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Mantis animation


jnord71

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I meant to enter this model in the Insect contest, but I didn't make the deadline. The background picture is one I took of Mt. Hood. The flies are from one of the extras cds. I found the flies' buzzing sound somewhere online. I made the mantis model and sounds and recorded the frogs and crickets sounds myself.

 

xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvsD_HdDCDM

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Jeff,

If you are having problems getting a link to show put an x in front of the URL and it should post.

Ah success! Sorry about that. I have no idea why the forum is processing some URLs (primarily youtube videos) incorrectly.

 

 

Nicely done.

I was watching that bird in the background wondering about whether it might be the mantis's demise.

 

Do you have plans to texture the mantis?

A little roughness and specularity alone might serve well in that capacity.

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Rodney, I thought I had textured it. It is true there isn't any Specularity or Roughness. Can you mix surface attributes and decals? I should know that. For some reason I didn't think you could. I have decaled the entire mantis with diffuse colors and decaled the face with bump and distortion maps. I don't think I lit the shot very well because I don't see the colors on the mantis (I did paint him lightly). I would appreciate any advice.

 

Thank you, Robcat. I appreciate your compliments.

bug test front0.jpg

bug test side0.jpg

bug test top0.jpg

bug test nord riding mantis_05.jpg

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Can you mix surface attributes and decals?

 

I believe the trick there would be to lower the percentage of the decal to allow some of the underlying surface attributes to show through. For instance, I assume the decal is set to Color (as opposed to Specular, Diffuse, etc.). Setting that to 66% would allow most of the decal to appear while allowing some of the underlying surface through. This could be surface attributes or other decals layered on top of each other. A specular map for instance would allow you to determine what parts of the model are shiny and what are not. An ambiance intensity setting (even if only 5%) would allow you to brighten some areas while leaving the other parts of the surface alone. Layering is definitely a great way to get those surfaces where you want them.

 

Here's a hastily put together example... not of praying mantis surfacing(!)... but just to show the effect of combining decals with surface attributes. In this case I just grabbed two random leopard skins from the internet and started layering. In the attached image I've used the same leopard image multiple times with different setups (displacement, color, etc.) but with none at 100% which allows. Ideally each of these images would be different to gain maximum advantage of that decal type.

 

Way back in the day there use to be a nice tutorial on layering of decals but a quick search didn't turn it up.

 

Aside: Most A:M Users tend to leave the roughness setting of a surface alone but I love to use a setting of 1 or 2 with either really small or huge scale to add noise to a texture. The roughness setting isn't like much because of the unrealistic patterns it produces at higher/default settings. My suggestion for using roughness? Don't use the default setting! ;)

 

In the case of a praying mantis I'd say we'd be looking for some translucency and other effects to give the appearance of healthy green leaves. (i.e. definitely NOT leopard spots!)

leopardlayering.jpg

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Here's a texture that is moving more in the right direction.

Another random image, this time leafy texture used over and over again with different settings (and pasted as a decal as a reversed/flipped image).

 

This image gets it's specularity from the cylinder's surface attribute although one map controls the size of that specularity.

At a guess I'd say that some finish of diffuse or specularity is the 80% solution to your texturing.

 

I like the look of the basic texture you have on the wings. That'd be really nice if that could be made to be a little layered with translucency.

playing.jpg

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Can you mix surface attributes and decals?

 

Each decal addresses a particular surface parameter, like color or specularity, so you can use both materials and decals on the same surface.

 

Example: You could have "roughness" set in a material and leave "color" unset so that a Color decal can do that work.

 

Also, with an alpha channel in a decal you can have the decal cover only part of a surface and allow surface attributes to be revealed in other areas.

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