Vampire Bat

[Manuel Poehlau]

Hey All,

I´ve started to work on a new project. I will do a vampire bat, or maybe a mutated version of this species. Besides the sculpting I want to improve my skills in texturing/rendering. Also the fur will be pretty tough, I don´t have much experience with hair/fur systems.

Here is a first screenshot of the lowres mesh, which is not done yet. I want a pretty decent topology for sculpting, unwrapping and skinning if needed. Still a lot to do.

Comments and critiques are welcome, of course ;)

More updates later.

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[Tomaya]

nice , look like an "oreillard" in french , a very common bat here ...
great start

[Manuel Poehlau]

Thanks. The oreillards have longer ears but the face is similar to the vampire bat. Btw, if someone knows some great websites for bat references, let me know. Sometimes the structure is hard to see, because pretty much everything is covered by the fur.
I´m working on the wings right now, I will post an update later this evening.

[Manuel Poehlau]

More pictures of the progress. Blocking out the body and wings. Have to cleanup the mesh in some areas before I jump into zbrush and work on the forms.

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[PascalR]

Bats are cool creatures, you're gonna have fun Manuel :)
Have a look at this thread, some interesting references here:
http://www.cgfeedback.com/cgfeedback/showthread.php?t=116&page=3

Keep it up! :beerchug:

P.

[Manuel Poehlau]

Cool, thanks. Those giant bats are really impressive!!

[Porkpie Samurai]

sweet man, I love vampire bats and the wires and general shape looks killer right now. Look forward to the sculpt

[Silva Spoon]

I look forward to the zbrush pass.

[migusan76]

Nice work so far Manuel! Looking forward to seeing more.

[clay]

Really nice base there, proportions look great and I'm looking forward to the sculpt pass! Although since this is the feedback forum I feel compelled to include some kinda constructive criticism, so I'll just say theres a few triangles in your topology that look like they would have been easy to re-route into a more even quad mesh for sculpting on :p

[oglu]

great start...
keep it up... like to see the texture work...

[Manuel Poehlau]

Thank you guys!
I think I will start with the zbrush pass today.

clay: Yeah, I know, I´ve already reworked the mesh and made it all-quad.
Also changed the polygon distribution a little bit, I will need more polys for the
wings to put in fine details later.

[Manuel Poehlau]

wow, after spending this night with shave and a haircut and different render engines,scanline, mental ray and vray for 3dsmax, I think, this is going to be like a trip into the hell.
It seems I get the best and fastest result when I use the default scanline renderer. Second comes mental ray, it´s a lot slower but acceptable.
My favourite renderer is vray and sadly, rendering fur is sooo slow that it doesn´t make sense to use it.
To render the fur with the scanline and the bat in vray seems to be the only solution for me now. But I hope that I will find a way to render the model and the fur in one pass.

[Ken]

Hiya! really nice start, I thought! yeah, if you could fix the problems about the topology, it would be a great base mesh! keep it up! Also, shave and a hair cut is really great tool, but I didn't use vray because I'm not a max user so far...
looking forward to seeing the fur-works and details works.
What software are you going to use when you'll create his details?
nice work, anyway!

[oglu]

think some highress textures would be cool on these bat...
so about 10uv tiles... and painting all in mudbox...

[Manuel Poehlau]

After doing some more tests, I´ve decided to go with mental ray and this really fast hairshader from this guy http://www.puppet.tfdv.com/download/index_e.shtml.
I would prefer vray, I think it has better lights/shadows,fastsss and displacements, but for this one, with all the fur I want to avoid vray.

Ken: I will use zbrush for sculpting and for the texturing maybe mudbox+photoshop, not sure yet.

Oglu: Hehe, yeah, depends on my final output . I don´t think I´ll need such a huge texture resolution.But we´ll see later :)

[migusan76]

:thumbsup: Nice choice Manuel. Mental ray is awesome in my opinion, The hair rendering can be medium slow, but I don't see alot of fur on the bat so you should be pretty fine. Also you can force the hair to take occlusion into account and final gather which gives it a nice touch.. :D

[Manuel Poehlau]

Here are the first couple of hours in zbrush. Just a quick test to see where I´m heading to.
I think I will have to be carefull with the folds and find the right balance between smooth and wrinkled areas later.

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[PascalR]

Nice start!

Not sure how close you want to get to the real thing or if it is a mutant one, but I would keep working on the lips, if you look at this reference, you'll notice how the upper lips meet with a flatter zone in the middle. Yours defin like a pointy shape. I would smooth out the tubular effect around the upper lips and get the lower lip small bits more pronounced and defined. Like here:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/animals/images/1024/vampire-bat.jpg

The nostrils and ears shape on your model don't quite match this reference but again this could be a design decision.

