Glitterwolf Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 ooohh I'm so going to get that Spider, it will eat Dinosaurs in my Lost World! 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Popular Post TaleSpinner Posted November 21, 2019 Author Moderator Popular Post Share Posted November 21, 2019 The next step was to cut the abdomen into 2 halves and make it hollow. To do this I needed to make the bottom of the abdomen clearly different than the top, so painters wouldn't have a difficult seam to deal with running across the sides of the abdomen. I decided to make is look like thickened lumpy hide, then divided it where the thickened part started: Concepted: Sharpened and cut: Inside: (True fact: 2 d 20's can fit in there. I'm thinking of using magnets on mine to make the spider into a dice box/guardian.) Ron wasn't sold on this though; he preferred that the upper part overlap the lower instead. I agreed, but that caused several technical challenges to overcome. I did it, by adding a ridge of small spines along the edge of the upper part: After that, Ron accepted it and here are the final shots: It on a 130mm (5") disk: Now I mentioned that that was the final, but...there have been new developments, and I am back working on this one again, so stay tuned for at least one more installment as I deal with production issues. The appearance and size of it won't likely be affected, more we are adding engineering features to make it easier for you to assemble it (it is a bit of a nightmare as is). 29 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loim Posted November 21, 2019 Share Posted November 21, 2019 This is pretty amazing. It brings to mind a certain well known spider who might or might not have been present at the Darkening of Valinor... 8 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jellyranger69 Posted December 2, 2019 Share Posted December 2, 2019 This is fascinating stuff, I could read these all day! Thanks for putting the TLC into your design...great work. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rainbow Sculptor Posted December 19, 2019 Share Posted December 19, 2019 I'm so glad you were the one doing this haha I truly know nothing about spiders or their anatomy but as I read through this thread I think "no, that's not quite right. Not really but that could work....YES! Awesome!" You and Ron really nailed it on this one! 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator TaleSpinner Posted December 20, 2019 Author Moderator Share Posted December 20, 2019 About a month ago, Ron contacted me about the spider. Essentially, it was way too hard to put together. The legs all ended in balls that fit into sockets in the body. There really wasn't an easy way to tell which leg went where. Funny thing is that I had just printed out the mini myself and I was even having a hard time figuring out where everything went and getting it all to fit. I was actually going to contact Ron about it when I got his text. We decided to rework the leg attachment points into keyed pyramids that would slot into the body. He also wanted a base that would have index points for the leg tips and just touch the abdomen to give it all better control. And bones, he wanted lots of bones. I quickly roughed out the following mountain pass scene, with a rough carved stairway as a concept to show Ron. Ron loved the concept, but the cost of such a huge base might send Ed to the hospital. Ron had originally been thinking of a more flat base strewn with bones, but did prefer this one. I asked him to let me work on it and I'd remove cost, while keeping the feel of the piece. Essentially, I had to get it down to near the mass of a 130mm round base with bones. I also said I would mock up the bones only base and they could decide which they liked best. I feverishly went to work on that base. It was a great challenge to make it fit my vision and yet meet cost parameters. I chopped I sliced, I hollowed it out; I pulled out every scrap of pixels I could without compromising the feel or strength of the piece. In the end, I think I ended up with something better than the original idea. I think that is because every rock, crease, steps, etc. had to be placed with thought and really tuned. What do you think? Now for the bones. I didn't have any bones. I had yet to start making myself a digital library of parts, so I had to start making bones. I sculpted a skull, a skull with no jaw, a vertebrae, 4 ribs, a femur, a humerus, an ulna, a radius, a scapula, a pelvis, and a fibula. These I figured I could copy and scatter across the base. The only problem, in digital, you can't really just scatter anything. Each bone had to be placed. There ended up being about 100 bones on the rock base and over 700 on the bone base. I also made some rookie mistakes with these bones. I made them at way too high a resolution, so each one added between 75,000 and 500,000 points to the model. I quickly ended up with point counts near 100 million for the rock base and 370 million for the bone base. My PC was not happy about the latter (but at least now I know what it takes to slow it down...rampant stupidity ). The other issue with this is that each bone must be attached into the base so it can be merged into a single layer. That means each needed to be fanaggled into place and then have the rock around it adjusted into it so they would merge without undercuts or holes. This was hard on the Rock base, damn near impossible on the bone base. The pictures of the bone base shown below are at a point where I gave up and snapped pictures of the concept for Ron, really hoping he would choose the rock base. There are HOURs maybe days of work left on the bone base, and I hope to never see it again. There are actually still many bones floating above the base in these pictures, and no matter what I did it seemed I kept finding more. That said it was a good lesson for me in a lot of aspects of ZBrush. These were the pictures I sent to Ron for approval and a decision on the base: Comparison of the two: And pictures should the spider abdomen touching the rocks: The red circle shows the point at which it touches: As you may already know by the announcement on Reaper Live last night, the rock base won!!!!! As for the keyed legs, well I never took pictures of those. I'll do that later when I next have ZBrush running. That is a whole post in and of itself anyway. 