Skyrim - Frost Dragon Mk2 by DaiShi

[daishi]

It's almost a year since I've finished Viinturuth, and it became my most successful template so far. Unfortunately for me my initial build has a lot of flaws.

The old (and cheap) printer I used at the time given up the ghost mid-printing so its not enough that a lot of the details were lost in printing (because it was a cheap printer) but half of the dragon was a different shade than the rest.
The whole model was badly balanced, and needed lots of ballast to the base. (I used up all my lead supply for it sign1)
Then came the inadequate bracing in the legs and wings, that resulted of the model tilting forward after a few months. I had to open the model and do something about it. By that time I bought a decent photo printer (which finally did print the shades the texture had) the replacement parts sport a third color shade wall1

Seeing how well the 2 other dragon builds I know of look I decided I feel like building a new dragon for myself. And since now I know the template doesn't have any big problems I probably wont keep to "Keep it Simple, Stupid" with the stand, and place Viinturuth Mk2 on an honest to Akatosh dragon word wall.

Here are some renders of what I have in mind. I also thinking about mirroring the model so it wont look so much like Mk1 :twisted:

(the textures are definitely not final on the word wall)

 

[DanBKing]

Nice!!!

I like the rock, you could put a small pot plant in there ....Hahaha

What are your thoughts on the internal bracing???
Are you going to incorporate a card structure inside the model, or what?
In my build, I am just making it up as I go along.......

 

[daishi]

What are your thoughts on the internal bracing???
Are you going to incorporate a card structure inside the model, or what?

I found that my models that have issues keeping their stance, the main problem is that the leg shape crosswise is deformed (e.g. sides of the knee get pushed out and the front and back gets closer together making the nearly circular cross section shape elliptic) and thus the joints bend more than they should, so making sure the leg cant lose its intended shape should do the trick.

I tried making the legs sturdier on my Swarmlord by gluing in cross pieces (like the part in the middle of the dragons neck) in every 2-3 rings. So far it looks good on the Swarmlord so Ill try that on my Mk2 dragon. The external wire bracing on Mk1 doesn't look too bad, so I guess if it proves inadequate I wont mind.

As for the wings I'll use thin and long wood cylinders (I have no idea what they are called in english ) worked on Mk1 dont see the reason why i should try something different. and risk that it wont work.

 

[DanBKing]

As for the wings I'll use thin and long wood cylinders (I have no idea what they are called in english )

I think the word you are looking for is: DOWEL

I think I might stick to my intended plan of an armature from mig welding wire and expanding foam. It will probably be overkill, but I know it wont collapse. :mrgreen:

 

[daishi]

I think they are usually just called sticks in english, but in hungarian we have a name for just this kind: "hurkapálca", if there is a specific word in english I dont know of it

It's a wooden stick about 1-3 mm in diameter and 20-40cm long, like a thin straw just made of solid wood.

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

I like this new design for the dragon. It looks really good.

 

[DanBKing]

I think they are usually just called sticks in english, but in hungarian we have a name for just this kind: "hurkapálca", if there is a specific word in english I dont know of it

It's a wooden stick about 1-3 mm in diameter and 20-40cm long, like a thin straw just made of solid wood.

Like this you mean ??

 

[daishi]

if they are around 2 mm in diameter then yes :thumb:

 

[DanBKing]

if they are around 2 mm in diameter then yes :thumb:

These hardwood DOWELS are available in all diameters, from 1mm and up......

 

[daishi]

These hardwood DOWELS are available in all diameters, from 1mm and up......

O the dowels I use are softwood, and now I know the name for it. Thx

... Ah i see dowel pins have an entirely different name in hungarian, than the really long ones that's why I never could translate them. wall1

 

[DanBKing]

O the dowels I use are softwood, and now I know the name for it. Thx

... Ah i see dowel pins have an entirely different name in hungarian, than the really long ones that's why I never could translate them. wall1

I understand the confusion....:mrgreen:

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

I have to say that, that is a rather interesting chair. What is the scale? If it is full scale, I am certain that you would be able to find a market for it.

 

[lehcyfer]

I will gladly see the next model of this awesome dragon. Wooden sticks will be a good material for adding strength to it

 

[daishi]

Finally I've finished the textures for the broken Word Wall. I've intended to make it snowy, but the UV map is all over the place and id rather not mess with it , so I've used this mossy rock texture with spiral pattens and I think it will look great with the dragon.

Also thx for the votes. Unfortunately. I've noticed that Ive managed to mirror the patterns twice (and thus getting the same template as my Mk1 dragon) when most of it was already printed wall1. I dont think I'll re-print the templates so it looks like I' be re-building the same dragon just with a much higher quality template. On that note Im just amazed at the difference a decent photo printer can make. Compared to my Mk1 this new template came out from the printer with at least 3 times more details on it. So I'm VERY happy with it even if its not mirrored.

