Canis Latrans: Process

CANIS LATRANS: A STUDY

THE PROJECT

In the spring of 2017 I participated in an independent study that gave me the opportunity to work on a project with more complex and interesting modeling than some of the previous prop work I had done for earlier projects.

BRAINSTORMING

I bounced a number of ideas around: a cyborg character, a robotic arm. I scrapped these ideas because I wanted to do something less mechanical in favor of something more organic. I debated between animals for a while, at one point I even considered a velociraptor, but eventually I settled on the North American Coyote.

REFRENCES

Though I started with references I found online, I eventually realized that I could use the internet to find more than just pictures of coyote skulls. It's definitely the weirdest thing I've ever bought off of eBay, but a week later I had the most accurate modeling reference I could possibly get my hands on.

MODELING

While waiting for my reference to arrive I set to work on modeling with the initial references I had. I blocked out the rough shape of both upper and lower jaws in Maya 2017.

Once my reference arrived I began refining the skull. Online references actually hid quite a bit of the geometry from me, and the real one helped me solidify my shapes and showed more of the subtle details than online reference could show me. The ability to hold a real version of my model gave me a better understanding of what I was making than any picture ever could.

Finally I tackled the teeth. To best emulate the irregular shape of the teeth I imported my model into Z-brush to sculpt my skull a pair of pearly whites. Once that was done I took the time to add a pedestal and sign to place the skull on. I wanted to give it the feel of a piece on display in a museum, rather than just a simple prop.

TEXTURING

I decided to hand paint the bone texture. Not only did I want to try and capture the roughness of bone, but I wanted to make the subtle color variations I found in my reference apparent.

For the pedestal and sign I used a procedural texture builder. Substance Designer allowed me to create wood and metal diffuse patterns that matched exactly what I had in mind. I was then able to take these into Photoshop to customize them as I liked. I eliminated obvious repetition in both materials, created wood seams where the pedestal panels joined, and added words for the sign to identify the species on display

LIGHTING

I decided not to over complicate things on the lighting, and utilized a standard three point lighting system to light the final piece.

CHALLENGES AND THE FINAL RENDER

Rendering in Renderman proved to quite a challenge for me, going all the way back to the texturing part of the process. Tutorials on how to use Renderman were difficult to find and while hand painting maps gave me plenty of control, the rough texture and the subsurface scattering of bone proved to be difficult to imitate. Overall I am quite satisfied with my final product and appreciative of the challenge this endeavor provided me.