Modeling a Saddle on a Horse

[Anonymous]

Hello Area,

I'm fairly new to modeling, having studied it some in college and now it's part of my job as a carousel designer.

Right now I'm working on a preliminary horse model to test a number of theories I have about the best way I can model our carousel figures to show potential clients.
I am currently trying to place a saddle on the back of a horse and have the saddle sit snuggly on the surface of the animal without passing through. Ideal, I would like for this to be something that could be animated as our goals are to build rigs in the models to show the different positions we can carve our carousel figures in.

I am right now trying the cloth modifier in order to drop a saddle-shaped place onto the back of the horse and then once that is against the surface, extrude the saddle from the plane. However this tends to cause wrinkling and would be great for the saddle blankets which will have lots of folds, including decorative folds in them (I already bookmark a great tutorial for pulling and arranging fabric).

Is there a way to tell the plane (or even the bottom faces of my sculpted saddle) to snap to the surface of the horse's back? Perhaps the surface or attachment constraints? I've tried both of those and so far have not had any luck. I'd like to avoid lining each individual vertex up if possible and I'd like to keep the objects detached for future swapping of various saddle designs.

What would the best way, in your experience, to do saddles on animals? If you have seen a carousel animal before, you are aware that they have decorative trappings covering their backs and heads. My eventual goal is to have one model of each animal we can do and to be able to swap out an assortment of trappings to show future clients what the company can do. Right now, everything is based on pictures of what we have done and drawings by the wood carvers.
Thank you for your assistance.

[jeff]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[jeff]

You certainly have an interesting project; I hope you're enjoying (most) of it ;>)
My suggestions were all related to having the saddle as a separate object, FYI. Intersecting could be a problem is some cases of animation, but I think that would be specific to game engines. For modeling, I would keep as many things as possible as separate objects, for just the reasons you described (showing trim variations, etc.). You can always attach objects together in a file version for a specific need if you have to.

-Jeff

[jeff]

FYI: cg-academy (dot) net, and thegnomonworkshop (dot) com both have good tutorial sets for sale. That helped me learn the little bit of rigging that I know. Might be a good investment for your employer to help make those dancing horses a reality.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry for not replying sooner. Thank you for all your suggestions, I"m still not entirely 100% positive with the method. The biggest item on my wishlist is to be able to model with collisions enabled so that as I tweak the blanket or the saddle it won't go through the horse model. I'm going to play with the cloth modifier since that has the collision option in it and see if I can just apply that. As for those tutorial sites you offered, thank you! I didn't do much animating in college, I was more of a modeling student and a digital painter, so I'm at a loss at how to rig. I've been following Digital Tutors "How to model a quadruped" but that is just one method out of many many options. My employer is very willing to invest in this so I'll sit down with him and see what all we can do. Thank you again and I hope to hear from you again and that you'll continue to provide me with helpful feedback.