What I would try: Model the saddle, and then copy the portion of the horse's back under the saddle to use as the bottom surface. Replace the bottom of the saddle with the "horseback" section. You could also use booleans to subtract the horse from a slightly over-thick saddle, but will likely have terrible geometry as a result.
That being said, would it work to have the saddle just intersect the horse a bit? Might be OK for visualization purposes, and a lot easier and more versatile than the above.
-Jeff |
Hi Jeff.
Been working on this model all day long and while I haven't tried you suggestion (Just checked the forums near the end of my day), I did discover the conform brush after the conform compound object and the conform space-warm were just not working from me. I have been able to model a plane to the shape of the saddle using my side, front, and top views of the particular horse I'm modeling (The first one I painted too). I then would use the shell modifier on the plane and create a surface which I can then model and extrude into the shape I need (Extrude and Loop edge tool, my best friends). I have been able to get most of the chunks of the trappings done. Everything seems to have decent geometry so far, though is lacking in smoothness. The reasons why I want the trappings to be separate from the horse is so we can easily switch out different saddles but keep the same blankets and so that I could easily isolate parts to make alterations and to also finely sculpt them in Mudbox. Also, so that we can switch saddles from different figures, such as to our tigers, our bears, and even our new cuttlefish figure with minimum rebuilding time.
If that helps you better understand what I am trying to do, please share any insights you may have.
The reason I am concern about intersection is because we do want to rig the figures so we can pose them, but also because the shop's owner has some pretty grand visions including animating the figures to move about (Not on the actual carousels mind you) for presentation purposes such as moving naturally from one pose to another and even prancing across someone's screen as a screen saver. I'm not sure when I heard this, but I seem to remember my 3D professors saying that intersection of objects is bad for animating and that is why I did not want the geometry to intersect. I never did take the animating classes actually beyond the basics so I'm not sure how it's done to be honest - Characters for shows and games move about with clothes.. how do they keep them from intersecting? Could you please clarify that for my addled brain?
I've included a screen shot of my work so far though it does not give much helpful information in addition to the figure I'm working from. Please feel free to share anything though. The horse needs some more work in Mudbox before I'm ready to call him done and I'll have to learn about bump mapping and all that to preserve the detail from the high-res model into the low-res but it's all a fun challenge. I've actually been modeling animals for our latest carousel as we had a sponsor interested in having a miniature 3D printed. However, he backed out.. ah well! Practice!
Thank you
-Ash
![](http://area.autodesk.com/userdata/forum/c/carousel_horse_theorytest.jpg)
![](http://area.autodesk.com/userdata/forum/f/fullhorse.jpg)
![](http://area.autodesk.com/userdata/forum/h/highreshorsehead.png)