Goosifer's [Normal] Projects

[Goosifer]

I just need to fix the ears and I think I can begin animating. I think that without the distinctive pointy look then it just looks like a shiba inu with rabbit ears lol. Did I go too far in the other direction with the stylized look? I'm not sure that it will matter zoomed out.

 

Zoomed out:

 

Zoomed in:

[pukkie]

Well You are doing great first of all A shiba Inu is way higher on the legs so it looks nothing like that body wise but the snout might give that feeling where the one in post 5 looked slightly better perhaps and the rabbit ears? is that not just the angle we are looking at?

 

By the way what to you mean by topology?

 

[Goosifer]

Yeah the snout is definitely better on Post 5. It's my first time modeling an animal so I think when I made the eyes everything must have gone wrong on the face not long after lol. I'm going to animate it a little and see if it at least looks okay in-game. If not, I'll try stencil-texturing it again and see if it hides a lot of the mistakes.

 

Topology is what makes up the shape of the model: all of the dots and lines. How clean the construction of the topology looks is important because the cleaner it is the easier it is to animate and texture.

 

Post#5 I was having a lot of trouble texturing because it was just so messy, so I retopologized it twice.

 

On 5/18/2023 at 10:06 PM, Goosifer said:

    

 

(A beginner’s) Retopology attempt:

[(Designer)HENDRIX]

The eyes are too small for a fennek. The part under the shoulder / behind the elbow region bulges out. Other than that, solid work for the shape!

The new head has pretty good topology on the head. In the end, if you only want to animate it for ZT1, that really doesn't matter much.

[(Designer)Vondell]

3 hours ago, HENDRIX said:

In the end, if you only want to animate it for ZT1, that really doesn't matter much.

 

^ Seconding that. I remember working on the Aldabra Tortoise and the Red Panda and making anatomy adjustments to the model that I thought were going to be huge and consequential, and then when I rendered them out again it changed about two pixels, lol. In that sense I've always appreciated how forgiving modeling for ZT1 is rather than modeling for a game where players are directly viewing and interacting with the models. I've cheated in ways I'd never be able to modeling for ZT2 ...

 

Looking good though!

[Goosifer]

11 hours ago, HENDRIX said:

The eyes are too small for a fennek. The part under the shoulder / behind the elbow region bulges out.

 

Yeah they've been a problem (the eyes). I think that handwaving them was a mistake early on as they've sort of exacerbated the problems with the rest of the snout. Good call, I'll smooth over the shoulder, thank you.

 

Quote

The new head has pretty good topology on the head.

 

Have you seen that Simpson's meme where Homer says he lost weight but he's clipped it all in the back?

That's how I feel about the rest of the topology I've neglected to share 😂:

 

    

 

Not a single triangle (got loooots of funky quads though),  so there's that lol..._{retopologizing is soooo tedious...} But as you said, any problems with the animation because of bad topology shouldn't be too noticeable in ZT1.

 

8 hours ago, Vondell said:

 

^ Seconding that. I remember working on the Aldabra Tortoise and the Red Panda and making anatomy adjustments to the model that I thought were going to be huge and consequential, and then when I rendered them out again it changed about two pixels, lol. In that sense I've always appreciated how forgiving modeling for ZT1 is rather than modeling for a game where players are directly viewing and interacting with the models. I've cheated in ways I'd never be able to modeling for ZT2 ...

 

Looking good though!

 

Yeah I agree that the game should be forgiving thankfully. I'll see if I'm able to pull off some fixes on the ears and eyes/snout by tonight. Honestly I just want to get the face right for the plaque 😂.

 

Thank you @pukkie, @HENDRIX, and @Vondell for the awesome feedback!

[(Designer)HENDRIX]

You can use the falloff tool to easiyl enlarge the eyes without breaking the surrounding topology. In my experience, better have some well chosen tris than lots of badly stretched quads. I strive for topology that has close to quadratic quads instead of long, thin quads, because it just unwraps, rigs and deforms better. Eg on the chin, I would collapse those thin quads at the 'cost' of having a tri or two.

[Goosifer]

Thanks for the tip! Had to look up the falloff tool and it looks like it could have saved me a lot of work haha. And yes, so true about the topology, it's rough. I did it by hand using the shrink wrap tool but man,  it took me hours and when it came to connecting the limbs, I just had to get creative when things didn't exactly line up. I'm going model it  from the beginning one more time and I'll try to get the snout, ears, and topology right this time. I don't have to, but I think it's fun seeing it get better. I'd like to release my models as a resource in case anyone wanted to use them for anything, so got to make them presentable!

 

Going to drive back home this week so I'll probably update again some time in June.

[pukkie]

You sure put a lot of efforts in this Project Goosifer I hope you will be pleased with the final results

[Goosifer]

Here's some context behind my question in this thread: Easiest ZT1 mods to get started

 

My summer research ends this coming week which means I am now jumping back into the mod-making fold before school starts. To catch everyone up: I have zero idea how to make mods anymore. I can make art assets, but the rest might as well be black magic so if you're willing to be my configuration partner, I'm game!

 

Before I go back to making the fennec fox and start work on the balloon stand I signed up for, I want to stretch my legs with some 'easy' projects. I only say 'easy' because I have the art assets mostly finished and I won't worry about animating anything.

 

Here are my 'low production' projects I am working on over the next week (I made these 3D models 15 years ago...):

 

Hot Dog Stand (I thought I had lost this model but I believe whichcraft rules state that if you utter a name in a certain cadence you summon the thing, so I blame it on this thread):

 

Forgotten Spire: I made this ugly thing for Zoo Tycoon 2 but it should be good practice to port as a scenery item in ZT1. I think I'll give it a fresh coat of paint to make it more appealing.:

 

(click on the pictures if they show as too dark)

 

Coincidentally, I never did release that spire for ZT2 so it will be part of the next ZooBerry mod drop.