HCM #10 AIM - The cat at play

#12

Starting on the face. I’m going to have to get some standard references of just a cat that or more orthographic. Tried getting some of Op yesterday but it was like trying to get my 3-year old to hold still, not going to happen. I think his eyes are too far apart due to the slightly angled reference shot, IDK.

After modeling people for such a long time this feels really foreign to me. Not sure where to start, how to proceed etc. This just looks wrong to me right now, I’ll try again tonight with some better reference.

#13

Wanted to share this. In my searching for reference I found this guy Bento. Just a magnificient looking cat. Reminds me of Baghera.

Update, scrapped the old model and started fresh with new reference. Think its going better already.

#14

Hi guys. I’ve not given up on the project. Just had 2 weeks worth of troubleshooting someone else’s busted email server (I hate having to reverse engineer other peoples shoddy work). Anyway it pretty much consumed every scrap of functional brain activity at the time.

But got it fixed, its been functional for a few days now, so back to work on the kitty.
I’ve not been able to keep up with the competition, I hope everyone is plugging along fine.

#15

Rapid fire posting!

Beginnings of the face structure.

#16

Attempting to follow the steps I use to model a human head.

Cat nose, man thats odd the closer you look.

#17

Completed face mask, mirrored temporarily to snap a photo.

The snout is very different than the human mouth. While making it I lost track of the fact that its really a mouth and had to add a divot to serve as one.

Next is the bottom jaw and completing to the neck.

#18

looking good, should the nose bit not curve in a bit more to the brow tho?

#19

Yes it should. The reference cat has a wide nose like that, Opie doesn’t. I tweaked the model toward the end of the night to match him better. 1 sec…

#20

Extruded the jaw from polys under the chin. Knifed twice and shaped into position.

#21

Bottom jaw completed. There is some polygonal mess around the nose area. Gonna let it stand at this point because I’m not really sure on a better way and it works out pretty good at higher rez.

#22

Lemme tell you, the ears were pretty cool to figure out. Mapped 3 quads into the head polys in the shape of the base. Extruded it to the full height, knifed and adjusted to fit the shape. I had originally made 4 base polys but using 3 created a quad in the inner ear which works out better.

I’m a little concered with the way I connected the ear to the head. At this smoothing level you can really see the screwed up polygons it creates. I’ll have to test it at higher levels.

#23

Adjusted to look like Opie.

Thinned the “cheeks”. Some cats have fat ones, he doesn’t. Narrowed the bridge of the nose, lengthened the snout, added more weight under the jaw and gave him some fat rolls he has under the neck (not visible). Its amazing when you look with a detailed eye how many differences there are between cats. I never really noticed how many till I needed to.

Okay, the ear/head joining polys look awful here but…

#24

They smooth pretty well. This was a quick 4 divides, 45000 polys. When I tweak it as I increase it’ll look dandy good.

Now heres my next question. What the heck did ZBrush do to my model, he looks about 10lbs fatter than in LW. I adjusted the perspective settings but that didn’t seem to do much.

Even with that problem seeing this result encourages me. Wasn’t sure about those ears but I use a pretty low smoothing setting in LW for speed. C&Cs are welcome, please let me know what I should take a second look at.

#25

Looking good. From experience on my otter, that pince at the corner of the nose might be a bit of an arse to deal with, but should be alright.
Do they perhaps use different subdivision algorithms? would that cause the bloating? tried turning perspective off in zbrush?
Perhaps put a loop round the forehead, those polys seem quite long in comparison to everything else.

#26

It could be the difference in the camera settings between Zbrush and your 3d package.

I would try exporting the high poly (bloated) mesh out into your 3d app and see if it changes back to looking thinner??

The models looking good man, just one thing that I can see that might be a problem is modeling the fold that cats (well both of mine have it! ) have on the bottom left of the ear (looking at the left ear straight on) as it looks like there should be a bit more geo to accomodate it in the lower mesh.

Be looking forward to updates.

#27

It may just be the way ZB handled the subd without modifications. It imports pretty good so tweaking on the way up may be the difference. This is the first model I’ve had do this.

NoirQ - I think you are right, and if nothing else I can play it off as part of the nose like its supposed to be there. Oops, too late! :wink:

gster123 - You are correct. That will be added in ZBrush along with many other details. I try to avoid modeling that level of detail in the modeling phase now. Leave it to the sculpting.

Thanks guys.

#28

For todays exercise, I’ve modeled a cat with rigor mortis. :smiley:

Got the basic shape down and enough geometry to rig and pose him. I’m going to pose him before exporting to ZB as I had trouble with that last time.

I’m thinking the front paws together grabbing at something. The back legs arched after the jump and the tail tensed in some random direction. I’ve found no reference for jumping leaping bounding etc. cats so if anyone knows where I could find some that would be very helpful.

Fun fun fun.

Edit: Crap, looking at this fresh today, the front legs are way too long. I’ll fix it tonight.

#29

i’d have had the legs extrude out from the body, to get the shape a bit better. atm your arms and legs flow with the body, which i don’t think they should do. it also looks like he’s going to have huge shoulders, which should prolly be a bit lower down from his head. drop the entire body down a bit, so the head is above it some. i can’t find a good shot of a cat, so i’m guessing with these, but i think they’d help

#30

Your progress on the head is looking really nice! :thumbsup:

I agree with adding a bit more geo on the base-mesh for the ears though. That should make scultping them in detail a bit easier in ZB later on. If you upload some more shots from different angles I can make a more detailed critique.

I am having a similar issue with ZB perspective. I can switch between Maya, XSI and Mudbox, no problem, but in ZB the model always looks very different and I cant quite get the right look for sculpting.

Has anyone found a good approximation of the settings to match the perspective cam in XSI, Maya, LW? (What the heck are those numbers for anyways? 55 doesnt look at all like a 55mm focal length, so are they just completely arbitrary?)

NoirQ might be correct on the legs. On my tiger, I extruded out once to the side for the shoulders and hips and then down on a pair of faces for the legs. That gave me some good room and flow to work with at the higher poly state that I am at now.

Atm the head looks a bit small and the neck a bit short for the size of the body.

Anyways, I love cats and am watching this one with great anticipation, so keep up the good work!

Naz dorovje!:arteest:

#31

Maybe it is my approach. I notice that most everyone here is modeling the muscles and what looks like the “skin” of their animal. I’m trying to model what is visible which is the fur. I have pictures of Opie doing different things and in all those shots there is nothing showing muscle wise. I tried extruding shoulders out but it really didn’t look right. His head is about the widest part of his body. I will add more in ZB to show the shoulders better but thats about it. One thing most domestic cats/dogs have is layers of loose skin. I can grab my cats around any joint (not on the head) and pull out about 5" of loose skin. Think about the skin around the neck that momma cats grab babies by.

I’ll post one of my ref shots to give you an idea. I’m still not sure, easier to play with these things in ZB.

As for the perspective, maybe ZB 3.1 will give better results. Haven’t had a chance to tinker with it yet. I’ll do that tonight.