Dragon

[s.winders]

Thanks Richard


The jaw I missed,good catch


Painted the wings today and the horns teeth etc,only the body to go now.


Cheers Bill,almost missed you there

[a4hire]

I hope we get to see the updates!

[s.winders]

Oh lovely I wasnt even able to see all those dual posts.

[s.winders]

Originally posted by Crow Haven:
Nope, it's not this monitor I'm viewing these forums with (I don't use the new NEC monitor for internet at all and the images I have created on it while looking much brighter than on this old monitor are seen as too dark when viewed by others -- Richard caught that for me. I have to adjust the posts in brightness on this old monitor to be sure others viewing the image see it as I intend.
I've run calibrations on this old monitor and it's accurate.

What the dragon looks like is that the body is a dark grey and pretty much a solid coloration except for highlights off the texture from the lighting. The wing membrane areas do look painted though, as do the spines and claws. The eye is a solid black and a bit duller than some of the skin textures (why I thought again they hadn't been painted...so that's why I asked) The skin has texturing but is looking very uniform in coloration.

Here....I've cropped a bit off the pic you put in the zip file....Soquili sees some green in the eye....there's a very very slight tinge of it but so slight as the overwhelming look is still gone to a black eye. I don't see any clear cornea and do not see any real distinction between pupil and iris here, just a slightly darker center(iris area surrounded by the very faintest greenish tinge to a blackish surrounding eyeball area. For the skin on the main body -- the specular highlights from the skin itself may be confused with some lighter scaling you added (?) don't know if those were painted lighter or just the lighting on the surface --- subtle, yes, but the look still strikes me of dark grey plastic mostly ---except for the wing membranes, they look fine.

That's all the description I can give of what it looks like to me. Probably no one else sees colors the same way I do though -- so don't worry about it.
---Maya

No youre probably right about the brightness Maya,I forget about the LCds glare at times

[s.winders]

Originally posted by Turan Mirza:
Really cool.

Is this hand textured? I was real set on focusing all my efforts on learning C4D when those darned Poser and DAZ folks (Mike, Maya and RamWolf) kindnapped me and forced me to sue their products .

Totally excellent work.

Turan

Thanks Turan


Ya its all hand painted from scratch,colour,bump,spec colour,diffusion,translucency maps.About 400m worth of maps I think.In hindsight would have made them bigger still actually,but ah well it doesnt matter.

[s.winders]

Thanks bud


Ya I have an update ready soon


And just for the record as for above,what I meant was Maya was right about her observations and I was wrong,once again hence the grin smilies.

[s.winders]

Originally posted by Crow Haven:
The brightness of this image John posted is better (the eye is still very dark, though, as to look mostly like black, this robs it of life)...

I guess it's the use of so much grey all over the dragon and so little contrast of any other color on the main body which gives the grey plastic appearance. From anything but a close up shot he's going to look just dark grey with black shadows. The eye won't show whatever color is in there if this guy is reduced in size or part of a scene. He will need bright lighting to show any subtle color variations at all, but that will add highlighting problems due to the current shiney specularity of the skin causing extra glare. Colored lights are probably going to be the only working option, but if they come from sky coloration he will disappear within the scenery due to a lack of contrast coloration from the scenery and only the body shadows will make him distinct from his surrounds --- this even more likely if set amongst mountain/rocky terrain or any backgound with much detail in texturing. Skyborn allows for better visibility of the dragon but also, unless a closeup of it, reduction of his size in the distance will detract from his colorings in all but the brightest of daylight. This is just what I see from this model against this background in it's present update. A solution would have been a skin coloration of other colorings/markings/stronger light coloration contrasts on various parts of the body such as the undersides of all body portions, and a lot less of the overall monotones of greys, which although much easier to paint with really doesn't do a lot for the model, imo. More color I think could enhance the model -- only the Giger Alien pulls off the monotone colorings (yet colored lighting still was needed -- though mostly the filming kept the Aliens in the dark and rather hidden as they were sneaking around, fine for filming with action to add to it (and even with this dragon animated the enhancement of more coloring to its body would still be an advantage), not so good for still imagery without other color added)okay.

I have no expectation you or anyone else here will agree with any of this -- my opinions = that's all they are.

One other note on the model itself...the one area that I hope may be transformed through rigging and posing the creature is the area of the neck -- it looks to me very tree-trunk and stiff in appearance. The knee areas rather weak and tiny for such a large creature. The jaw area also very stiff and solid without any look of underlying musculature or bone. But overall it is improved from the first dragon quite a bit -- that one was a good effort but rather wooden all over -- but the eye of that particular dragon, however, had life.
---Maya

The lighting for an environment will be different again,this is just a rig for posing/checking the texturing.


The knees I want to be like that as I dont want the model to look to heavy/ie be unable to fly.Its actually quite streamlined and light looking.


The color is shades of blue grey,damn it!

Grab a copy of the one John posted,stretch it out on your monitor and zoom a bit,then you will see some color