This has been a long project. Finally gave myself permission to finish it.

I really liked the design of this creature. I thought it might prove to be an interesting challenge to recreate it and then see what I could do as far as putting it into a scene.

The first step was to either purchase the model and paint it up or check out what other people have put onto the internet as far as reference images. (As my office is kinda small, and its already full of my creations, I chose to see what was out there digitally.) Lets face it, digital images don't take up a lot room.  :)

I started by building something in its basic form to attempt to realise what I was trying to do and mainly to figure out the most appropriate approach.

I then started breaking down the model into what to do and when. I realised that the tail would be better built straight and rigged. This would allow me to easily adjust the position where needed, create the Uv's and possibly even animate it.

I started with the main shell, the first carapace and the top part of the spine

Next i worked on the second carapace. By this stage I was getting a good idea of scale and the modelling techniques I was going to continue with for the rest of the model. I kept in the back of my mind what would be required for UV and texture mapping.

I added some detail to these

Next up was the third carapace and some of the spine detail.

I moved onto the top and created the second shell details.

I put in a temporary tail to continue keeping the overall scale. This was a fairly simple model that I replaced later with the more detailed version. I also worked on the final shells.

In keeping in mind the UVs and overall spacing, I created a cylinder for the tail. I then divided it up into the segments and modelled the details into that. Once the modelling was finished, I then rigged the tail in preperation for positioning it when most of the model was finished.

The next task was building the arms. With a model like this it is really easy to end up with a scene that is very big and hard to control. You may want to make a small change and it becomes a nightmare to adjust. So, I built the arms in seperate scenes to 'Reference' them in to the master scene later. Again, I had already determined the scale of the limbs so it wasn't going to be a challenge when I brought them back together.

With the whips on the larger arms I wanted to be able to adjust them to suit the final pose as well as make texturing a little easier, so I built them straight and rigged those.

With most of the modelling finished, I started posing the model. I was attempting to create a pose that seemed menacing and forboding.

I then worked on the texture maps. I wanted all the maps to be suitable for Mia_Material_passes_X. This part of the porcess was the most time consuming. Each material needed a colour, specular, reflectivity, diplacement, and bump map. Some of the materials I also wanted to be sub surface scattering. Here is the early stages of applying the materials.

Here is an early attempt at the materials for the arms.

The under colour looked interesting but in the end I found it to be a distraction from the overall look.

Here is another stage of the process.

Starting to finalize the details now.

With the materials finished, I then spent some time thinking about lighting. In the render at the top of the page, there are about four lights as well as an HDR ILB. I included the skull at the character's feet to help with the overall composition and scale.

So, what's next? I'm glad to have made it this far with this project. I'm quite pleased with the materials. What I would like to do next is to put the character into a more powerful scene. Maybe something with broken buildings and lots of debris. I may also include some nekron scarabs in the shot.