Blind Slaughterfish | Morroblivion

In light of the reccurring comment -"If you want something done that's not in the vanilla game, do it yourself"- I decided to attempt one of the creatures discussed in this earlier topic:

http://tesrenewal.com/forums/skyrim/skywind-development/5638

I also drew a quick sketch of it earlier- I'm actually working as a concept artist on this project and should really be working on the task I've been assigned rather than mucking about with Zbrush [External image]

[External image]

My technical modeling knowledge is basic at best, and the model is unfinished, but I'd be interested to know what you lot think:

[External image]

I tried to get somewhere in between the body shape of the original slaughterfish in Morrowind, it's crocodile-snouted cousin in Skyrim, and the description of the Blind Slaughterfish in book lore.

Last edited by Yixist on 6 May 2014 - 20:18.

It looks like a crocodile

It looks like a crocodile tadpole but i like it :D its also really close to the reference image

I did it! I like the

I dig it! I like the different subspecies of slaughterfish (especially since it's following lore). Kudos!

Fixed up some bits and added

[External image]

Fixed up some bits and added some whiskers. Where do I go from here?

sharper teeth maybe?

Model prototype is very good.

Model prototype is very good. (But i really think that we need more interesting electric version, not so brutal)
--- Relevant ideas:
+ Small whiskers on rostrum (Or if that impossible, some spongy texture/feature here)
+ Red/rose/white coloration (with visible veins).
+ Big fold stretching on the bottom (blind creature eat rare, but much food)
+ Noticeable sideline (as series of points/holes)

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of my

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of my electric one anymore either, so I'll change that if I'm going to mess around with modeling it. Definitely agree with you an the coloration Alysander, only I haven't worked out how to texture/paint properly in Zbrush yet so I'll need to work that out :) I'll give him some more whiskers too, and mess around with some flesh/scale texturization.

+ Big fold stretching on the bottom (blind creature eat rare, but much food)
+ Noticeable sideline (as series of points/holes)

Not quite sure what you mean with the last two points though- could you please clarify?

Also is there any point in me doing this? As in, will this be able to be rigged to the slaughterfish skeleton later? I don't know anything about the technical restrictions, so if any of the other creature-modelers have any info about how I'd actually make this useful that would be great

Well, to make it useful you

Well, to make it useful you need to shoot for a reasonable tri count. If you have max and the niftools plugin, import the mesh of the slaughterfish (skyrim) and make sure that your model is not more than 150% the number of faces. If you started from a simple model in zbrush and divided up to your highest subdiv level, you can probably use your lowest subdiv model for the game model (if it's under the aforementioned limit.) The highpoly sculpt is really just used to create textures. Of course you can use decimation master to hit your target tri count, but do that before you use polypaint. If this is unclear, message me. You asked a very complicated answer, and I'm trying to give a concise answer.

+ Big fold stretching on the

+ Big fold stretching on the bottom (blind creature eat rare, but much food) = as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmodon_niger
+ Noticeable sideline (as series of points/holes) = as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_line
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Gasterosteus_aculeatus_with_stained_neuromasts.png
^ Just some touches/details of realism.