Iguana Model

I finally finished 2 models last month. I am posting the first one here. It is a small model of iguana head. I worked on it for a class on modeling using a software called Mudbox.

I must admit that I have not heard about Mudbox before the class. With Mudbox, we sculpt instead of model. At first I found the process awkward, but after a while I started to enjoy sculpting. For the purpose of this class, we were basically encouraged to go overboard with details on our model (with the hope that we learn more about sculpting that way), so small models were encouraged. The modeling process is more or less illustrated in the following image.

Basically we used Mudbox to sculpt details on our models and then create a displacement map. Next, we applied the displacement map to a base model using 3ds max and then (after setting up lights) rendered the output images.

I am quite happy with this model even though I am not fully satisfied with the diffuse map. However, with my current skills, I do not know what I can do to improve it :p Anyway, here are more renders.

Here is one thing I learned while working on this model. With Mudbox 2011, exporting a Mudbox model to an OBJ file behaves in a way I did not expect. It creates 1 OBJ file; however, the OBJ file has multiple models at the same position. (I have not yet tested if the multiple models are from sculpt layers in the Mudbox file or from the sculpt levels.) I expected that I would get 1 model that has merged details from all sculpt layers. Still, this unexpected behavior can be easily fixed by opening the resulting OBJ file and then deleting models that does not have the merged details.