Loxodonta africana

Got the controllers fitted & working. Ear setup is a little clumsy but OK for basic posing.

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Been a while since I did anything with this. All it takes is a few family occasions to completely throw me off my project these days. Time to get back on the horse, err, I mean elephant :smile:

Took the poly-mesh as far as I could so I’ve finally made a start with sculpting, careful steps at first blocking in a few details and landmarks.

Because of bulk it’s tricky to identify bone & muscle landmarks on live elephants. Watching them walk in slo-mo video helps. For bone area, the top of scapula, olecranon process & iliac crest seem to be visible most of the time. On a side note, elephant pelvises are works of art.

Muscle is more visible when moving, triceps and latissimus appear fleetingly under tension and as the rear leg pushes off you can see some of the femoris group. There’s others but trying to scope out the shape of elephant muscles is like taking a very difficult eye test.

Shaping the mouth area before I subdivide further.

Having the model rigged has some benefits for sculpting. I’ve curled the trunk upwards, thrown the head back and opened the mouth to get the sculpting brush into some hard-to-reach areas.

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A little pedicure.

Not been at the computer much the last few days but some small progress happened. Made a few marks to guide the direction of wrinkles and indicate a couple of muscle boundaries.

Gave the eye area a little attention too.

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Feels like I’m closing in on the details now.

I don’t want to indicate muscle & bone more than this as you just don’t see much under elephant skin, just hints here & there as the animal is in motion. They’re not called pachyderms for nothing :smile:

Polygons are a bit pinched under the tail, probably should’ve done more retopo. Gone too far now to redo, nevermind I might make an improved version in the future.

Hardly touched this for nearly a fortnight, I have a middle aged attention span & have to switch projects constantly :smile: (there’s always some D.I.Y. needs doing or something requiring a fix).

Anyway I got un-bored with the elephant again and started a detail pass last night. Looked over it this morning and made a few tweaks. That’ll probably do for the sculpt stage, gonna start on some textures this week.

The ears are a little on the thick side but that was intentional 'cause I’m tempted to get a couple of scale model 3D prints which won’t work if the material is too thin.

Don’t think I need bother detail sculpting the trunk & toenails, a painted bump map should be enough for these parts.

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