Dragons!

Well, here I am, doing my campaign, and I decide that the models I'm using at the moment for the main characters are just getting a bit annoying and don't match my loading screen drawings at all. So I decided to begin modelling my own!

Yes, it is a bit high-poly, but there's going to be some close-up shots of these in my campaign, so I want it to look good.

I think I'm almost finished with the modelling part (except for fixing the wings, doing that now), so now I need some skins! But I'll post that later. Next up is to do a bit of animating!

So tell me what you think so far.

Hmm.. looking good, iv been watching this from wc3c.

I suggest you fix the tail, correlate the rings of vertexes so they arnt slanting, if you leave it as it is and try to animate it wont work to well due to the topology. And fix the wings topology aswell.

Working on the wings right now.

It's also not going to have any flying anims, only ground ones.

How much polies are used?

I'm guessing about 10,000... jk

Gj though. +rep

Actually...

Dont count that, you havnt added proper faces(triangles) yet, it would be around 1500.

What do you mean by that?

Very nice.
The legs are too straight down under the body. Reptiles tend to have their arms and legs come out from their sides and not facing foward under them like a horse, maybe move them to look more reptile like and less mammal like. Also reptiles (dragons are meant to be reptiles or atleast semi related) tend to have their claws diging into the ground more than resting on it like feet, and their fingers with the claws are more spread out than a human foot which it looks like you gave the dragon.

The 2 things I say must be changed are.

In case of dragons, they do have their legs like that...

Man Pyritie, that looks like a really good model. I only see the toe thing that Dr. Super Good pointed out.... they do look a little close together and they might want to be digging into the ground a little. Other than that, nice.

Just very nice.
You could add some horns on his back.

I've fixed the tail thing, now just gonna fix the feet. But I don't think the feet digging in to ground would really work, because then it would just look like the animation's all screwed up.

I don't plan on adding spikes, since that would add quite a few more polies. I might do that for the evil one, Firch... (Hint Hint [play campaign now!!!11one])

Update!

- Fixed tail
- Enlarged feet to 120%
- Added bones

I'm really sorry, but somehow I don't like that. I don't know why.

Well, I can only improve if you tell me what you don't like. If it's the transparency or the dark blue, those are just to show where the bones and stuff are.

AGhh.. NGON dammit..misspelt..

Werewulf said:

AGhh.. NGON dammit..misspelt..

Click to expand...

So how do I get ngons in GMAX?

Um...you pretty much always have ngons or 4 sided polies. You want triangles.

So how to convert or whatever to triangles?

from what i remember gmax has this, just apply this modifier:

if the faces screw up its to do with the topology, just manually cut the faces where it screws up to fix that issue.

Im no master at this technical stuff ..so TDR would be a better advisor...


and..my rat..just chewed my headphone cord in..half...=_=

Okay thanks, I'll try that out later!


But may I ask, why do they all have to be triangles? Does wc3 not display them properly or something?

Wc3 uses triangles, for me, exporting to milkshape makes them tris, but if you have bad topology your faces will be screwed up that is why you must have them at tris

also that triangle count is what your after, not poly count when wanting to know how many polies. You should count the 3 sided faces (triangles).

If you still have triangles when the model is a poly object you can try selecting edges and press backspace to removed the triangle but still having the polygon. You should really fix those wings. There are currently alot of heptagons (7-sided polygons).

When you are finnished with the rigg could I please have a copy the max file? :} Btw you should always fix the uv and texture it before rigging.

I finally found out what I don't like in it.

Its "cute". Dragons aren't cute in my opinion. They are mighty, ledendary and "angry-looking".

Katu said:

I finally found out what I don't like in it.

Its "cute". Dragons aren't cute in my opinion. They are mighty, ledendary and "angry-looking".

Click to expand...

Then you, my fine sir, haven't watched enough Pokémon.

If you don't like cute dragons then that has nothing to do with the technical aspect of the model, thus its not helpful.

Werewulf said:

If you don't like cute dragons then that has nothing to do with the technical aspect of the model, thus its not helpful.

