feedback request especially if you own a horse

Well i’ve been working on a horse for a while now.
I posted my progress under works in progress, but am now at a point that i could use some critique. Especially if you own a real horse, or see them regularly (as i dont have a horse).

Because, i got the feeling that i’m now in between a disney toon horse, a real horse, and a toy horse.
My goal was not to create a Disney horse mesh, or toy look, but more into direction of an anatomical male model. (but would it be practical, as my end goal is to create an animation with it)

Now when i do adjustments, sometimes they feel creepy real to me; but not always, a sign to me that parts near a real look; but also something “else” is holding me from that look and keeps it so CG. The Horse is also on the forum “works in progress”, but now i am just entering a point that i want just a bit more realism and feedback, to get a better horse like look. I know cannot do it all; I’ve seen animation from horses, as done by the studio of Avatar, those just look completely real. But that’s a too high standard. So i want to get somewhere in the middle, a good horse look, and minimize toy / cartoon looks.
But how to get it ??? …

As for me people where always easy to draw.
Drawing horses however, i always found complex and this is my first attempt of a CG horse, even more complex to think of their 3d shape, but did make use of horse pictures, as background while mesh editing, so now proportions should be fine.

The model has 2 subdivisions, I wonder if should i apply them, so i could tune the mesh a bit deforming, ‘fake’ muscles. Or should i use a bumpmap ?..
Or should i keep it as is the mesh; as i am also planning to create a bone system, and animation him later.

Ok well the pictures :


The tail hair is not ready, i’m yet unsure how to get a nice tail; with a goal of animation, if you have some tips i’d love to know them.

it looks like his thingy is a little off. In horses, it tucks in until they are ready to use it. So the area you have now, should be more like a kangaroo pouch, which is completely attached to the rest of the body. so, no space between the pouch area and the belly. Also, there should be more definition in the muscles of the front shoulder joint, and in the neck, imo. allthough, he is kind of hairy, so maybe it’s ok as is.
(edit) also, less white in the eyes. you should barely be able to see the whites. In fact, I think humans are the only animals in which the whites of their eyes are particularly visible with normal eye position.

I didnt yet made a shape modifier for his thingy; I had in mind to make it smaller later by shapemodifier, as i wanted a full mesh first; (the kangeroo shape is there already, as i had an anatomical horse in mind) when i start to do more shapemodifier (mouth) i will create that one too. With complete retraction then I didnt knew that actually.

Muscles; well i posted it on my facebook too, to get some feedback, there people said it too. They must be a bit more visible; but i’m a bit in doubt here. My endgoal is to make a short intro movie; and i’m not sure what would work best.
I could use bump maps, for this, to go beyond limit of ‘low’ poly mesh, or apply the 2x subdivision modifiers and next adjust the mesh shape more detailed. I dont know what would be right to do ??.

Currently the eyes are very simple, just spheres with 2 shaders, for the white and dark area; I already darkened the white, because something felt wrong there, but adjusting the iris size, that might be it; its a very good advice, since i didn’t look at them anymore, and maybe that’s just what caused that “eerie CG” feeling that i couldn’t pin point but had to do with neck or head shape. Naturally we are attracted to look at eye’s first, so if they are not of the right type they set us off thinking its CG…

Thanks !!!

the body of your horse is pretty good. the head has some issues: the eyes need be rotated, and you have no eye brow at all. an eye brow ridge together with the cheekbone give the correct surface where you can put the eye… and, as it is now, the eye looks too large… further more the nose area is wrong.the nose is three parts, the center part a rounded shape, from which the nostrils rise at the sides. so, usually from front view you have a squared view, with the nostrils slightly higher than the shape in the middle. … furthermore, the ears look strange in this position, they need go more sideways…

Hm the head is based upon a photo overlay, so at least from side view eye position and head shape should be correct. However you see something is strange, and i am looking to find the “eerie CG” part. While a 2D correct side view that doesnt mean its also 3D correct i might be wrong on details. Eyes to large might be a result of wrong iris size; it needs to be larger (as mentioned by Modron)
I’m failing at understanding you at:

  • Eyes need rotation, … to… front/side?.. more sidewards ? (in the beginning I started with wrong frontward eyes)
    And i think you like to see some cheekbone adjustments, right ?.. or ??..
    (i’m kinda worried that the head gets to wide, but… well maybe could you describe me what you see here as strange ?

