the new dragon - Page 4 - Simply Maya User Community

# 46 05-09-2003 , 05:34 PM

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fried giraffe dragon... mhhh... tasty...

his what? user added image

... and i tought i loved dragons... yours is a new philia! user added image

congratulations, it looks you have improved a lot! two builds more and youll be working on ilm user added image

the wings should be as adl told you, ie the frist bone longer than now until the frist and the second (and the others) are about the same lenght... for folding its like 1001 toldya, plus make em a soft body + gravity field (f1trick) and paint the bones so that they dont are affected by grav and the intersticial membrane a lil softer so that its affected by grav and movement as if it were al lil rubberlike, it will fold and stuff (youll want to put it on another layer to be able to animate the dragon, and then run one timeliner with the dinamics to see the effects)

Last edited by dragonfx; 05-09-2003 at 05:37 PM.

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# 47 05-09-2003 , 05:50 PM

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:eek2:
Ok how to spot a guy who knows WAY more than me? When he comes up with a whole bunch of stuff of which: 20% I have actually tried, 50% I have heard of, or read in a book, and the remaining I have no idea what he's talking about...
So, since I am kind of slow, let's recap:
1) Make the entire wing a soft body, including the polys the make the bone structure? Not just make the membrane a soft body?
2) Make the soft body influenced by a gravity field? Is it to make it bounce with the movement of the body or something? Should it have springs? (just another word I read somewhere, not that I ever tried springs...)
3) Where do the actual joints and skeleton come in? Should the wing have joints? Or should the rest of the dragon be animated in the usual way, and the wings be animated only with dynamics?
Can a soft body be used for soft skinning?

I'll appreciate help since I haven't got much experience with this stuff.

BTW, if 2 more builds were enough to get in ILM, I would go ahead and make 3, just to be sure... :thumbsup:

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# 48 05-09-2003 , 11:16 PM

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flap flap...

I am not touching those wings again... user added image

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# 49 06-09-2003 , 03:37 PM

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Alrighty, looks better from the top... lets see a couple more views.

One more suggestion on the wings... take a look at where they connect to the body. Look at how thin that is! Lets say those wings could get this dragon off the ground, they look like they would snap off.

When looking at this style of wings ("bat" style) you can see the bones through the skin. In your case, you have the top bone, plus three others going down which the wing itself stretches across. (If what I just said doesn't make sense, I can post a pic... pics are worth a thousand words, right?)

The top bone should be a bit thicker, especially where it is closer to the body. Otherwise, like I said, it would snap off irl :S

Here is a question: are you going to animate this guy? What will really sell your wings is how they stretch as he moves.

Me and THIS army!

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# 50 06-09-2003 , 07:23 PM

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Good point about the thickness of the bones there.
The idea would be to animate it, and as you can see from previous postings, I got several suggestions about doing that, which would be fantastic if I knew how to do half of it... I replied by posting a few questions about the rigging and skinning. If you know the answer to any of those questions, BY ALL MEANS, I am all ears!!

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# 51 07-09-2003 , 03:12 AM

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Okay, when it comes to rigging, I've found that one of those "auto riggers" works tons better than anything I ever come up with. Unless I need to create REALLY unusual skeleton, like an insect, a vehicle or some other non-living thing, this does wonders!

I've learned a lot about rigging recently though, but I still like to be lazy and use this script anyway just because it's so cool. When rigging your character, just bend the rig over and make it fit your character. If you want to do your own custom rig, I'll help you out anyway I can... but at least for learning purposes I would start there. I've rigged some pretty odd characters before with it. (well, sort of odd... my current project is a wolf.)

Me and THIS army!

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# 52 07-09-2003 , 04:05 AM

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1001 Jedi Nights,
thank you SO MUCH for your posting. I have rigged a few skeletons before, and learn a bit more each time. I would like to rig the body of the dragon by myself, although I would love to count on your help if you would be so kind. My main perplexity is about the wings, and some of the suggestions I got about using soft bodies. The only experience I have with soft bodies are plains to simulate the sea, with an easy turbulence field. Not much else.
Thank you again!

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# 53 07-09-2003 , 04:25 AM

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So can we get some diffrent rendered angles

www.cgmaya.tk

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# 54 08-09-2003 , 01:03 AM

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So can we get some diffrent rendered angles

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# 55 08-09-2003 , 05:12 AM

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Unfortunately, I have not had much experience with soft bodies. The only non-humanoid character I've done is the wolf, which isn't finished. No wings there.

I would be happy to offer any help I can, though. Perhaps on my next day off of work I'll do my own dragon and we can learn this soft body stuff (for the wings) together.

Keep in mind that I only started this whole 3d gig in February this year, and switched from 3dsmax to maya in July. Although I have learned more than I ever thought I could in that amount of time, I am still generally a newbie. I can model very well, I am a novice at texturing (no photoreal stuff as of yet) and rigging, and lighting is my weakest point.

But we're not talking about lighting, are we... user added image

I took a class on maya, taught by a videogames modelor (sp?) so we (my classmates and I) focused mostly on low-poly, and rigging with as few bones as possible. I'm here to tell you that for animation, using less bones really sucks, and for realism... I always use as many polys as I need. My creations won't be used in games, so screw this low-poly stuff.

For the record, here is my wolf. No textures or fur yet, just default gray. I won't start a thread until I'm at that point, I'm just posting this so you can have a looksee. user added image

Yeah, yeah... it's offtopic. So what.

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# 56 08-09-2003 , 08:21 AM

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traveler, sorry if you had to wait... user added image

Here is another shot of it. I have been spending some time cleaning up the head, rebuilding part of the inside of the mouth, and generally, going from NURBS and SubDivs to polys. Lots of cleanup, alligning, etc. I wanted to do that before I attach the head. Still not finished to cleanup, but it's late and I want to go to bed.:p

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# 57 08-09-2003 , 08:29 AM

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Looking cooler now. user added image

adldesigner
Caracas, Venezuela
Hell .. not gone perse, but with a certainly lower post count per day.

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# 58 08-09-2003 , 01:13 PM

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i agree with adl but i always thought it was cool.

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# 59 08-09-2003 , 02:46 PM

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That texture is a huge improvement! and I see you fixed up the wings. Excellant!

Me and THIS army!

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# 60 08-09-2003 , 03:01 PM

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Okay, I am getting way ahead of myself... I've found some tutorials. The problem is the way they suggest doing this is way more tedious than I would like. I'm going to keep looking.

Me and THIS army!

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