Click to expand...

Okay, then keep up the good work. I'll try to be a friend of the fact that there are some cute dragons... I hate Pokémon anyway...

It is accepted that a wc3 model uses 3-sided and 4-sided polygons.
Ngons (polies with more than 4 sides) are not recomended as it will give nasty results. So whatever you do, Pyritie, stay away from the ngons.

I remember that you can fix it by using Connect on two selected vertexes (I suppose Gmax has a similar function in the Vertex editing thingy), or welding a vertex to it's neighbour vertex.

Nice model, btw.

Well, I don't quite see why I need to have all of the triangles visible on the wireframe, because if you go to "Edit Triangulation" then it shows all of the 'hidden' triangles.

I'll add all of the triangles when I'm done btw.

Besides, this is just the model. The skin will add more stuff, if you will. But the main character in my campaign is a 14-year-old, so it kinda has to be at least a little cute.

Dragons don't have to be all evillish. Dragons being evil is just something humans made up because they were pissed off at them eating their sheep. The dragons only ate their sheep because the humans had killed most of the wildlife the dragons would normally prey on, so they had no other choice.

[/rant]

As I said, 4-sided polygons (quads?) are also accepted for wc3 modelling, so you don't have to convert all the polygons into triangles (3-sided).

Ah. Okay. But I will definately convert those wings to quads/tris when I'm done.

BTW, this thing needs a good texture. If anyone would like to help, I'd be greatly appreciative. And you get opening credits... credit!

Well, I'm still working on your request even with Wc3c down ' I made a basic colouring so that you might be able to wrap it, or say if there's anything to add/sustract.

Not bad so far, but the head looks a little funny.

Can we see it wrapped?

I'll start wrapping it now.

But that is that lighter orange blob for? The wings? And what is that little strip down the right edge?

EDIT: This is how it looks now, using a WoW texture (I'm a bad person ), so I'm gonna start redoing it now. *sigh*

why not try to make it with in-games?

Because they're supposed to look different from the rest of the dragons.

And the in-game textures are not very good for certain things I want to do with this model.

EDIT: Fuck, fuck, FUCK!!! I just spent 5 hours on mapping the texture, it was almost done, and then I go to save it, and then because gmax was getting a bit buggy I go to restart it, and then when it opens again all my work is gone! And on my birthday, of all days!

SHIT!!
I don't feel like working on this any more today.

Well, I think it looked well using a WoW texture

No, it looked like crap up close. Besides, it was looking very good with your texture until I lost it all.

I'm gonna do it all again once I get over my hatred of gmax.

Oh that sucks.

Make a backup copy next time...

Doesnt gmax have like autosaves? I know max does.

Well, it seems like yesterday I accidentally discovered how texture animation works! I had the little animation bar set to like halfway across, and it was in animate mode for some reason. It seems that when I went to reopen it, the slider went back over to 0, so it looked like I lost everything, but sliding the bar along told me that the skinning was fine. All that was needed to fix it was to slide the little key over to 0.

Yay, my work didn't get destroyed!

But I don't know if gmax has autosaves or not. I don't think so, since it already has tons of limitations on stupid crap.

Oh, and Dionesiist, keep working on that skin, it looks much better than the wow texture already! (But please just make the mouth outer part a little bigger, as in pull its lips towards each other. See picture. And also the leg is a little retarded.)

I never could do anything with Gmax, then again I probably can do nothing with studio max, I think I just suck. . .

K now make a backup copy lol.

I already have two don't worry ^_^

Omfg bump!

I'm just doing this so this thread doesn't get locked due to its last reply being older than three months.

But I can tell you that I've restarted work on this and the UVing is about half done.

That and Dionesiist has made a very good skin for Firch, the dark green one. HappyTauren and WILLTHEALMIGHTY have made a yellow and black version as well, although HT's is as of yet unfinished.

as for mine you will have to get different wrap, because i didnt follow dio's wrap xP my is optimized.

What do you mean by... optimized?

EDIT: BEHOLD!

Err, you could try and bring his eyes to a more natural position...

Like...