  • The nose i studied several pictures (google image search), from which i noted that there are several types of horse noses.
    So i settled/went for a type with nosetrills that looks a bit like if it ‘can’ close the nose; and so this is a bit round shape and its slightly bend backwards, while the nose hole itself is lifted a bit upwards. I think ‘holes’ fits your description then, but a language miss understanding perhaps, or some other miss understanding, its often not easy to discuss 3D shapes. Could you explain a bit more what you think is strange. As i like to remove the “eerie CG” factor in the model.

The model has not yet eye-slash-hair; and no nose hairs either. There are now 2 hair groups: [overall skin] and [neck + legs + tail]
The whole horse uses a single texture 2048x2048; (mostly single toned brown) used by under laying skin; while hair using same shader does not use the texture color, but a fixed color + transparency
there is not enough detail on the texture to create the cell skin structure. But i could make nose hairs, (but i wonder if such detail would vanish, once i start moving the head); but your right here it adds realism, in wonder in final less closeupp animation if it would be needed, i will think this over, but might indeed need some improvement.

oh, i did not mean eyelashes… i meant the bony structure for the brow area, yes, noses come in a lot of shapes, but i not spoke of nostrils alone, but the whole surrounding area… here is very late, need sleep now, but i try make more clear tomorrow what i meant… overlay with foto gives you only one view(flawed by perspective of the camera, that shoot this foto)

i made some drawing over your render to show what i mean… no, it is not the missing detail that makes your horse looking cg, but that the head shape on your sculpt is essentially cylindrical, with slits for eyes and nostrils. a horse has however a complicated structure in head, it is more like a fat big cylinder rotated for the cheekarea, and on that stuck a tapered thin box for the face and nose/mouth area… i tried to show by the lines how ou can bring your horse in this direction. when the underlying model is correct, it will look realistic, even without fur and details… if the underlying forms are wrong, no fur and details can remove the cg look…


and, yes your horse might be correct in one view or two, (i think only the sideview outline looks correct) but these are only outlines, the forms that create these outlines need be correct …

Correct forms do matter. Did some adjustments on the head to demonstrate. Not sure how correct it is but shows how the looks change

Gif here http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=80130


Ok thanks, i begin to see the light now :slight_smile:
Besides that i also see my mesh limitations, … there is a lot of interesting shapes in horse heads.
In a way kinda funny, i did model drawing for years, but that was based on real people posing, and then you dont think about it; what becomes a natural structure to draw. I first googled up some horsehead skulls, to see what was going on, some surprising shapefeatures;

Behind the eye, there is a bit holow area for the ears, for i guess nerves etc. we have that too but much smaller. The eye holes in the skull are not much extending, like our human forward looking predator eyes; instead pretty flat to the skull. the extension is mostly muscle skin base, also cheeks are by bone structure flat, but their powerfull bite depends on cheek muscles who create the wider cheek look.
Then the area between cheeks and mouth is longer, … and based on pictures it varies a lot, i think younger horses have that area more flat, but older have complexer / vein like shape structures there.
I cannt ad them or i should a bump map.


While posting this message, i now see the image in postcard-stamp size; and then it looks OK.
But if it enlarges one sees of-course a bit more and notices still some things to do.
One of those things is that i should use texture based eyes, its unwrapped but not used yet.
I’m still going to work more on it, but the image is just to show you that i work on your advices, and that it indeed improves.

Now i got rid of the “eerie CG” feeling, now it feels like i’m working with stuffed dead animals :frowning:
A result i think because of all the tiny mesh changes, and the many renders to see their effect.
As the edit windows, cannt show me how close i am to the result. (rendering directly is to slow on my pc). Well pretty weird i don’t have that with human models when painting, or blendering.

oops i forget a blender future… border rendering in view.
Just mention might be handy for others too.
Press allign to camera view in one edit window press ctrl+B do a render, after it, preview of a small area while you edit.
since its not the whole drawing your spending less CPU/GPU time, on that, ans do are allowed to edit and see effects of complex materials faster



Oh and updated that mouth underside a bit too in this one, and improved fangs a bit more
Maybe i will keep the eyes like that, as mentioned earlier horses almost have no eyewith, and their eyes can be very dark.