Ident 3 - Components - Little Fish

The fish were a fun; if bad decision. For such a vital aspect of the ident... they really required so much work... and would only appear for a second or 2. Not the most efficient thinking, I know. But nonetheless; time to make a few fishies:

This was a neat little tactic I learnt from a few people in class (Harwood brothers... I love you!). I found a nice image of the sort of fish I wanted to model; and set that as a texture on a plane. With that on stage; I was then able to model a cuboid (Yes, a cuboid) around the picture, meaning that the contours could be followed, thus creating a realistic fish shape. As a result: cue a long 20-30 minutes matching vertices's against the original shape.

The fins were all created from splines (Also drawn against the original image). Removing the backing image reveals a pretty decent fish shape!

The next step was working on the angles of the fish to create a realistic shape all over (Not just from a side shot). Another blast of turbo-smooth took care of any uneven edges.

The final step was simply to add an eye and carve a mouth out of the vertices. Looks a bit ugly at the moment... let's add a bit of texture to it!

The first step was to add a fish eye and body texture. It took several attempts to get the skin right. I tried using textures of fish scales... but nothing worked properly. In the end; I created a blue texture with a decent specular level; and added the scales texture with a low opcaity (So the scales were less prominant and less dominating on the fish)

The fins, fortunately, were less hassle. I was able to use a segment of some fish fins for these, and dusting them with a light coating of bump map, high specular level and low opacity created a shiny, textured fin. Nice!

The dorsal fin was originally created from a separate fin-image (Seen as it's so much more prominent than the other fins)... however, it was found that it looked better when it shared the same texture and style as the others, and was subsequently changed to match them.

And there it is! The small fish ready for a quick swim!