Challenge #553 (01/17/14) Entries CLOSED

Theme #553 for January 17 2014 is: Fantasy Creatures

Entry closes at 2100 GMT -5 or 8pm CST, Monday January 20 2014.

Does it have to be organic?

Falkbeard if non-organic creatures are your fantasy, I see no issue in that :wink:

Hahaha I’m so excited for this one. I’ve actually been needing to make some for my project. I love fantasy stuff so much.

Ugh i just wish i wasnt working so much this weekend… i hope i have time.

Sounds fun

Heeey, I might have time for this :stuck_out_tongue: Or maybe not >.>It depends on how long my screencast takes.

Let me join in by saying I have been looking forward to a theme like this for awhile. Bummer part is it happens to be a weekend my wife has to do a project for work and my computer time is limited. I’m gonna try to get something in though. Looking forward to what others produce just as much.

“Swamp Cobraclops”
Tomorrow will be need to be devoted to football, and I may even close blender for the day, so here’s my entry. It’s a swamp cobraclops, searching for a spot to take a seaweed nap. I made a custom scale brush and sculpted and baked with multires.


Hi,
It was supposed to be something else but…


Blender + Luxrender

Hey everyone
Here’s my entry for this week. It’s the golden snitch from Harry Potter.

Here’s something I read from a Harry Potter wiki. The Golden snitch was originally a little bird called a Golden Snidget. They were originally used during a Quidditch match. The team who catches the snidget gets 150 points. But these birds were very fragile and they were crushed to death when they were caught. Because these birds were being endangered, there was a need to invent the golden snitch to replace the bird.

So here it is, I hope you like it. :smiley:


Good luck everyone.

wow very nice entries so far every one I don’t think I am going to get one done this week busy at school but look forward to seeing everybody’s.

Blenderallday, your entry looks really nice.

Any chance you could explain what you said with “baked with multirez”? I’m using multirez for the first time on my image but having a hard time matching my textures on the sculpted model with the uv image from the base model. The details I sculpted in that fall in between the lines on the uv map I have just been guessing where they go, render, go back to paint move texture around, save, render again, repeat. I’m thinking there has got to be an easier way.

And your water looks awesome. Your water, well, it blows mine right out of the water :slight_smile:


Spent most of Saturday on the model and textures, and then today just tried to make it look good. I ended up throwing away a few hours of texture painting, but it all worked out in the end :slight_smile:

Total time taken ~13 hours

“Overgrown”
Not sure about the title, or if can be called plant or snail :slight_smile: …pure entry:


Argh…mine wont render. Keeps causing blender to shut down. Tried at 1000 samples, 500, and now 20…and POOF. Dont know what is causing the problem. It will render in viewport…but not when I try to do it for real.

use a screenshot for your render? or try rendering with the cpu instead of gpu?

use a screenshot for your render? or try rendering with the cpu instead of gpu?

I got it working…had to change it to .png. I only have cpu…my card doesnt support GPU rendering. I think I need a new comp…2 hours for 1000 samples doesnt seem right to me.

excerpted from “Creatures of the Realm”, by Arch Mage Byron Wysiwig,

“The Golden Crested, Triple Bearded Snorkel Dragon is a very rare, some might even argue extinct, dragon which spends the majority of it’s life in the shallow waters of the Pollywaddol inland sea. A smallish dragon, growing to an average length of 3 meters, it’s diet consist primarily of fish and water plants. The dragon likes to spend most of it’s time floating just below the surface, using it’s two extend nostrils as snorkels. The golden crest is believed to have evolved as a method of scaring away predators as when submerged the crest resembles the tail of the small but dangerous Golden Crocodiles which inhabit the same waters.
While rarely seen it is rumored that under the full moon, young maidens can lure the dragon to the surface with a secret song. The dragons like to let the maidens weave colorful beads into their beards and in exchange it is claimed the dragons will bless the young maidens with a life full of many children.”

For what it’s worth, here is my entry this week. I didn’t learn as much this week as in past, but learned quite a bit on what not to do when it comes to texturing. Pure entry, cycles 250 samples. Textures made in paint.net, and or cycles procedural. Moon glow added after in paint.net.

Good luck everyone (I really like MIK1190 concept, very original).

Attachments


Gregzall, love the Shroom king! Great render.

Ryeath, when you sculpt with multires for fine detail like skin pores or in this case snake scales, you wind up with around 1 million verts at level ~6. So what you do is you bake a normal map from sculpt level 6 to level 1 or 2. You use that normal map in the nodes of the shader to fake the illusion of the detail while using a much lower poly mesh, level 1 or 2 (or the basemesh with subsurf). Normal maps must be baked in blender internal, but can then be used in cycles. You can then delete the higher multires levels to bring down the blend size and memory usage.

The water is a slight blue glass mixed with glossy using fresnal, and then some more transparency to show the seaweed some more. There is a diffuse dark blue plane hiding underneath. One of the “secrets” to good water is using an environement lighting texture. Glass/water is highly reflective at certain angles and there needs to be something to reflect or it will look not like water at all. It is somewhat shocking what a difference (in a good way) an environment texure does to your scene. In the world tab of your scene, under surface,under ‘color’ choose ‘Environment texture’ and choose a nice jpg or hdri from this site: http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html
The image you choose will have a profound effect on the appearance of your glossy materials, I tried out maybe 7 different ones in this scene. I honestly forget which one I used, but it is packed in the blend so have a look if you like.

As for your issue, I’m kind of having a hard time visualizing exactly what’s happening. I would start a thread under modeling or materials and post some screenshots, or better yet the blend along with the issue. I would definitely (and others) would be happy to help you out.

If you want to look at the blend for my snake, it is here. I did a “tiny” amount of post, basically hiking the saturation levels, but the render is virtually identical.

But yeah, start a thread in the other forum, drop a link in this thread if you do, and I’d be happy to look over your sculpting/material issue.

Here is my non-competing entry:

Thunder Bird

Description: Inspired by the Native American legends of the Thunderbird.

RobertT