Diorama- Making the Crocodile

For the past few weeks I've been working on a 3d diorama. We were only given 3 weeks so there was no time to concept our ideas but instead we had to find a reference image and create a diorama from that. Luckily during the summer I went to Whipsnade zoo and collected a variety of photos of animals of which this one grabbed my attention for a diorama idea.

I really liked the idea of re-creating an enclosure and when looking at this one thing that really stood out to me was the water. The fish could give a nice contrast of vibrant colour against the crocodile. I've never created a water effect in 3d and I really wanted to try it and I felt this would be a good starting point. So to make sure it might work I created a quick white box to test how it might look. 

Once I was happy enough with the layout of the scene I began to try and model the crocodile. This is however where I came into issues. Even though I felt my photo reference were inspiring enough to create a diorama from they were the only reference I had; those two images. This led me to then start and collect a variety of internet reference on the shape and modelling techniques for crocodiles. I also researched into the species of crocodile it was, which is a West African dwarf crocodile. This meant it was must chunkier and shorter than most crocodiles. 

Modelling took a long time as things such as the ridges on its back were very finicky. It also took a long time to work out its proportion as dwarf crocodiles are quite different o most other crocodiles. However I got there and was pleased with the final model and began to create an unwrap using this to work out the best way to unwrap him and help work how to optimize the unwrap. Then when I started texturing I then realized what my next issue was... My reference was very limited to use for texturing.

Even with the small amount of usable texture I was able to texture it quite successfully. I used a leather texture I used for a previous PBR project to use for the underbelly. I used segments of his back which didn't have water ripples on to create the majority of the back and tail texture. Then I took areas of his more warty like texture and cloned it across the sides and arms. I also gave him teeth which added a lot of detail to his face and made the closed mouth look a bit better. I unsaturated all my textures so I could quickly adjust the value to work together. It also allowed me to quickly make a normal map from the values. And once the texture was finished I was able to just add a colour layer and add the colours back in to the texture.

I adjusted the normal map after this and then moved on to the last step: making the rest of the diorama and rigging his tail.