Final project for our 3D modeling class, we had to model and sculpt a creature of our own imagination. I went and created a sturgeon fish/dog thing. A very big dog. It stands at about 5'5", dwells in swampy areas, and despite it's large size is primarily an herbivore which scavenges meat and fish when possible.
On the right is the base Maya model with the concept sketch visible in the back. On the left is the final model after sculpting and painting in Mudbox.
By this point I'd felt rather comfortable modeling, however this was my first time making proper use of Mudbox. The scultping was a very long, tiresome process, and I went through four to five complete do-overs on the sculpting due to technical problems when importing from Maya (Mudbox and Maya don't use the same units of measurement, Maya work's at scales equivalent to centimeters in Mudbox! And scaling up in Mudbox leads to nasty lookin' sculpting, expecially for texturing. A huge pain which took me a couple hours to troubleshoot and made me scrap a series of different scultping attempts.) and upkeeping my own standards of quality. I really wanted to produce something I'd be proud of and which would approach professional quality. A week of serious work - including an intense weekend of little sleep - got me this far. If I'd had more time I'd've created my own texture for the scales and explored materials more for a proper "fishy" glow.
Detail shots of the creature. Surprise! It does, in fact, have a mouth! Like a sturgeon fish's. The shots, unfortunately, allow a better look at the dopey eyes on this guy. Time constraints forced me to paint on colour and highlights, rather than setting up materials to naturally create the shine of eyes. It works fine from far, but is pretty uncomfortable to look at close-up. It's just not right, y'know.
