Hi all,

I am making some pretty good progress in terms of rigging the Creature. There are still quite a few things to do, but I find it helpful to make sure the mesh deforms correctly before finishing off the sculpt.

As of right now things are looking pretty good (but still basic). It was a pain to make sure that the Creature deformed nicely in both his land (walking) and water (swimming) postures. But the rig and mesh are very capable of doing both. So yay! :)

Stay tuned for more.

Hi guys,

I started compiling a basic SSS shader in 3ds MAX for my Creature model (which was inspired by the shark-man from the "Creature" Peter Benchley TV film). I am using Mental Ray and some basic (animated) photometric lighting.

So far the SSS material only consists of 3 really basic skin layer maps: subdermal (muscular tissue, veining, tendons and bones), epidermal (fatty tissue, fascia, more veining) and a very basic flesh tone diffuse map for the top layer of skin). The final maps will have more veining and subsurface detail, the top skin layer is all flesh-colored right now but will have far more variation. The top layer will be a cool combination of shiny and sand-papery shark skin mixed with humanoid (oily), light skin.

The middle render shows off really nicely how the light gets trapped in the middle layer of skin, almost making it turn darker before lightening up when the lights hit full strength.

Regardless, the material is responding really nicely to the light. This should look very cool when applied to the whole mesh :) Stay tuned for more!