Parasaur x raptor thing update (long post)

First here's a time lapse of the raptor I don't think I posted! It's a long one, no music and it has a lot of meandering with things like testing cloth, testing some initial rigging stuff, etc, but it's the process from sketching a head to the final body mesh.

https://youtu.be/VXvt5UjcYOg

I've been working on a bunch of stuff while waiting for the fluids to simulate on the bronto animation- first here's a bit of a failed (for now) fun thing I wanted to do as a part of the parasaur/raptor animation, a parody of mature cartoons that would be playing in the background (and a joke would be like, the parasaur says "Wow, you actually watch this crap?" but then at the end, they're watching the show together and the parasaur is like "Maybe it's not that bad.")

The idea is a 3d cartoon that's inspired by a weird rabbit hole (no pun intended) that me and one of my online friends went down, the world of obscure mature cartoons from the mid 2000s. From time to time, a weird short memory of an anthro rabbit in this 3d cartoon I couldn't remember the name of would come up in my mind and it's haunted me for like over 15 years. Finally, thanks to my friend, I found that dang scene (it's in this video, around 7:59)

https://youtu.be/IqWd0I_lbT4?t=477

The rabbit isn't as cute I remembered, so I drew what I remember it looking like:

Then took a crack at modeling it.

As I modeled this, I was thinking "what if the cartoon was an old CG looking cartoon!?" so then I started concepting what the main character would look like (a jerk, horrible alien with a duckman-like personality)

I really liked the design on the left, but I felt like have two eyes was a bit of a cop-out. With two eyes, the "alien" doesn't look alien enough to me! The cyclops one looks more alien, but I wasn't a fan of the smooth "hair" things (it was an attempt to mimic balding hair with alien tube things). So I combined the two ideas into this design:

His name is Stercus, which is latin for dung. I picked this name because it sounds like a dumb alien name but also because it's funny to name a character the latin word for dung.

Then I started to work on a robot character, a ship environment, a space ship, a story (it would be about an adult film crew who fly around the galaxy filming adult xenophilia) but it seemed like it was beginning to get a lot bigger in scope than it should be for a simple funny joke... so I'm just kind of shelving this idea for later.

Some more Sterc, with textures. He'd probably be the ship's maintenance or pilot or something. He's not involved with filming or production (something he complains about frequently), which is for the best since he's aggressively heteroflexible and doesn't have a filter when it comes to his unsolicited (hot-take) opinions on alien culture and galactic politics

Some more rabbit (still like really wip). Rhonda, a trans babe who's also the crew's xenobiologist, handling research on the idiosyncrasies of another species' reproduction. She's one of the leading experts in her field, knowledgeable about the mating habits of the known species and possible dangers interspecies mating could involve (this would be like, the kind of sci-fi where there's a zillion walking and talking alien species).

Some of the robot, Chips- named after how computers have chips. He (they?) is a bit  innocent and naive, being a robot after all. Chips is the "body" the ships' AI inhabits.

Anyway, in my pursuit to come up with a quick explanation for the fake background TV show, I realized it'd involve finishing up a few character models, making a semi-detailed sci-fi environment, just for like a 10 second joke. So I was like... eh. Maybe one day but not now.

Back to the actual thing. I decided to completely scrap this joke about a background TV show and focus on components that are much more important. A room for the animation to take place in and clothing (since they'll be wearing clothes in the beginning). Still wip, but it's starting to shape up into the slightly messy but cool looking room I'd imagine the raptor having.

It's all still WIP though, things like cables from electronics are missing, needs more odds and ends to make it look like a place someone lives in, bed needs pillows, that sort of thing. When I was making this dresser, I thought "if the raptor has large herbivores over frequently, he might put caution tape on things as a safety measure, to make sure taller dinos don't bump into this dresser, for example"

It also has the added benefit of looking unique and giving the room some more visual interest.

(Also to be clear, plenty of props in this scene I didn't model myself, they're either models I bought from sketchfab/blendermarket or cc0 models, with models I made sprinkled in such as the bed, the metal sculptures. That wonderful stereo I didn't make, but it looks really nice doesn't it?)

I liked how this one angle turned out show the sculptures!

I've been working on finishing/cleaning up the character rigs too. The parasaur has proper bone shapes and groups now, I'll be posting the model probably tomorrow. Though it won't have a material- I want to create a better reptile skin shader, started to, but it's far from done.

Raptor is almost done- I do one half before symmetrizing it since there's no way (as far as I know) to symmetrize bone constraints.

One last thing, I also made the clothes for the parasaur- I originally was going to have cloth sim on the shorts and the shirt, but the shorts just didn't look good. So I went with a static approach- they're not simulated and when he's wearing the clothes, the torso of the full mesh is hidden and the shorts version replaces it (as the legs, tail and shorts are all one mesh)

Yes, he's got some really pronounced nips!

Once I get the rigs and clothing done, I'll finally move into some animatic stuff. I'm really excited to start animating with these rigs, I think these are my best yet and so far I've been able to hit the poses I'd like to in the animation.

Obviously these aren't supposed to be good or polished poses, just enough to prove that the characters can be arranged a certain way and also the rig/topology is capable of making it happen.