20 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clearman Posted December 20, 2019 Share Posted December 20, 2019 I also like the rock base. The dimension gives you more to look at, and it's size is definitely lends itself to be mounted on a flat base, or be integrated into a diorama. That said, the diorama idea I had for Arakoth has me torn between not using the rock base at all, or needing to buy a second model... :-/ 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GHarris Posted December 20, 2019 Share Posted December 20, 2019 If you will forgive the backseat sculpting.... I wonder if the bone base could have been ZRemeshed into manageable polys? Then perhaps the individual bones could have been made into Insert Nanomesh brushes, then selectively inserted using the ZModeler brush? It still would have been a bunch of tedious work but maybe it could have saved you some sanity? It looks like the base was relatively flat so it might have worked. The Nanomesh sliders could have helped with random placement/sizes/orientation and the depth that the bones were sunk into the underlying mesh. Of course the results speak for themselves, this is an excellent model! Your post just got me thinking about how I would do this on a technical level. 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGP Posted December 21, 2019 Share Posted December 21, 2019 @TaleSpinner At some point will you be saving all those bones in an electronic ossuary? 14 hours ago, Clearman said: That said, the diorama idea I had for Arakoth has me torn between not using the rock base at all, or needing to buy a second model... :-/ Use the rock base as an assembly jig, don’t glue the legs to the base (blu-tac as needed), then detach the spider and install on the Diorama. 15 hours ago, TaleSpinner said: These I figured I could copy and scatter across the base. The only problem, in digital, you can't really just scatter anything. I saw a guy have almost exactly the same problem scratch building terrain (he was wanting to put yellow poseys on a grassy area...and they looked very placed and quite unnatural). The only thing I could think of was to do an actual random process...somehow. An idea for a bone strewn base might be a much assembly required approach. Provide a textured 130mm disk and a huge sprue of Bones and Skulls and Spines and such. Leave it up to the hobbyist to randomly scatter the bones on the base (and individually glue them!). Honestly, that might be a nifty standalone product right there. A big round base to get you started, and a stack of sprues with lots of Bones and Skulls. Think of all the 40K guys that would buy multiples of that ( ! ) to customize the bases in their armies with. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator TaleSpinner Posted December 21, 2019 Author Moderator Share Posted December 21, 2019 14 hours ago, GHarris said: If you will forgive the backseat sculpting.... I wonder if the bone base could have been ZRemeshed into manageable polys? Then perhaps the individual bones could have been made into Insert Nanomesh brushes, then selectively inserted using the ZModeler brush? It still would have been a bunch of tedious work but maybe it could have saved you some sanity? It looks like the base was relatively flat so it might have worked. The Nanomesh sliders could have helped with random placement/sizes/orientation and the depth that the bones were sunk into the underlying mesh. Of course the results speak for themselves, this is an excellent model! Your post just got me thinking about how I would do this on a technical level. I was starting to look in that direction, but really had no idea where to start (hard to look something up when you don’t know what it’s called). Spent the whole time thinking “there’s got to be an easier way” but having little luck in finding it. Thanks for the terms, I now have something to look up. 7 hours ago, TGP said: @TaleSpinner At some point will you be saving all those bones in an electronic ossuary? Use the rock base as an assembly jig, don’t glue the legs to the base (blu-tac as needed), then detach the spider and install on the Diorama. I saw a guy have almost exactly the same problem scratch building terrain (he was wanting to put yellow poseys on a grassy area...and they looked very placed and quite unnatural). The only thing I could think of was to do an actual random process...somehow. An idea for a bone strewn base might be a much assembly required approach. Provide a textured 130mm disk and a huge sprue of Bones and Skulls and Spines and such. Leave it up to the hobbyist to randomly scatter the bones on the base (and individually glue them!). Honestly, that might be a nifty standalone product right there. A big round base to get you started, and a stack of sprues with lots of Bones and Skulls. Think of all the 40K guys that would buy multiples of that ( ! ) to customize the bases in their armies with. Yes, the bones are saved in my library. That would be cool, not sure if Ron would go for it. Some of the bones are pretty thin; without being attached to something, they may not print. 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tordelback Posted December 22, 2019 Share Posted December 22, 2019 It's to Talespinner's credit that this thread - and the story and outcome of the rock base - have sold me on adding Arakoth to my Bones mountain. Lovely stuff. 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Administrators Reaper_Jon Posted December 27, 2019 Super Administrators Share Posted December 27, 2019 Wow @TaleSpinner I just found this, I'm new to the forums! and im slowly combing through all the stuff on here to try adn get caught up. stumbled upon this! this was awesome to read! maybe we can do something more in the future with this type of stuff! I have alot of ideas. Just wanted to say that this was awesome to see! 6 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator TaleSpinner Posted December 27, 2019 Author Moderator Share Posted December 27, 2019 2 hours ago, Reaper_Jon said: Wow @TaleSpinner I just found this, I'm new to the forums! and im slowly combing through all the stuff on here to try adn get caught up. stumbled upon this! this was awesome to read! maybe we can do something more in the future with this type of stuff! I have alot of ideas. Just wanted to say that this was awesome to see! Thanks Jon. I'm game for future ideas. I've been doing these WIP style posts for years. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Administrators Reaper_Jon Posted December 27, 2019 Super Administrators Share Posted December 27, 2019 1 hour ago, TaleSpinner said: Thanks Jon. I'm game for future ideas. I've been doing these WIP style posts for years. Yeah, i'm a millennial who just didn't get forums. So now im on them and trying to get my footing, i'm much better on other socials. 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator TaleSpinner Posted December 28, 2019 Author Moderator Share Posted December 28, 2019 21 hours ago, Reaper_Jon said: Yeah, i'm a millennial who just didn't get forums. So now im on them and trying to get my footing, i'm much better on other socials. LOL, I'm an X'er who's very at home here and just doesn't quite get why we need all these new fangled outlets. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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