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Old 18th January 2008, 04:48 PM   #11
lisa
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Default Re: Sea Horse

It's a made up species, but I did look at lots of photos of seahorses. I'm not really sure which species I was looking at though, since I swear I couldn't find two sea horses that looked alike!

The model has 3465 surfaces before subdivision, all quads and triangles (mostly quads). About 75% of that is from the bevelling to get the ridges on the body and tail... each bevelled body scale is 5 surfaces that were created from one surface, so as you can guess it was a lot fewer surfaces before I did that. All told, it's about 14K after subdivision... large, but not too unweildy.

The rock is about 860 faces before subdivision. It's made from a cube I divided a number of times, then ran the noise plug-in on... much fun if you haven't tried it! The background and grass are just quads.

Here it is before and after subdivision. I tweaked the scale after subdivision. I usually commit my subdivisions before texturing, otherwise my UVs tend to warp funny sometimes.
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Old 18th January 2008, 04:56 PM   #12
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Default Re: Sea Horse

Here's the uv layout, for those of you curious about texturing:
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Old 18th January 2008, 09:31 PM   #13
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Default Re: Sea Horse

I presume you had to make that map yourself?
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Old 18th January 2008, 09:45 PM   #14
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Default Re: Sea Horse

Lisa,
You said you did box modeling on the sea horse...

Did you start out with one box for the entire model, or did you box model the head, then the body, etc?

Also, do you trace a background when you box model?
Was the model for a job, or just hobby?

Let me/us know.
Very beautiful render and model..

Grease
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Old 18th January 2008, 11:18 PM   #15
lisa
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Default Re: Sea Horse

Quote:
Originally Posted by captainj2410 View Post
I presume you had to make that map yourself?
Yes, I made it in Corel Photopaint. The base colors were painted with the airbrush tool. The speckles were painted on another layer with the orbiting "confetti" brush, and then partially erased with a mottled eraser brush to make them look more organic.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Greasetattoo View Post
You said you did box modeling on the sea horse... Did you start out with one box for the entire model, or did you box model the head, then the body, etc?
I started with one box around the center of the belly, and then extruded in both directions to form the head and tail. After I had the whole animal built as a smooth tube, I went back and started adding details like fins and eyesockets with more extrusions. I'll post a time-lapse shortly.

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Originally Posted by Greasetattoo View Post
Also, do you trace a background when you box model?
Was the model for a job, or just hobby?
I virtually always start with a pencil sketch and trace over it. (attached!) There's a few things in the sketch different than the model--part way through, I went and looked at more photos and realized I had the fins on the head attached in the wrong spot! Doh.

This model was just for kicks. I like fish.

I do work for games and film professionally, however. Technically speaking I'm a programmer not an artist, so mostly I write simulations, but I like to make stuff whenever I get a chance.
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Old 19th January 2008, 08:50 AM   #16
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Default Re: Sea Horse

Quote:
Originally Posted by lisa View Post
Technically speaking I'm a programmer not an artist, so mostly I write simulations, but I like to make stuff whenever I get a chance.
Err, I would rather call you an allrounder. I try to do a MMORPG for years with different engines and the biggest obstacle is that all my models look awful. If I had a small part of your skill I would have been ready years ago ;-)
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Old 19th January 2008, 11:39 AM   #17
Greasetattoo
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Default Re: Sea Horse

Thanks Lisa,
I am going to have to give that box modeling a try...
I seen the foot tutorial.
Almost, like sculpting.

I would really be interested in seeing the time lapse.
How do you do a time lapse?

Grease
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Old 24th January 2008, 12:05 AM   #18
lisa
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Default Re: Sea Horse

I video recorded the whole thing while I did it. The model took about six hours to build and texture, which is a little too long for youtube.

I can speed it up to make the timelapse. I tried to do it with window's movie maker at home over the long weekend, but WMM wouldn't handle a file that large, aargh, so I'm going to try it sometime this week with a different piece of software.

Last edited by lisa; 24th January 2008 at 12:05 AM. Reason: no, rilly, i can't speel
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Old 24th January 2008, 01:27 AM   #19
mooseberry
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Smile Re: Sea Horse

Again, it looks really nice!

I can't wait to see tutorials, so don't kepp me waiting!
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I'm a modeler!!

Haha...
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Old 25th January 2008, 05:05 PM   #20
lisa
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Default Re: Sea Horse

Got the raw footage compressed. I still need "tutorialize" it and edit it down to fit on youtube--video's about 14 minutes--but I figure you guys can have a little sneak peek... I'm slow as molasses in getting to things, so don't want to keep you hanging too long!

High quality version, about 100MB:
http://www.independentdeveloper.com/files/seahorse.wmv

Low quality version, about 16MB:
http://www.independentdeveloper.com/...horse_0001.wmv

Oh, incidentally, whenever I get this cut down for youtube I will more than likely remove these files. My web server has to share bandwidth with my XBox and, well, you know, Halo has to come first...
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