Wudja look at that...

Fenrir Texturing Update

This is so time-consuming. I've been doing this for about 30 hours now and I still have what seems like another 5 or so left. Fortunately I feel like I'm on the downward part of the hill now closing in on the finish line but damn, this fur. Honestly thought it would take me too long. 

All that said; really happy with the outcome so far. The hind legs are done so that's what the front should look like, there's not a lot of detail or fur on the lower portion which is to not create too much contrast and then drag the eye away. Did toy with the idea of making them a flat colour with an emissive on as to focus purely on the silhouette making the feet look like some sort of void which would add to Fenrir's somewhat unnatural, seemingly otherworldness. Though I think the blue fur will have to suffice.

Other than that I have the teeth, hairbands and bracer to do and then the mammoth task of making the clumps of fur on his shoulders look decent. I'm reaaaaally not looking forward to that. 

Final 30 odd hours! Gotta get this all done, then rig him and Odin and finally make some pedestals. Somewhere in all that I need to find time to to renders, turntables and turn it all into a presentation.

 I. AM. GOING. TO. DIE!

How many energy drinks was it before it killed you? 

Fur

Happy accidents are great. The head on the left shows how I was originally going to paint the fur which, honestly, I didn't think looked all that bad - in fact I was quite pleased. Then I started blocking in some colours for the rest of it with a typical round brush when, with a little refinement, looked great! So on the left is how I'm going to do the fur. Unbelievably happy with this as avoiding too much noise was one of my main priorities and this has helped that fantastically. 

Should also mention the colour palette. It changed a little while working but generally it's a hue shift from purple through to a blue/blue-teal for the fur, going darker on the extremities inward to relatively lighter hues. Having green for the iris and will later add some orange-red for some cloth strips, dulling it down for the teeth and his bracer. The ears are a mixture of these. 

Also, check out that new and improved logo. Awww yiss.

Fenrir Unwrapped

First of all I'd just like to express my love for 3D Coat. I've only had a little experience with the program which I thought at first was just a tool for painting onto your model.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

You can also unwrap in it! Pretty damn well too.

Interestingly as well I realized you don't get seams as you paint onto the model, which you'd expect, so this means, I guess, that you could just flatten map your model and paint straight onto it. Of course that would be silly and the pixel density would be all over the place but the point stands that seams are a problem of the past.

Doesnt mean unwrapping took any less time for this as I had to keep juggling it between 3DCoat and Max to make use of symmetry as 3DCoats unwrap also automatically packs them as well, which is just lovely really. Also you can change the size of certain islands, say if you want the face to have more space, then click pack and it packs them according to your knew preferences! I know Max has its own packing tools but I never seemed to get them to work well for me. 3DCoat really takes the pain out of unwrapping. So much so it should be illegal.

This program was well worth the £60 and all I wanted it for was the painting. Yay for hidden gems!

http://3d-coat.com/

Extra Fur

Added some fur geometry which I have no idea how it'll turn out, too late to test unfortunately but I'm positive of the outcome; as so far its been really good.

Still need to add this and that but not too much work.

Fenrir Retop

Caw blimey retopping took a lot longer than I thought it would. I appreciate humans are naturally bad at guessing times but c'mon, Scott. Anyway he is currently sat at just over 7k tris with some geometry to add which I imagine will end up around 8k. 

Fenrir

The wolf is here at last! After some super deep soul searching, considering whether to just polish Thor and Odin or go ahead and make Fenrir I decided it wouldn't hurt to gamble the first day; if I can get the sculpt done in one day, then I'll continue, if not then I'll cut my losses and work on presenting the other two. 

Been a tough day, fighting a lot of doubt but I'm glad I stuck with it because I'm very happy with the sculpt.

Here's a turnaround of my complete sculpt. The fur on the back was just a test and I'll most likely just model the fur clumps in max which will be easier. Also going to add some fur sticky-outy bits to the elbows and knee as well as work on those bits on the tail. Really Z-brush was used to detail the head and, predominantly, to work out the overall form and proportions; having never created an animal while also lacking comfortable knowledge of canine anatomy I figured sculpting would be the best way to pull out forms and shift things around until they were right.