A study of Anamorphic creatures.

[Validtility]

Hello world. I'm new here, and kind of old here as well. I started playing CoC many years ago and fell in love with it.

Now, grand title exculded. I'm currently trying to figure out how to make "sexy" looking things in 3D, and geeze, it is a challange. 2D have so many loop holes you can go through to make things look pleasing. It's just not possible to do so with 3D most of the time. So I'm troubled.

Here in this thread I aim to share what I've learned and also recieve feedback, concepts, ideas and any form of input that could possibly push my "art" further along the right path.

Subjects will include things like: Furry anatomy 101. How to make fur look sexy. Should it be stylized. Color themes. Hand painted Textures. How much 3D is too much.

Any concept poses, those that are from the front and from the side are perfect for remaking in 3D, but they are very, very hard to find, especially when I want to make CoC characters... xD

I'll post things I'm testing out and I'm working on as I go. Ideas, comments, feedback, materials, it's all very welcome.

I also want to model "The Wet Bitch" from CoC and populate it with characters eventually, if anyone want to doodle a "floor plan" or small concepts of what the building looks like, it doesn't even have to look good, just convey the general ideas, I'd gladly have a look! That goes for alot of other things as well!

I've still to establish a style of my own, but atm I'm heading towards a simple & clean topology model that use hand-drawn textures and maybe stylized shaders. We'll see where it ends up!


Things like these are super useful!

 

[Validtility]

(To-do-list ect.)

On my to-do-list of head studies are: Horse, Dog, Cat, Fox, Mouse, Shark, Rabbit, Gel, Lizard, Bee. Both male and female. Other than that is the demon ones, so maybe, goat? (tentacles?!)

Other studies to be done are: Hair & Furr. Morph leg typs. Tails. Shaders. Textures. Topology. Expressions. Simpel animations.

Spoiler: Head Studies

Spoiler: Shaders

 

[Validtility]

Here I will post questions and what I'm currently poundering and things I hope to recieve feedback and input about. I need your opinions!

(OBS!! Rants and long reads might apply. Proceed with caution. OBS!!)

Current questions:

• Spoiler: Eyes?

  From what I can observe, 90% of the 2D art of furry and anamorphics are done in an "anime" style of drawing, this can be replicated in 3D, but the method to do it is vastly different than the traditional 3D style. The traditional style involves making realistic eyelids with eyelashes ect and render them. While the anime style relies on idicating general shapes instead, the eyes are not even attached to the model, but put into place to simply look nice. Pros and cons are: Anime style might look better, but it is harder to replicate or re-use for difference scenes, every scene might require one to make a completely new set of eyes to match the expression and angle. The traditional approach will work in all scenes from all angles, but it might not look good at all comparetivly.
• Spoiler: Feet?

  For the legs, how many toes/digits do you think is good/ideal? From what I've observed it's almost 50/50 that they are drawn with 3 toes or 4 toes. From the exampel, A B and C are most commonly drawn with 4 toes. After that D E F G are often drawn with 3 toes. What are you guys prefferences? Also, what about the "pads" of dogs & cat morps?

  Spoiler: Examples

  
• Spoiler: Furr?

  So? Opinions on furr? How much furr is really okay? In 3D, furr is a nightmare and looks like a nightmare & renders like a nightmare and is generally a bad idea... there are solutions, but the quality and the look always feels bad. In 2D, there is aloooot you can get away with, they can make furr look as smooth and soft as skin and mix between the two flawlessly. Doing so in 3D is way harder. Thus I'm currently trying to make an auto-shader for it. Otherwise I will try to hand-paint the furr into the textures.
• Spoiler: How much morph should a morph... you get the idea

  In CoC & TiTS there is "gradual" morphing, which is great. But outside of these, the variations of how much of a morph resembles or does not resemble the animal they are on the extream. Some are the anime versions where only the ears change, others go nose + ears. Then there is the complete opposit of completely animalizing the heads but keeping a humanoid body, although furry. What procentage of morph is the best in your opinion? Got any examples? Post or link to them in the thread please, and also write what % of morphs you think they are.

If you have any artworks you like or feedback, please throw it into the thread. If you have just a small thing you really like about some piece of art, cut it out or doodle on it and post it for me to see! Every little thing helps!

 

[Reptillicus]

Lots of neat stuff here, I'll keep an eye on this.

 

[Validtility]

Throwing some 2D doodles here if anyone is interested.

Spoiler: 2D

 

[Xiokir]

I like the non auto-linework, but it might benefit to have the auto-linework different colors, like if those objects are yellow, the line would be orange?

 

[Validtility]

Dumping some old 3D doodles.

Spoiler: "Artwork"

Spoiler: Props

Spoiler: Characters

 

[Validtility]

So today I kinda "finished" a version that uses textures flat on the model to display eyes. This method only works on stills so it's not ver effective in the long run, but I wanted to see how it would turn out and gain the experience while doing so. It was painted on the mesh model inside of blender, I could probably have done a better paint if I exported it to krita or something, maybe.... I'm no painter x'D

 

[Validtility]

I hope everyone had a good new year! I myself got a new wacom tablet! Woho!

Update time! This is another shader, combined with a small amount of textures and particle hairs and a new type of eyes modeled into the model.

Hard shaded. Soft shaded.

Results: Eyes are easy to use in all scenes but the look needs refinement. The hair is very, very intense to render and very hard to customize, maybe if i learn it in detail i can make hairstyles, but it's very inefficient and does not give the look I'm going for, I learned alot though. Combining textures with shaders is a bit questionable, I think going for just shaders or just textures mainly will yield a better result in the end.

I still have 2 more eye types, 2 more hair types and testing if textures or shaders should steer the style left to do. I'm trying to finish up this model and testing phase as soon as I can, after this one is done and the methods are tested I will start to pump out models using sculpts and finishing using the methods I found to work with this model! Yey!

Mmmm, clay sculpting.... *drool*

 

[Validtility]

Hohoh, I found this amazing video using some awesome 3D in it, what do you guys think of it?

Sidenote, I got a new shader in the works that looks to be very, very promising. The control is excellent altho a bit time consuming to set up.

 

[Validtility]

Ugh, I'm moving this month and I'm also in a permanent panic looking for another job so I haven't gotten much done, I did however begin an "imp" sculpt to get used to sculpting with my new tablet... though I go into details way too quick and do things too realistic when sculpting >.< gotta practice more!

But I got one very important thing "done" I suppose, like 90% done.

Spoiler: NSFW: Horse part!! :O

So yeah, the shader is 90% ish done! The rest will depend on the model and tweeking, but I have the method almost nailed down! Wiie!

Now back to being in panic...!