Tentacles: Kitsu

[kitsu]

I always moan about how I miss the challenges on this forum, but then when I find one in progress I mope about not having a concept, or I don't post because I don't think I'll finish

Well not this time! I found out about the challenge in time, I made a stab at a concept, and now I'm going to post. I'm not sure where this thing is going - it is already a long way away from my initial sketch. This is my first real use of mesh sculpting and I'm still trying to get a handle on how best to use it...

Here is where I started:



The tentacles are tapered bezier curves for now because they are easier to pose. I'm thinking about what kind of modeling should go on them, but I need to do some tests before I convert them to polys.

Next I gave sculpting a shot to see where I was going with this thing:


I think I'm getting a feel for this creature, and I like it so far, but I'm running into problems with my base topology not working for my sculpt...

So currently I am re-building the base topology around my sculpt.


I am hoping this will give me resolution where I need it for the next round of sculpting. There are a few spots where I'm having trouble getting the shapes to flow into each other. If I was smart I would probably just make each part a separate mesh, but I kinda like it all as one piece for now

[fktt]

w00t! looks blody great! and it sure has tentacles! ^^

edot: are you useing retopo on the shell? and yeah, it might be a good idea to have em separate in the end..

[Adam]

Great concept - sort of a hermit octopus!

Model looks great so far.

Adam

[Rblackmore]

Sweet, it looks awesome! I like the look of the shell, but the tentacles look a bit plain in comparison.

[Wayne]

Oooh I like

I'm going to keep an eye to this one, as its such a great idea.

Wayne...

[kitsu]

I wrote some replies here a little while ago, looks like one of my posts vanished? Hope it didn't end up somewhere it didn't belong...

Anyway I'm totally screwing myself at work to get this done, but I couldn't help but finish up my mesh rebuild.
Melty-smooth subd view


Here is the edit mesh. And oh no! I decided to use triangles


But wait, My loops are all (about) where I want them


And look, the subdivision algo cleans everything up for me

Note: Blender leaves out some edges in this kind of draw mode.

In the past I have been really stuck on this 'all quads' rule, to the point where I didn't finish some models because I couldn't figure out the edge flow. It made modeling a really laborious task, when before I knew anything it was a lot more fun/easy. Lately I've been trying to get into the mindset that form is more important than topology. Two things that really help with that are the new sculpt mode and re-topology tools in Blender. I still don't have as much control over my topology as I would like, but at least now I can move forward.

There are still a few places where I might want to cut some new loops, and I need to push some verts around, but I think this is ready for sculpting
Next thing though I need to experiment with polygonal tentacles...

[fktt]

well, as this shell wont be animated, then i dont see any reason not to use tris on this.. and eaven on objects that are to be animated, yes at certain points you can get away with tris (& n-gons alike)

[3dtodd]

This looks like it could kick the Cracken's butt.

[pnoland]

Nice work on the shell, topology looks very clean. This reminds me of something that could be a movie monster from an old B rated 70's film.

[kitsu]

Well, I got a little done.
First test using polygon tentacles and Blender's curve deform.


First test sculpt on tentacle


Model with first sculpted tentacles


And a video turn around with 'finished' tentacles
Xvid video ~300k
I tried to adjust the contrast, but it still looks too dark in WMP?

I think I'm starting to get the sculpting stuff a little now. I figured out a few ways to get the forms I want, when to use smooth and when not to. My only continuing problem is how to get nice sharp edges without corresponding edgeloops? I think using some alphas/brushes will help. After this challenge I plan to do a bunch of speed sculpts to get better at this. I'm thinking of doing some 3d cast drawings