Crabbys First Steps :)

Crabby now has the ability to walk...
Enjoy :D

The Final Scene - Phase 1

As i have previously before entered in my blog that i will be doing a variety of scenes, i have discovered this will be far to complex and unrealistic to complete to a satisfactory standard. Therefore i have designed and created a whole new scene. This consists of a sandy beach, with a playground on one side (yet to add), and a river flowing through the middle. The river will have a log bridging the gap in order to allow the crabs to gain access from one side to the playground. "Lets just pretend that these crabs can't swim :) "

I have also used omni lighting to give the scene a feeling of the sun rays hitting the surface of the water and sand.

The sandy texture was created in photoshop by using a cloud filter with sandy colours. With the opacity turned down, this was placed upon a yellow background giving it the effect it has.

The water texture was created by using a plane. I followed an online tutorial (link at the end of this post), which i recommend to anyone who wants to create water. You are unable to see this in screenshot renders, but the water surface actually moves during animation, and with the use of omni lights it makes the scene look that extra bit better with the light reflecting off the surface.

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE44k7d_FtI

Sky Texture

This is the image i have used to wrap around the inside of my cylinder surrounding my scene i have created. It is very basic and consists of a brush pack of clouds that i downloaded and a gradient background (blue and light blue). Although it is very basic i am pleased with it as is resembles the effect i was after, cartoon.

Skinning Crabby

Once the boning stage had been completed, i was then able to apply the "skin" modifier to the model. I then added the bones to complete the structure.

I also used "Dummy's" (green boxes) in order to allow me to not be so precise when pulling the structure about. I applied 2 Dummy's to each of the legs, one at the top joint, and another at the next joint down towards the foot.

As you can see there are a range of rectangular faces behind the model, this is to allow me to make a good estimate of leg range/movement that would be acceptable for the crab when walking.

Boning Crabby

In order to set up the bones correctly for the crab, i started off with creating one centre piece bone. This would be the parent to all the other bones of the surrounding legs. I then created a structure for a single leg, because all 8 legs are the same i was able to copy this and just edit the angle of each leg individually. Once the bones were created and put in place correctly i edited the fins to fill out the leg model of the crab.

I then applied a skin modifier to the crab model and added all the bones that I created within the skin.