M.U.L.E. (was War Horse 2115 WIP)

25/01/2015

Change of direction slightly as I was mocking up the scene it became apparent what I had in my head wasn’t going to work as there was no reason for the horse and human to be in the scene where they were :slight_smile: So instead of medic they now engineer and then I remembered M.U.L.E. both the old Atari game which i spent many a happy hour playing and the Robert Heinlein reference’s / general beast of burden which all fell into place better.

01/02 assets created so far for scene everything needs unwrapping and texturing still ! Working on scene, need to create basic space craft as well!






Eyes
retopologized eye piece, all of these pieces are going to have some sort of rubber piece bringing them all together and also I want to be able to rig the rear of the helmet to open out so it would actually go on so keeping that in mind as i work through it.


Now I went a bit off on a tangent :slight_smile: I wanted a mechanical iris over a camera type eye, I fond a 5 petal design i liked the look of and modelled it but it didn’t overlap and I didn’t like the look of it open. I doubled it up so 19 petals in total offset and made sure it would still work, then I got a bit carried away and rigged it, un-textured example here which I was pretty pleased with

then got really carried away, I’ve been in the back of my mind how I was going to articulate the horses neck when I get to that point as the range of motion is so great and I want to keep it hard surface. Anyway one thing led to another and I ended up modelling this with an experimental bendy pipe I’d seen on grab stands I made and then textured it a bit then rigged it. This is going to be the eye, just won’t be on the bendy pipe obviously :slight_smile:

Close up, I’m pretty pleased how it turned out not sure I’ll do it metal in the real thing but looked nice with the gold and silver, going to be working out how to fit it to the eye socket this afternoon, then have a push to finish off this panel and onto the next one!


Fitted eye’s, glass, seals used real gas mask for reference, decided against doing more detail on that panel as the iris’s are pretty intricate and I think that’s probably enough but will revisit later. Put some basic materials on just to have a quick look, like the look of the way the light interacts with the iris’s and the glass. Trying not to get distracted and build some human steam punk goggles with the iris’s :slight_smile: Working on core frame for rest of the panels now thinking on how it should go together so the side panels can slide out if needed. Was surprised how easy it was to mirror the Iris and armatures, I was expecting everything to break and point in opposite directions etc., must be getting the hang of local and world space with parenting etc. at last!


Loving the lights so far at night and how the light interacts with the details.


Man, that rigging is wonderful and truly impressive. And the modeling is also very good. Cool stuff.

This is looking really good.

Wow, I love that last image! Really great. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the feedback much appreciated! also happy to take improvement suggestions as well :slight_smile: That last dark picture was a pure accident I had turned off world lighting for some reason and went into render view, then was wow I have to render that :slight_smile:

I’ve finished retopologizing the helmet now, split it into separate parts where I may want to rig it in the future and to give it obvious constriction lines. then created rubber grommet to join then together, in retrospect I should have done the rubber strips before splitting it out, made life hard for my self as I don’t have a straight edge and have loads of weird angles but in the end I prefer it as it’s not 100% perfect as it bridges the gaps and looks better I think because of that as it would bunch up a bit in real life. Took front clasps off as they didn’t fit any more with the flow in my eyes but the parts live on in other bits :slight_smile:

Not 100% sure about the size of the gas mask canisters but will leave it for now, looks good from the front I think but not sure from the side, will see what it looks like once I have the body done. Going to need to be really careful with lens choice as it’s easy to make the head look weird as it’s long, it is the correct shape as I made an low poly anatomically correct horse a while back and used that to check proportions and it’s no different to real photography with horses you get more distortion close with wide lenses than you do with humans as the head and body are elongated away so I’ll keep that in mind.

Put a bit of extra lighting in the check reflections etc. these not final materials or colours etc just for test renders, well I quite like the rubber material I made for the strips that might stay :slight_smile:

detailing the rest of the helmet now! the two not joined panels on the side are going to be bolt on transparent panels I think with details underneath, well that’s the current plan, I’m making it up as I go along so who knows!

Loving the glass and plastic, I followed the tutorials here for those materials http://www.chocofur.com/ don’t know if these guys are on the forum or not but thanks if you are, really good site!




Finished first round of detailing on rest of helmet, going to leave it there for now, a few bits I want to tweak and ended up not making the side panels transparent I think it would have been too much and I really liked them once I had set them properly. Will hopefully look nice when I have them textured scuffed up with writing etc.

Going to start on neck now, going to rig as I go (well that’s the plan I need to figure it out!) don’t want to get caught out at the end having something I can’t pose / animate easily and it’s going to be hard to keep everything hard surface and get the range of motion I want I’m going to have to compromise on the range of motion but wan’t enough so I can do the more usual poses with the head and neck, the rest of the body should be easier I think as less range of motion.

I’m already regretting bringing the helmet part so far back and down as I wasn’t thinking about doing the whole horse when I started! Looking at reference images I can see where the knights of old ran into same issues as me and cheated with chain mail or left gaping vulnerabilities! :slight_smile:


Pleased with rear vent


And probably should have looked at these about 2 weeks ago I can see me having to chop the back off the helmet at some point there is not a lot of detail there, but going to stick with it for now :slight_smile:


This is progressing very nicely! Great job. :slight_smile:

You can tell I have lots of time off over xmas :slight_smile:

Neck all went a bit better and quicker than i was expecting, just test render to check clearance, after lots of fiddling I think it will work, I’m thinking have the gaps but then have some visible pistons moving etc. and a flexible bit in side to fill it out, not sure if I’m being over ambitious but going to have a go see how I get on.

