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Description
In my 3D Character Modeling class, we had only two projects for the whole term since modeling and texture building takes up so much time. We were given free range over what kind of creature we could do--from animals that currently exist, to animals that no longer existed, to animals that we personally designed. Naturally I wanted to make a unicorn because I figured it'd be simple enough to do, but the more I though about the more I grew disatisfied with the idea. I wanted to make something unique, something that would be on par with my classmates' creatures. So I began looking into types of animals photoshoped together for ideas. I did not find much inspiration there so I just began looking at different animals, their anatomy, and their meshes. I eventually settled on making a sabertooth tiger or a horse. Instead of trying to figure out which one I wanted to do more, I decided to merge the two together. And thus my saber horse was born.

I hand painted the texture map since I was having so much problems with my Mudbox (...the damn thing got to the point where I could not even put a simple scratch into the base model). I originally had planned to sculpt out the hair on the tail and hooves in Mudbox, but then my teacher told me that it had to be done in Maya (I was told this right after I finished retopologizing my mesh (because Maya was a bitch that turned my quad mesh into triangles and despite clicking the Quad button refused to revert back to its quad mode)).

I came really close to the image that I painted in photoshop and I hope to be able to work on it some more in order to add some wrinkles onto the top of the nose, flick the ears back some, add a certain part to distinguish that my sabor horse is in fact male, fix the hooves a bit, and to add some fur onto the sides of his face.

I am proud of my acomplishment regardless of my grade on it. I know I was marked off for not using Mudbox to make the texture or normal maps, but who knows what else I was marked off on?

Time: Approximately 5 weeks
Tools: Autodesk Maya 2015 and Adobe Photoshop CS4/CS6

Original Model Sheet:

Description
In my 3D Character Modeling class, we had only two projects for the whole term since modeling and texture building takes up so much time. We were given free range over what kind of creature we could do--from animals that currently exist, to animals that no longer existed, to animals that we personally designed. Naturally I wanted to make a unicorn because I figured it'd be simple enough to do, but the more I though about the more I grew disatisfied with the idea. I wanted to make something unique, something that would be on par with my classmates' creatures. So I began looking into types of animals photoshoped together for ideas. I did not find much inspiration there so I just began looking at different animals, their anatomy, and their meshes. I eventually settled on making a sabertooth tiger or a horse. Instead of trying to figure out which one I wanted to do more, I decided to merge the two together. And thus my saber horse was born.

I hand painted the texture map since I was having so much problems with my Mudbox (...the damn thing got to the point where I could not even put a simple scratch into the base model). I originally had planned to sculpt out the hair on the tail and hooves in Mudbox, but then my teacher told me that it had to be done in Maya (I was told this right after I finished retopologizing my mesh (because Maya was a bitch that turned my quad mesh into triangles and despite clicking the Quad button refused to revert back to its quad mode)).

I came really close to the image that I painted in photoshop and I hope to be able to work on it some more in order to add some wrinkles onto the top of the nose, flick the ears back some, add a certain part to distinguish that my sabor horse is in fact male, fix the hooves a bit, and to add some fur onto the sides of his face.

I am proud of my acomplishment regardless of my grade on it. I know I was marked off for not using Mudbox to make the texture or normal maps, but who knows what else I was marked off on?

Time: Approximately 5 weeks
Tools: Autodesk Maya 2015 and Adobe Photoshop CS4/CS6

Original Model Sheet: