T-Rex in Maya

We went into the lesson today to find out that we were going to be making a low poly model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. This fits in perfectly as we had just sculpted into the same character in mudbox (though this was in a template). The idea is that you create a low poly model, like the one that we are doing, and then take it into mudbox to spruce it up. It was just unfortunate that we had the mudbox session before this as we could have used our own models instead of a template.

We started off by creating a plane and putting a sketch of a T-Rex on it, so that we had reference that we could constantly refer to and make sure that the character that we were creating was absolutely perfect.

Starting up the T-Rex.

When we ready, our tutor told us that we would be going to obtain a file that was already made for us. In this file we had the T-Rex already set up for us. What our teacher had done for us was he mirrored the cube to start with. Whatever we did to one side of the cube, the other would follow it exactly, for example, if I wanted to pull a face forward, the other side would then proceed to do the same.

At the start of forming the face.

As I am doing a low poly of the T-Rex, I wanted to keep the head quite basic, so I started off using the cube that we had already been given to us, I extruded it so that I got a outline of what the head would look like. Now at the moment, the head looks nothing like the reference image. that's because at the moment, I haven't inserted a certain amount of edge loops onto the shape. One I have done this, I can make the head more physically appealing.

The low  poly of the head.

As you can see in the image above, I managed to create a low poly version of the head that looks pretty accurate. You can see that I managed to get the basic things done right such as the eyes, the skull shape and the open mouth. The one thing that I'm not too happy with at this point is the way that the eyes are, structurally. I would do my best to touch this up later, but for now, I would like to continue with the rest of the body.

Extruding the neck.

The head was done, this meant that I could move on with model. Starting with the  structure that I had at the neck, I could start extruding it and create the body. It will be a slow but efficient method. Whenever I need to make the neck/body bigger, I can just scale the extrude and then press "G" to repeat. This is a process that I would be using a lot, so that the body can look as realistic as possible.

Carrying on the extruding all the way to the table.

I continued on with the process that I had used above and repeated the same methods. This low poly model went all the way down the tail, but this mostly a test, just to see if it had worked at all. It had but the edges in the piece were very messy and somehow affected the piece. I decided that I will be starting back at the beginning of the body, just so I can create a more realistic looking creature.

Starting the neck again to a better standard.

Looking at the image above you can already see a drastic improvement to the character that I had just attempted to make. This is a good process to go through as I feel that I am learning quite a lot by just re doing all the actions again, just in better ways. The structure of the body is looking more realistic a firmer, I just needed to carry this on to the tail of this beast and then I could start to do other features on the  T-Rex.

Cutting a whole for the legs to fit in.

Now that the basic body of the T-Rex had been forged, it was time for me to start the legs. Using the reference that I had on the background, I could decided whereabouts the legs were going to start off at. Once I had found the point that the new legs were going to located, I selected the first few faces on the flat side and decided to delete them. This was so that I could completely reconstruct the legs into the image that I want, while at the same time not having to deal with as many problems with the faces being inside of each other.

Extruding the edge and slowly forming the top of the leg.

At this stage I am selecting the edges from the cut that I had made and I am extruding them out., I keep repeating the process, and then I bridge the hole, so that now, I have the tops of the leg, looking fairly decent and ready for me to use it to structure out the rest of my leg.

Pulling the leg down to reflect the template.

I have the template lined up right next to my low poly T-Rex, so the next step was for me to follow it and pull the leg out to replicate this exactly. This again, was simple enough, I selected the edge that was available after doing the last move and then went on to extrude it and pulled it down. I was starting to gain a decent looking leg and it was starting to come together, all I had to do was follow where the template took me.

Using the same method on the arms.

I did the exact same process that I had done above for the arms. Again, all I had to do was select where I was going to put the skull and make the muscles that would feature in the piece look fairly prominent. As well I used the template to help indicate where this would go and get realistic sized hands for the creature.

Creating little hands for the T-Rex.

This next part was quite easy, all I had to do was to split the square that was the hand using the "Insert Edge Loop Tool". The next thing that I did was position the two new edges apart from each other. This created two pincers that were apart from each other. After that all I had to do was extrude it forward and then at the end scale it in so that it has a sharp edge to it, looking more like a hand.

Continuing with the rest of the leg.

After I had completed the had, I felt that using the skills that I had learnt, I could finish up with the feet. As you can see on the image above, This time I didn't necessarily stick to the template because of the way that I had positioned my dinosaur. It was only slightly out, so I managed to keep the same structure to it, but if I were to do this again, I would be constantly watching the template, making sure that everything was in the right place.

Extruding the toes.

For the toes, I wanted to get some claws on it, like actual T-Rex's had, so to do this I first needed to create the toes. This was achievable by selecting three faces and then extruding them. The next thing I did after pulling them out was to select the two edge toes and rotating them inwards. This gave me the structure ready to create the nails on the dinosaurs foot.

Polishing off the toes and adding nails to it.

What was left for me to do was keep on re-sizing and extruding the nails until I got the result that I was happy with. Another thing that I did was to select the edges and play around with the direction and with it I got some pretty interesting results as shown above.

A finished low poly model of the T-Rex.

The Low poly version of the T-Rex was finally finished, if I were to take this any further, the next step would be to export this model as an fbx file. From there I can take this model into mudbox and sculpt over the top of it, meaning that you can make any decent low poly model and touch it up in another program.

A smoothed out version of the low poly model.

I really did enjoy today's session and did feel that I had learnt a lot. I like the idea that I now know how to make a decent low poly model and export it into a program of my choosing for editing. I' am really happy with the result that I ended up with as the creature does look quite menacing and scary.

If I were to do this piece again, I would give the T-Rex a unique shape. This is so that it is original and different form everyone else, something that would stand out in a sea full of T-rex's would be remarkable.