In this multi-part series, I’ll be covering how to box-model a stylized dragon, making heavy use of the various sculpt tools. The texturing will cover creating tangent normal maps and using the “toon shader” to get a nice cel-shaded look. I’ll also go into some intermediate rigging with some nice animations; from walking to pouncing to flying. and finally we’ll look into setting up a good composition with props and lighting.
In this second part, I do some tweaking of the face, and go on to add the body, legs, and tail. I also create the inside of the mouth. This is required if we are to make him roar later.
This file got a bit large also and we will be working on future ones to break these apart into two downloads for purchase or for the Citizens.
Can’t wait to see this part ! (surf-controlled here
)
Thanks a lot David !
Could you answer this question : in sculpt mode, what is the difference between the options (like Grab) from the brush menu and the ones from the tool menu ?
This series rocks !!
i honestly couldn’t say
if you notice, i sort of bounce back and forth between the two 
The Brushes contain attributes from the tool menu. so In theory the “Grab” brush should ave the grab attribute, which it does by default.
Things can get pretty confusing from the new system, but it was made to be simpler. Just to finish my point, you can change the brush named “Grab” to “Tug” and keep the tool as a grab tool. Now you have a custom brush.
Hope that clears it up.
veQue
The idea is to allow the user to create several different brushes, with different textures, sizes, shapes and so on…
@veQue and Paulo Barde: Thanks a lot for your answer ! That’s pretty clear now.
@Dave:
I noticed in the first part of this series that used both, so it was confusing me ! Anyway, thanks again for this great series, I love it !
Hey thanks a lot for this series, I’m learning a lot of new tricks
David. do you ever use hide in edit mode?
yea you do
gotta watch the hole thing before commenting
but probably not often enough
kick ass. All without using a reference guide. That’s definitely a method of modeling the interior of a mouth that I have to try on my models. Can’t wait to see part 3.
lol i hope this doesn’t offend you but your dragon isn’t coming off as strong or muscular but he looks like he has a pot belly…
just sayin’ his slender snout and neck don’t match his big stomach.
maybe you can make it like this:
http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=dragon&order=9&offset=24#/ddyyaq
but of coarse, you should keep the muscularity.
the rib cage and the stomach seem to merged and it doesn’t seem anatomically correct.
just my opinion ;0
I personally think it looks like it has inspiration from a brontosaurus, which would have a pot belly and long neck.
So they match fine for what he’s trying to achieve.
those were quite clumsy creatures weren’t they?
muscular and pot belly is just a strange combination, sorry.
Maybe thats why it says “Stylized Dragon” in the title.
haha, don’t worry. part 3 will modify the whole body shape, so he’ll look a lot better
YAY!!! ^_^
lol it was bothering me how his body was like that =P
Phew, lol.
Really, I’m not a fan of how it’s looking like now, either
Good to hear that it’ll change
But great work on the tutorial side
(Well, at the end you did so but at the beginning it took you 8 mins to finish the nostrils and that was with a mistake you found WAY later. Would have been 2 mins without error if you had used hiding right away^^)
Maybe just hide the mesh a bit more often.
Can one animate with blendshapes in Blender, or other some way change his expression in a aniomated scene?
@Trond Yes you can! They’re called Shapekeys in Blender (Vertex Keys in older versions). You can find them under Mesh Data in 2.5 or next to the modifiers panel in 2.4x.
I could already tell from the first part that this would be an epic series. thanks for giving a workflow for the inside of the mouth. It’s super appreciated.
david..this dragon hv wing or not..??
check this out
http://www.draconian.com/whatis/whatis.htm
Wow – that is a cool page.. hah had no idea the cataloged different “species” of dragon. Neat.
I think we can eat some dragon species…
Long time fan dude, you really have to tell me something tho, i did an animation with one of your tutorials, and i UV mapped easy with your mark seam shortcut and when i render the animation, the texture isnt on my animation. Why?
@Spencer This is wild guessing, but did you apply the texture to your material, or did you just unwrap and map it?
waiting for part 3
thx
It has been great working with the Dragon. I am working on a simplified version that I will be using to teach memory skills to the elderly with dementia. Great work I can’t wait for more.
Sammo
really great end result with the modelling , i love long tutorials and ur misc. comments are great man
,, keeps the tuts lively. Again thanks alot…
Great tutorial so far, David! I’m about to attempt modeling one of my dragon characters in Blender, and watching these videos is helping immensely so far.
By the way, do you plan on giving this dragon wings? Just curious. :3
Keep it up!
Have you tried using Median Crease to make the hard edges on your subsurfs? I was just watching a Paul Caggegi’s Process Diary and noticed he was able to do the same effect without adding edge loops.
Hi Gang. The tutorial and comments…money. Please comment on the when and how to use “scaling around the 3d cursor with proportional fall off?” And scaling around the normals. S versus Alt-S.
@Lucifiend thanks. I am glad Paul is back in action.
Awesome. You tuts useful very))
Hi Dave!
Just wanted to tell you that this tutorial is awesome and I can’t wait for the next part. I’ve been following along closely and this is what I created up until this point http://bit.ly/cmxOtZ (I’m trying to take a slightly different approach in style).
Kudos to you.
the style reminds me of the legend of zelda: wind waker.