Body looks cool, the head feels a bit small but could be because fur is missing, and I would put skin folds where the muscles meet the membranes to feel more tension.


Keep it up :dance:

[Manuel Poehlau]

Thanks Pascal! I caught myself mixing up some parts from different faces I´ve found in the net. Especially the nose shape seems to be very different on some bats, even within the same species.
So I didn´t try to match one reference pic exactly. Got a little bit sidetracked.
I might end up making some personal design choices while I´m working on it.
Good points about the lips, I will work on that and also make some changes to the ears shape. They´re still pretty rough.

[Manuel Poehlau]

Little progress on the head, still trying to match the refs, but getting closer.

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[Manuel Poehlau]

Quick vray testrender. I like vray´s fastsss. A bit too much in this case,though ;)

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[PascalR]

Cool! i like the mouth better, ears and nostrils are looking closer to the ref too. Nice render, there's never too much sss ;)

Keep it up! :beerchug:

[leslie.button]

Looking really great Manuel! I'm liking this render. I agree that you will need to be careful about the amount of winkles in the wings, since they are skin and have a certain amount of elasticity, although the SSS does a good job of fading them. Can't wait to see more!

The anatomy in the arms is working well, certainly making it look very convincing

[tonytrout]

ugly, scarey little beast, but looking good :thumbsup:

[rasmusW]

very very nice manuel!

this is sure coming along nicely. great render too.
the wrinkles work well, with the sss.

-r

[jasonlin]

bat is always cool man
love the sss on the wing
nice job:thumbsup:

[Manuel Poehlau]

Thank you guys!
Actually bat wings doesn´t really look like that in reality. So it´s just a kind of eye candy, sculpey-like render, but I like it. ;)
I found this great reference picture in the web. I will have to reduce the thickness of the membranes to get a similar look.
Today I want to work harder on the sculpt, the face doesn´t look really organic,
need to work on the legs and feet etc..

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[BrettSinclair]

Really cool. Will you be adding the fur as well? These critters freak me out :D

[tiktok]

this looks great! keep going!

I agree with Pascal, never too much SSS ;)

:beerchug:
-Bayard

[Manuel Poehlau]

Hey Brett, yes, adding fur is on the to do list. I´m still not sure,which renderer
I will use for it. Mental Ray is really fast for fur works, while I prefer vray over
MR for skin shading.
And indeed, these are really freaky creatures :)

Thanks Bayard! yeah SSS is a cool effect :thumbsup:

[Manuel Poehlau]

Edit: Removed the rendertest for now.Added a screenshot with the feet instead.
Need to find some more references, especially for the backside.


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[PascalR]

Cool stuff! I feel like the toes could be more elongated like here:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3045/2939120204_f57e514b41_o.jpg


and man some of these little creatures faces look so crazy! check these out:

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http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/animals/images/1024/big-eared-bat.jpg

[Manuel Poehlau]

Thanks Pascal. I think the reference you´ve found is from one of these bats.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Pteropus_conspicillatus.jpg/450px-Pteropus_conspicillatus.jpg

They are more like flying dogs. It´s the biggest bat species that exists.

The smaller bats doesn´t seem to have such long toes.
I could make them a little bit thinner,though.

Haha and yeah, there are some really crazy bats out there.
I also like this one :D

http://www.apus.ru/im.xp/049050053048055054054048051.png

[Manuel Poehlau]

Spent some more time sculpting the head. The ears are still bothering me, but the face is getting closer.

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And some very quick and dirty photoshop hair, to see if things are going in the right direction.

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[ianucci]

Looks great Manuel :). Concerning the ears I don't think they look quite delicate enough when compared to the ref. Looking forward to seeing the finished piece.

[Manuel Poehlau]

Thanks Ian! I will take care of the ears today. I also think that some asymmetry will help a lot to make them look more interesting.
But still I have to work on the shapes before I turn symmetry off.

[Porkpie Samurai]

Wonderful sculpting, I really like how its coming along. I think it will be a great piece to texture too, playing with all the different areas of specularity around the ears and face.

[Manuel Poehlau]

Poor naked bat wants some fur .. ;)

Thanks Chris. Yes, I think I will enjoy the texturing process.


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[oglu]

are the legs and arms still in progress.?
they look a bit left behind...

maybe you could also work a bit more on the ribcage...

[Manuel Poehlau]

Yes, pretty much everything is still in progress.
Just worked on the overall shape a little bit. The head is bigger now, made the body less bulky(the fur will give him more volume),moved the hint legs a little bit backwards.
I will work on it for a while now until I´ll post the next update. Just wanted to show it, because I think it looks somehow funny without the fur :D

[ianucci]

He looks a proud nudist to me. Look at that smile!

[Manuel Poehlau]

Haha, yes, vampire bats seem to smile all the time due to their mouth structure.