Tupandactylus II

Continuing on my Tupandactylus, I fixed up the model, created some UV's, rigged, and skinned the critter. The key for the rig was making it so it would be able to work both in the air, and in the pterosaur quadrupedal stance. I think it works rather well.

Next I'm going to do some animation to test the rig further, and make any minor adjustments I may need in the skin weighting before I get to texturing and 'pycnofiber' generation (via the fur tools).

-Evan

Tupandactylus I

For an individual portfolio-building project at work, I've decided to build a full creature in Houdini; doing everything from modeling to animating to rendering. I've also taken this opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for quite some time: build a pterosaur. More specifically, the  tapejarid, Tupandactylus imperator.

To prep, I've been doing a lot of reading about pterosaur anatomy; mostly Dr. David Unwin's Pterosaurs: from Deep Time, as well as from other sources such as http://pterosaur.net/ and portions of various papers and websites. Due to the lack of time I have to complete this, I'm obviously not going to hit the books nearly as hard as I did for my Master's Thesis. I just have been casually reading and using my modeling sessions as a way of testing my understanding. It's been fun so far. I want it to be authentic enough, and true to the animal without killing myself over every minor anatomical detail.

Here are some images of what I have thus far. So far I've completed the base model (much more detail will eventually be sculpted in), and I've laid out the bones which will be used for the control rig.

First the model:

...and the bone layout:

I took my time with the model to try to make sure I was able to create it in a way that would work for both the flying and walking motions. Being conscious of this, before spending the time in connecting the model to the bones, I first adjusted the skeleton into a quadrupedal stance to make sure the dimensions of the animal would work.

This has been a fun project so far, and I'm excited to get a working rig. Painting the skin texture and adding the "pycnofibres" should be fun as well :P

As always, comments, suggestions, feedback, etc. are welcome!

-Evan

Houdini Modeling II

Welp, I finished that guy. I discovered a bunch of options and little tricks that helped make the rest of this go so much quicker. Very exciting to know that I can model a full character in Houdini now.

-Evan

Houdini Modeling

This is what I do when work gets slow...experiment/learn.

I decided to take a break from rigging and tackle organic modeling in Houdini... it's not nearly as bad as I was expecting, but I am still much quicker in other packages.

Here is a hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius):

-Evan

Golden-Maned Ostrungul

Slow Sunday = creature designs.

 This is the Golden-Maned Ostrungul (Ostrungula aurocapillis). This is a male showing off his crest, which floods with blood during the rutting season; giving it it's pinkish hue. These animals are about 9 ft tall at the shoulder, and use their claw-like hooves to dig up invertebrates, mollusks, and crustaceans hiding in the riverbeds.

Playing with GIMP

The Perpetually-Projectile-Vomiting Dinosaurs of Santa Monica

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I've been busy with relocating to Los Angeles, and settling in with a new job. I'm currently working at Side Effects Software, as a Character Animation Intern; working on a short film that is being produced internally.  I do have more drawings and even an animation test to eventually post, but first things first...

The office I'm working on is right on the Promenade in Santa Monica, and right outside, there are two Ornithischian dinosaur fountains, which I absolutely adore.*

I have always found it peculiar that there are a plethora of fountains in the world where the water spout emerges from the depicted animal's mouth. Every time I see this, I just can't help but laugh to myself. Here is another image.

The reason I find this so humorous, is because, if these figures were indeed alive....they would be in a horrifically uncomfortable state of perpetually-projectile-vomiting, which is hilariously ridiculous. The above Stegosaurus fountain therefore inspired me to realize this bizarre concept with the following digital painting (click for higher resolution):

I'm glad I got that off my chest! Now I hope every time you see an animal fountain, you imagine what it would look like if it were alive, and puking all over the place.

-Evan

* Down the street there are two sauropods as well; both a Brachiosaur and Diplodocid - and they almost look like they're about to beat the crap out of each other