As promised I will show a time line of the Raptor I am creating this will be a Blog post that will be updated regularly during the project.

To begin with this Is my first model in the Autodesk Maya program so creating the raptor was a means of learning this new tool. So I started with reference images found of the internet and for those who do not know what the Deinonychus or commonly seen as the Raptor in the Jurrasic park movies this is what it looks like well so the palaeontologists think.

So I have been working on this model for quite some time and have restarted it recently so the first set of images are of the first attempt. I will explain why I restarted the project further down this post.

So to begin with I created the body out of one box and constantly extruding it and morphing the edges to fit the shape of the creature.

As you can see the body is some what correct. Next came the morphing of the head this part I find the most fun and yet the most frustrating, as it can be quite hard to get the points in the right place to make it look correct.

As you can see from the above image the face hasn’t got a mouth this is because I wanted to focus on getting the shape of the head correct before attempting to add detail also notice that I have created the toe claws.

Next I added detail around the eye and what I would call the beak part of the skull as you can see the Raptor is certinaly coming along well, but looking back on it I can begin to see where I was having problems mainly due to the legs not being morphed into the right way and the feet being to fat for lack of a better word, this would easily have been fixed if I didn’t add the detail in to early and just focused on getting the shape right.

Then I went on to the arms as you can see from the above image although the arms itself doesn’t look that bad, the shoulders them selves where a problem as I said before adding to much detail created a problem when adding the limbs as I had to many vertices or points to play with thus making it a bit more difficult to make the shoulders look like they weren’t just welded on to the side of the animal.

So After reflecting on the problems I had with the creating the dinosaur I decided to start over this time I drew out animal both head and body just so I could get a sense of the anatomy of it.

So after Drawing the Deinonychus head and body I then went on to modelling it again this time I decided I will not add detail until the body itself looks perfect as a low poly representation, then I will add the detail in.

The image above Is of a Low poly render of the Deinonychus as you can see form of the model already looks similar to that of the Deinonychus although there needs to be some vertices that need to be moved around to get the shape perfect but its coming along quite well. The 2 images below are of the wireframe and the smoothed version of this model.

As you can see from the above image the model itself is much cleaner than my first attempt at creating the Deinonychus, although I am still having problems with the feet I beileve that the arms and legs look much better on this model than on my previous attempt.

This image is just to show what it would look like if it was smoothed or in other words more polygons where created on the model, in comparison to my first attempt the arms look a lot more like they are part of the animal than looking like they where just stuck on. This version of the model seems to be coming along much better as I am taking more time just to get things right than rushing on to add detail.

As stated at the beginning I will be updating this post regularly with more Renders of the model as I continue to build upon the model and hopefully making my first realistic organic model.

17/11/2012

So today I started working on the face even getting the eye socket correct is very time consuming so for I have worked on this for two hours, using another model are a reference to understand how to create this part of the anatomy I now understand that it should be built around the eye instead of building the eye around the socket.

As you can See although not perfect yet the head is coming along slowly but surely. I am now putting into practice what I have learnt from drawing out the creature and from other models that I have been taking apart just to start to understand what it really looks like. One problem that I can see that I havent fixed yet is that the head hasen’t got much of a shape on it but I will fix that before I create another image. I wanted to show of the wire frame because I am impressed how neat it is compared to my previous models, so Im feeling more proud about this as I can clearly see I am improving the eye socket needs a lot more detail but it is a start.

03/12/12

Since My last Update I started again for a third time Due to the neck of the head being wrong and I really didn’t like how the legs and arms were extruded so I went back and refined the body again.

This time Instead of extruding the whole top of the leg, this time around I made sure that I only extruded from the calf downwards just to make sure that the leg would loop correctly and make the model itself have a better poly flow. You can see this in the above image although that being said the leg still needs a lot more work so that it is more rounded rather than a flat front. After I have done that I will then start adding the muscle definition to the model

As you can see even with a default render the model itself looks a lot better than my first attempt. This is mainly due to thinking more about the construction of the animal and constantly drawing it out so that the body just flows. I also like the fact that even though I haven’t used the smooth tool mainly due to being told to stop using it in renders as you really cant see the problems of the model when it really should be a learning process for myself but even without using the tool I can see that the shape of the creature is there it just needs a bit more detailing and tweaking so the parts are in the correct place.

So far I am loving this iteration of the creature Next time I update this post I will have the hand claws completed and the eye again and hopefully I will not need to start it again, fingers crossed.

21/12/2012

Its the end of the world and I’m sitting doing 3d stuff. I have finally got back into maya and editing this Raptor to make it look a lot better and I have to say its on its way to being a decent model. For this part I had to learn the art of edge loop, termination. This basically means making a high poly section merging into a low poly section much like a dual carriage way merges into a single lane road. So here is a few images of what I have done so far

The image above is of the toes, although they are perfect just yet you can see that they are really starting to look like how the feet are meant to, the Raptor is meant to have ran on its toes so the bottom of the foot is actually tilted vertically.

The image below is how the Raptor is looking over all much better than the previous attempts at it but in saying that still needs a lot of work.

03/01/13

I have been working on the dinosaur quite a bit although it doesn’t seem like I have done much sadly.

I have mainly been working on the face and mouth region to try and get the head of the Deinonychus to look a bit better than it has been looking.

The next image shows what the inside of the mouth looks like so far, it looks really rough at the minute with all the polys being aligned properly, so this is the rough creation of it. (more time will be needed to clean it up and make it look more smooth.

Inside the mouth

As you can see below I have been working on the head more as I dont like being able to see the lines, I have to tweaks the positions to get rid of the lines of the neck but I think its coming along nicely it still needs the addition of more edges to make it more smoothed

The last image I want to show is of the claws right now its very square and again I need to make it more high polyed, which I am having a problem as even with the addition with more edges and verts I am getting lost with the modifications of it, so It seems I need to add more edge loop terminations further up the arm instead of being really close to the actual claws.

14/01/2013

Just added the teeth although they look off slightly but overall I think it came out quite well.