The text on the Word wall is taken from the game also its the word wall for the thu'um: Faas
Noble Nord, remember these words of the
hoar father: Fear not (the) specter of
death, for he is (the) herald of glory
and your guide to great Sovngarde.

Here are some renders: next update will be actual build pictures, promise

 

[lehcyfer]

Can you elaborate some more on the difference?
What printer did you use before, what printer do you use now, on what kind of paper do you print and on what settings? And any other things you feel you could add to that...

 

[daishi]

Can you elaborate some more on the difference?

Sure I can! Ill write down everything maybe someone can learn from my experiences

Let's see. When I made my original dragon (or Mk1 as I started to call it :mrgreen I was fresh out of the University and looking for work, so I didn't have the cash for anything fancy, I used a cheap HP all-in-one printer my parents had and simple 180g paper (not photo paper). That old printer was a mess, printed really badly even to photo-paper
Using plain paper resulted in the dark parts like most of the legs on the dragon coming out as solid black. no scales or anything. Also that printer had a really tiny ink cartridge containing all 3 colors + another black one. Ofc Murphy said that it should dry out while I was printing the template for Mk1 and the new cartridge started printing a whole different shade (after color calibration if I might add) so I had to play with the texture and some color filters so adjust the parts, with limited success.
So after I've found a job I used my first few paychecks to get:
-An Epson Stylus P50 photo printer (which i affectionately call the Black Monster )
- A monitor that wasn't so old that the colors were all off on it.
And big surprise (sarcasm) it made a whole lot of difference. Ofc when I had to cut Mk1 open to reinforce the wings. (Yes I did that wall1) the new parts I've printed were a 3rd shade, and even on plain paper it was much more detailed.

So when I finally decided I'd build Mk2 I thought its high time (especially now that I dont have a student loan on my back to pay back anymore) to up the quality another notch and start using quality paper.
I've already tried using glossy photo paper on my ME3 Garrus build to make the armor parts shiny, but didn't like it at all. So now I bought matte photo paper.

I mentioned I needed a new monitor. This is maybe not apparent for ppl who didn't try to make game-rip templates, but the textures from a game (in most cases) need some extra work before it can be used for a template. This has a really simple reason, the appearance of something in a game is coming from multiple textures and can change significantly depending on the shader. For example I had to color the textures of my WH40k models by hand because the actual coloring is done by the shader and the models only have grayscale textures saved for them.
If you check the frost dragon texture is quite green, but in the game its more bluish, this is because of the lighting and the shader used for calculating how the model should look in game. so to adapt the texture for my needs I needed some color filters and overlays, since my old monitor was off color I didnt do any color corrections because I couldn't be certain how it came out of the printer (and test printing was too expensive)

Ok now that Ive been rambling for a while now: here are the actual differences:
Old:
-HP all-in-one scrapheap, cant even remember the setting form it had
-plain paper, 180g
-unadjusted, 1024*1024 (scaled down) textures (after cartridge change color correction to approximate the shades that were printed with the old cartridge )

New:
-Epson Stylus P50, settings: Photo Quality, Matte paper, Vivid color correction.
-Verbatim 180g Matt Photo Paper (Head 120g)
-adjusted 2048/4096*4096 textures (up-scaled, used color texture as base and some others like specular map as overlays to add/enhance details, also used some color correction to get a more blue-is hue overall)

I'll try to make some photos tomorrow to do the comparison but I doubt most of it will show.

 

[lehcyfer]

Thanks for a prompt answer.

Matt photo paper - consider making a review of its use for paper modelling when you'll get to gluing the parts - or did you used it already and can say something about it?

I suppose when you make the teeth you'll be 100% sure of it's qualities as a medium for paper modelling

 

[daishi]

Here is the pic I promised the camera I used is kind of bad. but the difference is very noticeable.
BTW the new dragon is bluer because
A: I've added a filter that enhances the blue channel with about 2-3%
B: even the original texture is more blueish than that old scrapheap printer managed :curse:

 

[daishi]

Finished with the head!

Turned out great IMO! The photo paper tends to make the edges more visible, but the additional details on the texture makes it worthwhile. (e.g the horn on my Mk1 is solid black T_T)

So here are some pics:

Next ill build the Word wall and if the template is OK, and it looks stable enough I'll upload it to my site

 

[DanBKing]

Looking great Daishi.

Personally, I am not sure if I like the new colouring or not. You say your new scheme is closer to the original colour and textures from the game.
In my rush to get my version printed out, I printed your downloadable .pdf version with no modification. My model turned out to be more on the grey/black plane, than on the blue. But actually, I prefer the darker finish, as it matches the dark soul of the creature......

But that is just my personal opinion. :mrgreen:

I would love to see some pictures of the assembly of each part, to see what techniques you use, and where I can learn from you.:mrgreen:ops:

I will be following this thread....