you going to texture the wings? I think they could use a veiny thin skin texture on them.

[Rinne]

Kat-II:
Sorry, I was just using the lighting setup I used to test out the Bumpmaps…

here is a more neutral lighting without rig, I noticed that I have to add a lot more bones to provide a realistic animation…

I’ve also started on a body armor that still needs a lot of tweaking (you can see it on the upper neck a little, bad angle)

and I may do something about the very deep “canyons” on the face, bad bump-mapping there…

womball:
thanks, of course the wiongs will get textures as well, but they are some kind of a secret for me, yet…
I’d like to have translucent wings, but as I’m rendering with yafray the only option to do that would be real sss, that means editing the xml file every frame, what is very bad for animation, and then there are those rendertimes :-?

I’m currently looking for a workaround for that, there will be some way to fake sss with yafray as well ^^

Regards—Rinne

[kat-II]

…and I may do something about the very deep “canyons” on the face, bad bump-mapping there…

They might not be too bad if combined or used as ‘damage’ to whatever armour/skin it has. It probably looks a little odd atm because you’ve not gone the traditional ‘scales’ route with the skin.

It kinda reminds me of the dragon design that an artist by the name of Micheal Whelan does…
http://www.michaelwhelan.com/images/dynamic/dragonsbane.gif

[Rinne]

Thanks Kat-II,

The Design was from a sketch made by myself, but of course other things had influence on that as well.

I remember having seen this pic somewhere already

Anyways here’s a new test, improved bump, but still too heavy, new rig and especially, textured wings…
I hope you like it…

Attachments

[Robin]

You should add a eyelid texture and another background. A black circle just don’t look good. Use a high resolution sky instead. What is the black circle supposed to be? And if you wanna keep the black circle make atleast a highresolution texture.

[womball]

Looking good! I think you may want to render with Yavray. It takes a lot of tweaking but you have control over depth of field. This scene is asking for shallow depth of field.

[Rinne]

The Scene is rendered with Yafray, and the black circle in the back is an hdri map!

This Scene is just for testing purposes and effects like dof will be added at last!

Thanks for the crits, I’ll try to do an eyelid soon…

[mfoxdogg]

awsome work just one thing the face looks to friendly

[Rinne]

I’m sorry, I will not do any significant changes on the dragon anymore…

I’ve learned a lot on this model, but I think to efficiently improve it most of the ressources have been used, if I’ll head for something better I’ll create a new one…

I may be doing some little changes but will mainly head for a final scene now, I’ve already set up quite some mood, but am not satisfied with the final result yet…

Anyways the mist covers a lot of the dragon, so I think there are not so many tweaks required anymore…

Attachments

[Robin]

I ain’t sure about what the scene is supposed to be but I think it looks like pillars from greek temples. If the dragon live their it should be ruined and there should be more than just pillars, like walls. Don’t dragons usually guard piles of gold coins? I don’t like the fire either but otherwise it’s good work.

[Khnum]

I’m really starting to like this!! At first the dragon reminded me of something from a dueling card (Yu-gi-ow or Duel Masters) but it’s come a long way. The latest render looks really nice!

[Rinne]

Robin:

Thanks, that’s exactly the point, I need some more ruins

Khnum: Thanks

[Odjin]

somehow i didn’t wanted to post but i can’t get around it…

the first image looked like this could get somewhere but… arg… how shall i say it… it looks plastic and artificial. i don’t know even what this ‘thing’ is if it would not wear a label :-?

i hoped this goes into a more comic like direction as this is what the model would be suited for. this way it looks… well… a bit ridiculous. i know it’s far too late to get this comment across but i just could not hold it back any longer . maybe you can try a second one going this way later on as this one prolly doesn’t please me at all… and i have also no idea how it can be remedied at the stage it is yet. still good luck with it, wherever it may take you.

[Rinne]

Odjin,

thanks for your crit, there shouldn’t be a reason to hold your crits away, as this is the reason why I’m posting things here, and I won’t take anything personally (that time’s over since several years now, luckily ), believing in most people only want to help!

Personally the only thing I’m satisfied with on the dragon is the tail and a bit of the wings, but I can do better…

A comic like look would probably be a solution, but that’s really too late now, as you already mentioned…

I will slow down on the next project a bit, it’ll be a larger, but simplier project so I will spend more time on creating single objects… There will also be more pre-production (sketches etc.) and more variation in objects, so it won’t get too boring for me to work on it, I don’t know how long I’m working on this dragon now, for the outcoming result too long anyways!

[xrqlz]

first off: i like the render: are you planning to animate this thing, or no? there’s a lot of mist in the scene, but thats not really a bad thing.

nice work