NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 2 - Alien Body

At the beginning of year 2 we were tasked with (over the course of the year) creating an alien using quad drawing techniques. For my alien I created multiple different drafts, however in the end I based it around a mix between a xenomorph (from Alien) and a Tyranid (from Warhammer). This led to an introcut but interesting design.

First I started by creating the alien's head (see other blog post) by creating an elongated head in Mudbox, adding details to make it appear with a more xenomorphic look before then quad drawing, bump mapping and texturing it.

Eventually, after I had completed the alien's head I moved onto the alien's body. I created it by taking a multitude of different shapes and positioning them in order to make the appearance that I wanted. I made the model in Maya and then imported it into Mudbox. I sculpted it at a higher poly count to add a higher multitude of detail.

Once I had completed the alien's body I retopologised it and re-imported it back into Maya. Despite the fact that I retopologised it, it still had an incredibly large poly count and made it significantly harder to quad draw. Also, in preperation for quad drawing I decided to remove the alien body's tail temporarily while I completed the quad draw.
Next, I began the quad draw by converting the alien body into a "Live" object and activated the quad draw tool. At first the quad draw had no issues and went incredibly smoothly. However, when the poly count began to rise, it slowly caused more and more lag until the quad draw began to become extremely difficult. While I tried to rectify this, it proved to be too difficult to fix within the time constraints that I had. Therefore, I decided to find a quicker and easier way to lower the model's poly count.


After fiddiling with many different settings and tools, I found the "reduce" function under the "mesh" tab in the modeling section. This was extremely useful as it allowed me to immedately lower the number of polys that were slowing the application down and allowed me to have completed much of the work that would have taken much longer if I had carried on with the quad drawing. On the other hand, this caused another issue as I could not mirror the object without running into difficulties. This was also eventually fixed when I bridged each of the individual models together and murged their virticies.

 Despite the set-backs, the final model looked very good, but I still needed to add textures to the model. I did this by taking royalty free textures from the internet and adjusting them to appear as alien like textures. This lead to the creation of two armour-like scales, one bonelike texture used on the sword arms and two sets of alien flesh textures. I also created a bump map for each texture in order to add more of a 3D affect and increase its detail.

Once the textures had been completed, I added them to the model. I then used any deformity within the texture to find and fix any problems with the UV mapping of the model.

Now that the texturing of the body was done, I decided to add the body's tail back and then imported the low poly alien head into the scene. This allowed me to position it on top of the alien body and begin editing the heads UV mapping, in order to make the head easier to work with.

I first started by creating a planar UV map for the alien head, then cutting the UV down the middle and moving the UV shells next to one another. This allowed me to texture each half of the face more easily.

Once the UV mapping was finished I imported the bump map I had created for the alien head. This allowed the head to retain its detail and new textures.

Then, I created a mix between each texture in photoshop, correlating to the new UV mapping. This allowed me to have all three textures while also keeping the previous bump map.

Next, I created a new bump map that was the original alien head's bump map with a faint overlay of other bump maps for each texture. This allowed me to use all the bump maps needed and to also lower their effect so that it wouldn't overpower the original bump map.

Finally, I added the textures and new bump map together, giving the same style as the rest of the body.

In conclusion, I believe that despite my troubles in creating it, my final model is very good. If I had more time I would have created the textures more closely related to my original design. If I could change anything, I would have used the reduce function much earlier than I originally did.