http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/max/dragonwing/dragonwing.asp
Dragon Wing Tutorial - Advanced
By Jacek Oczki
This tutorial shows you how to make a Dragon or Bat wing that is easily animated and
the skin between the wing bones streches. Maybe you will make your own Dragonheart
animations. The plugin needed for this tutorial are Surface Tools.
The tutorial is cut into three parts:
- Modelling (a simple dragon wing)
- Linking
- Other
Modelling
We will make the wing bones out of some simple cones and spheres. The leathery skin
between the bones we will model using surfacetools (patches). If you don´t have the
surfacetools plugin you can buy it at www.3dcafestore.com
The first thing to do is to make 6 spheres or geospheres that will be the joints of the wing
bones. Make the spheres 4-5 in radius. You can use this picture to see how to place the
spheres in the viewports.
Now we will make the skeleton of the wing. You use the cone object primitive to achieve
that. Make the cones 2-3 in radius. The ending skeleton bones should be pointy. Now
align the wing skeleton to the spheres as shown on this image.
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http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/max/dragonwing/dragonwing.asp
Now you should have a skeleton of the wing. The skin between the bones is our next
step. For this you should make a spline skeleton that looks as the one on the pic.
After you have made the splines attach them together. You can use Edit Spline 2
modifier to weld the vertex points thet overlap together. After that you applie the surface
modifier that makes patches that fit the spline skeleton that you´ve made. Remember
that it can only make surfaces of 3 and 4 vertex points. Tri and quadpatches. The spline
Threshold on the surface parameters should read max 1,5.
Now your skin should look like this.
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http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/max/dragonwing/dragonwing.asp
This part is to be aligned to the wing bone skeleton like on the picture and you can copy
it over and make skin #2 and align them too.
The last part of the skin is made in the same way. Make a spline skeleton that looks like
this.
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http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/max/dragonwing/dragonwing.asp
If it looks like this assign an surface modifier as prior. And the final result should look like
this. And this wings spline threshold should be max 2.0.
Now you should have the model of the dragon wing.
Linking
In this part we will be using LinkedXForm Modifier to link the vertex points of the spline
skeletons to the wing bones, to get the streching skin effect.
Select the first wing skin that you made and go into the modifier stack and select the
bottom most object (it should be a linie). Now add 6 Edit spline 2 modifiers. After that
select the first of the Edit spline 2 modifiers. In the Edit Spline 2 modifier click on the
sub-object level and select the vertex level.
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http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/max/dragonwing/dragonwing.asp
Now in the front window select the rightmost bottom vertex point´s (you can eventualy
move the vertex point so it aligns better with the bone) and add a LinkedXForm modifier.
In the LinkedXForm Modifier you click Pick Control Object and select the bone that
overlaps the vertex that you selected.
And you repeat that for every Of the Edit Spline 2 Modifiers you have assigned but the
last Edit Spline Modifier 2 you just click on the sub-object button to close the sub-object
level. The next picture shows what vertex to link with the LinkedXForm Modifier to which
control object.
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http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/max/dragonwing/dragonwing.asp
You repeat that for the second skin. This is a map to which vertexes to link to which
bones on the second skin.
The last wing skin is linked in exactly the same way but it has 7 Edit Spline 2 modifiers
assigned to the modifier stack. Here is how to link the vertexes of the last skin.
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http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/max/dragonwing/dragonwing.asp
The modifier stack for the big skin should look like this.
Now we have linked the skins to the bones so the last thing is to make a bone hierarchy.
Link the bones as shown on the picture.
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http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/max/dragonwing/dragonwing.asp
Now you should try and rotate the bones around and you will see that the skin streches
to follow the bones.
Other
If you want to animate with IK the you should make some dummies (null objects) at the
end of each bone and then adjust the constrains. That should make the animation
process easier.
Good Luck And Happy Dragon Animating
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