My main concern is he looks really cute in the test animation, well to me, not sure how I managed that! He’s called Hani now as he appears to have a personality all of a sudden by accident :slight_smile:

Wow. Superb rigging on that Iris!!!

Scary horse

Neck Done and rigged so I can pose it, that was a lot harder than I was expecting! but glad I’ve done it now and ended up with something I can pose. Had to learn so much. Have put a short video up if it’s of interest to anyone and I’d be really interested to get any feedback on better ways to do it, it is working which is great, everything controlled from one bone, but I wonder if I’ve overcomplicated it (as always!!)

Had to chop back of helmet as I thought I might but it looks better for it. Leaning more towards medical support horse than solder now, more in keeping with the horse spirit and when I did the test animation it felt softer so changed tact.

Became obvious that gas mask canisters made head look too long and were also now out of keeping with the more shiny hi tech look rather than steam punk that I was original going for! Will remodel that part so it flows with the rest of the muzzle later. I’ve kept it modular with a view to being able to swap out attachments anyway so no big deal.


Blocked out body and roughly sculpted it then put basic rig on it and hacked about with sculpting until nothing bashed into each other any more, wasn’t very scientific approach :slight_smile: smoothed it out, ran some test images against poses to check I had anatomy correct, not far of I think ?, I tried really hard to get mostly full range of motion. The joints are all just temp I didn’t want to get into detail until I had made sure it worked mechanically. Going to refine now, re-topologize and detail, looking forward to this bit :slight_smile:

I hadn’t appreciated just how hard it is to pose a basic shot without knowing the lens, camera position etc. in a still frame, used to having the computer solve it form me with video :slight_smile:




Sculpted legs, retopologized them + body. Was really careful to make sure the legs had clearance for how I know they can move and let that define a lot of the shape. Have only got lateral movement through the shoulder, there is slight rotation and lateral movement below the knee, well it’s not really a knee it’s the equivalent of a human wrist so I know there are 2 bones above the knee like a forearm and then a wrist like structure to the hoof but I’ve left it as is for now and see if I need to tweak it later. I think it will be ok / you wont see anyway when I get the armour layer on.

Legs correct proportion for the horse except obviously he’s got a big helmet on :slight_smile: so his head looks overly large to me at the moment. I didn’t think it looked that bad when I had blocked the legs out before sculpting and everything in blue here is now effectively the base skeleton that I’m going to put another layer of armour over the top as I detail so I think I’m going to leave it as it is proportion wise at the moment until I’ve done that layer (even tho it’s really annoying me !) Need to fix the neck as well it looks to weedy for the head now but I’ll do that later as well.

Onto armour and detailing, if I’ve missed anything obvious please do say!



I may have bones in about the right place but I still can’t pose it nicely, was so much harder than I was expecting!


Wonderful and sweet hard surface modelling. I like the compositions where you show how you can pose it.

Thanks for the kind words minoribus! I think I was a bit over the top with the legs given there is a layer of armour to go on top but I learnt loads doing them which is the main point of this project and it will make the armour paneling easier I think and will add a layer of extra interest visually in the end as you will be able to see some bits of the skeleton.

Looks a bit more in proportion now I have basic armour layer on, also looking a bit like a horse storm trooper at the moment :slight_smile: Going to leave the detailing on the armour for a bit and get the tail done, I just realised I hadn’t given that any consideration and I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to approach it yet!

Grabbed background from blendswap just to quickly see what he looked like in a scene, thanks MConDA4ever!, details below as licence.
Name: Star Wars Imperial Hangar
Author: MConDA4ever.
http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/75810


Finished detailing, still need to sort materials and texturing but I’m going to do that once I have a scene set up.
Rendered with a bit more effort with lighting, pretty pleased with how it turned out, going to be medical assist in the scene so no weapons :slight_smile: Fully rigged for posing as well.

Going to start researching how to create large scale scenes now, also suspect I’m going to want some human interest so might end up having to do a human as well but will see how it goes.


Again a very nice result!

But something was disturbing me and I didn’t know what. Now I think it’s the fact that it has no ears, no mane and no real tail. I guess it would look much more like a horse if it had those features. Just compare the silhouette of the third image in #13 with your last render. It would benefit so much from a more horselike silhouette.

Thanks minoribus, I do love that image in #13 and see what you are saying, let me have a think, I was thinking about it too literally from a utility point of view I think :slight_smile: and for working horses they would either have the mane shaved off (hogged) or plaited down, same for the tail it would have been plaited up or cut high so it didn’t drag in the mud etc. which is what I went for + it was obviously easier ;-). I did rig a proper tail with like flex coming off it but thought it was a bit over the top when I was testing ideas. I’m not 100% on the metal bit’s on the neck either. I think I might hold off fiddling more until I get a rough scene set up and see what it looks like in that. I’m working through compositing courses trying to get my head around that as well for the main scene, this is going to take a while I think! Will see how that image sits with me over the next couple of days I would like to get some sort of mane and tail but I need to think how I’d do that in keeping with the more hard surface look, not sure how I would do that yet :slight_smile: