Crab

The last test we had was to make a 3D realistic crab.We were provided with plenty of reference images, some of which made me feel sorry for the poor animal.

Looking at the shape of the crab, I felt pretty scared at first. I thought that this was going to be one of those things that I don't have the skills for yet. I thought I would be stuck redoing it over and over again, like it happens with new things usually. But to my surprise, that didn't happen. After setting up my reference planes in Maya, I started modelling right away. I started from a box and adding edge loops to it, I managed to shape it into a crab's body.

Next were the legs. I decided to build those separately from the main body as that way, it would be easier to animate as well. For the back legs, I modelled one, unwrapped it and then all I did was copy it across 4 times in different sizes and positions.

And this is what I ended up with: At this point I was at 3300 tris, quite under the 4000 tris budget. This made me want to change some things and redo the legs, make them more accurate and detailed, but I realized that I had already spent far too much time on this crab and it was best for me to move on and see how far I can get. I thought I could always improve it later, it was a good enough practice for now.

I used planar mapping for the body and Road Kill to unwrap the crab. That was fairly easy. I used Photoshop and the provided references to create my diffuse map. 

And this is when I ran out of time. This is only a draft before my final textures. The main body works, but the legs ended up looking strange, which wasn't surprising considering I only quickly cut some images for them, unlike for the body where I spent more time tweaking it to fit the shape.

Unfortunately I didn't get to the sculpting stage to create my normal maps. This assignment was set in an awkward time, between essay and dissertation proposal deadline and I had to prioritize writing over modelling. I am still pleased with the model I've got, considering how little time I spent on it. (Well little for me, I usually spend quite a lot of time doing the 3D assignments, so this one was a surprise.) 

As someone who is trying to specialize doing textures it was kind of annoying that I didn't get to finish them properly, but I think I will, when I have the time. It will be good practice. Texturing organic models is quite tricky,especially when you have cylindrical shapes, such as the crab's legs.