The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 3

Creating A Dragon

As you read before, I knew what I wanted my dragon to look like, now I just needed to make it. Now, there are a million and one articles out there that will tell anyone willing to look how to make a 3D model. I wont bore you by adding another, but I will quickly show you some of the steps I have been through.

First a create a quick box model, with an approximation of the proportions and anatomy of the dragon. I took this into ZBrush to sculpt a more natural looking shape, with muscle groups and some skin wrinkles and stuff.

Now what is worth noting hear is that while this looks pretty nice, I couldn't use this for the final model. For one thing, the dragon doesn't really have a mouth. It is one solid piece of geometry. So what I did was use this model like a scaffold to help me rebuild a model with the correct topology to function whilst retaining the shape I created. I then took this new model back into ZBrush to start adding more detail.

This dragon now has all the features I need. Fine detail on the skin, a working mouth and the correct shapes and muscles. I could then move onto the job of getting this high detailed model into Maya so the character could be animated. This required texturing and exporting normal maps to create the illusion of high detail on a low detail model.
The project I made this model for required a maximum quad poly count of 6000. Here you can see what I produced.

Now this looks pretty good, and would be ready to go into a game engine for use, and was more than good enough for my module requirements. However, I am not producing a game, I am producing a film. I needed more detail. I threrfore added a displacement map to the model to push up the details, and below you can see something that is almost the finished product.

As the weeks go on, I am going to put more work into improving the look of the surface and ensuring it is as good as I can make it, but I hope this little post has given you some idea how I got from a drawing to a high detail model.

Until later,

Alex

The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 2

Designing a Dragon

Now the big showpiece of my project is the dragon. I think lots of people want to do a dragon when they come into the world of C.G. Its just one of those things that draws you.

When designing my dragon, I had a few things I wanted to stick to. It needed to look like a lizard. I have seen a lot of dragons that look like a cross between some crazy eel and a lion, and in my head dragons are reptiles, so I wanted to keep it lizard like. I also wanted it to have four legs and two wings. People have gone on about the anatomical impossiblity of this, and there have been a lot of dragons done with bat like anatomy, but I just want it to be a little bit more like the traditional fantasy dragon. Finally, I wanted the dragon to be red.

As you can see, the design of the dragon matches my desires. Now I will be the first to admit that I am no great shakes when it comes to drawing and could pick out half a dozen things wrong with this picture, but it works as a starting point. Some things you might see are that the head it very reptilian, based on a monitor lizard. The legs, however, are aranged and jointed like a mammalian quadraped, like a dog or a horse. This is to give the dragon more speed on the run and more power to jump into the air.

Once I had this completed I could then move onto thre process of turning this 2D dragon into a 3D reality.
More of that later,
Alex

The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 1

What Is Project Dragon

Project Dragon is a short film featuring a C.G. dragon composited into live action footage. The purpose of the piece is to showcase a broad range of skills excecuted to a high standard to enable me to hit the industry at a bit of a run.

I am focussing all my available resources and time on this project, and have been doing so since early in the year. If you imagine that my uni year is split into two halves, and that each half is split into four modules, I used three of the four modules in the start of the year as preproduction for this project.
For one module I designed and created a dragon. For the second module I rigged and animated the dragon, testing out its limitations and little quirks. For the third module I researched into the area of simulating fire, because everyone knows dragons breath fire.

Now I have come into the second half of my year, and this is divided into a group project module, and an individual module. A review of my assignment briefs shows that these two modules are well suited to support each other, and thus what I create individually and what I create in my group can come together at the end in a single piece of film with a reasonable amount of impact.

What these Making Of blogs will describe in the coming weeks will mostly be focusing on the work I am doing individually, but where I have to manage the overlap of the projects, no doubt I will write a bit about that too.

I hope that has given you an idea as to what I am planning. Next week's entry will be going into the details of how I designed and created my dragon.

Until then,
Alex

Advanced Animation & Special Effects

Here begins the blog for advanced animation and special effects. For those not in the know, this is a two module, 14 week block of work.
Today I pitch my ideas and get the green light on whether or not I can make my planned shot. At this point I see no reason why I should get the go ahead. I have done a lot of work preparing myself for the start of these modules. The first half of my year has been spent creating a dragon and researching digital fire. These two elements will be key for my final video.
Anyway, I must crack on, so fare thee well!
Alex