First off, thanks to Modron and Torq for providing that fantastic modeling tutorial. I decided to take a try at modeling with face loops in mind, as Torq emphasized. I got this thing as my result:
and because orthographic cameras are ever so useful:
Well, I dunno, it’s my first time I’ve ever gotten near anything worthy of being shown off.
Comments? Critiques? Flames?
Like kansas15, it looks like he wouldn’t be able to shut his mouth :). The nose will touch the end of the lip before the gap will close.
It looks like you rendered one image in ortho rather than switching to an ortho view and rendering in perspective mode. That ortho image looks really odd. The perspective one looks nice though.
You’ve got good faceloops on the eyes too. Now onto texturing.
I would like to see this animated too because I see a lot of lizards modelled but few animated. Animation is the true test of good modelling. 
Ha, you’re right about the mouth.
Animating it though, eh? I’ve barely gotten anywhere with rigging, so that’ll be a challenge. Oh well, I like a challenge
Nice lizard, give him more detail.
Like kansas15, it looks like he wouldn’t be able to shut his mouth
ROTFL 
Hm. Yep, okay, I think he really needs some texturing. What do you think is the best method? I just recently noticed this thread.
Then again, Enrico Valenza wrote some great-looking techniques I’ve never tried…
painting Allosaurus fragilis textures
Textures in Blender in OrCo mode
I really have no idea which is the best way to go. Suggestions?
(in the meantime, I’ll try messing with the rigging. Once I get out of class, that is.)
Like the guy on the Allosaurus tutorial said
the best method to map an organic form is uv mapping
I think that using the new LSCM tools is the easiest way. You just make seams that divide up objects that will unwrap fairly well like the legs, body and head.
So in editmode, select the edges around the hip joints and neck joints (not necessarily at the same time) and do ctrl-e or use the edges menu under the mesh menu.
Then, when you have all your seams (it’s good to display them using the option in the editing menu), just go into UVfaceselect mode and select all the faces. Hit u->LSCM and check the UV editor. It’s a good idea to have a panel with this in it while UV mapping.
Adjust seams until you get a UV layout that looks good. You can then export for painting in a 2D editor. It’s best to get a UV layout that’s good first because if you have to adjust UVs manually, you would really have to get into the habit of using the UV save layout script which is more hassle. This means you don’t lose a lot of work by accidentally remapping UVs.
I would try experimenting with procedurals first because dinos usually have a repetitive skin pattern that I’m sure can be simulated quite accurately using procedurals. Also, you don’t need to worry about UVs or stretching with those. Try adding a stucci noise texture with hard noise and a noise size of 0.05 as a bump map too.
Great stuff! I’ll give that a try.
One more question though… about the mouth, what should I do with the teeth? It seems to me that adding them to the main mesh is just asking for problems… a billion extra face loops, I would suspect.
Or am I getting ahead of myself trying to add teeth on my first decent organic model?
Adding teeth is fine even on a first model. But I think lizards either have small teeth or just suck their food:
If you want to add small teeth, just model one tooth and use dupliverts on a mesh that you’ve unfolded to follow round the inside of the mouth. I would say just to leave it.
Lizards can chew food if they want. They do have small teeth if you look carefully.
I don’t normally look carefully at lizard’s mouths because they don’t like me. I just recently had plastic surgery because of this. (kidding of course)
Great modeling on the lizard! I did some experiments and found that for scales, a Clouds texture with a Noise Basis of Voronoi Crackle (mapped to Col and Nor) seems to give good scales. Another Clouds texture with a Noise Basis of Voronoi F2-F1 (mapped to Col and Nor as well) also helps. Be sure to use relative small Noise Sizes, though. Obviously, UV mapping would give you much more control and probably more accurate results, but procedurals are much faster and a lot easier.
Thanks everyone! I’m hoping that after today I’ll have the time to work on this guy, since I’ll be done with midterms.
osxrules, you’ve been very helpful. That picture of the lizard is great… It gives me some vision for what I should do with the mouth.
cool man! now to UV map him! you can check out my UV mapping thread.
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Lizards can chew food if they want. They do have small teeth if you look carefully.
Lizards don’t really chew their food. For the most part, the jaw can only go up and down, so they can’t really grind the food. They don’t have the flattened mammalian molar teeth to really chew. They will chomp their jaws a few times as they swallow something, in order to work it down the esophagus, kill it, and help soften it.
There’s a few anatomical flaws in your model, but you generally did a good job. Unlike some of the lizards, this one lacks the boxiness and is much more natural.
Some of these may be half-intentional, like how the lizard’s mouth is all pointy. That happened on accident, but I decided it was more interesting when pointy. Hence why I named the lizard “bill” 
Hey guys… I’ve dedicated some more time to experimenting with this thing… mostly learning how to LSCM unwrap… so that’s why this has been so delayed.
Funny thing is, I LSCM’d the whole thing, had a really nice layout… then I decided I needed to cut another loop around the mouth, so I could give him more defined lips. Maybe I could have recovered it… but in order to move around and fix up the face, I sliced him in half and mirror moded him. Oh well… I can redo it, now that I understand it.
I have a few questions to ask though:
I hope I can get this all figured out. This December I’m planning on making a humorous short film with this guy… I’ve already written out the script
I always rig before I texture- rigging often forces me to reconsider some topology for good deformation- that way, I only have to unwrap once.
As for how to do it- I’d have at least a jaw bone for the lower jaw and a head bone for the rest of the head. "Stretch to " in current cvs is very nice for tongue rigs.
RVKs are good for mostly linear motion. If something has to rotate a lot bones are better.
Is there a lizard named bill in Alice in The Wonderland? or is this a coincidental naming?