Rattlesnake texturing -- sorta getting somewhere

[cathuria]

Oof -- I'm through tweaking this thing until next week...
Some of my own crit's:
Need to make the mouth bits "glisteny"; just spec & glossy isn't doing it . . . maybe a cheater light.
The tail is crudely boned -- How does one get a string of bones to smoothly deform the object?
Finally the combination of image color map & procedural scales on the body isn't really satisfactory, but I see no alternative that wouldn't take a ridiculous number of extra hours on the project...

Any other crit's & suggestions would be most welcome

[masp]

After a while watching the snake I realised that rattlesnakes has a more fat and compact body. I think thats the problem with the rattle. The head of the snake is superb. Good luck texturing the snake.

[mrxd]

I'm not too thrilled about the colors but the actual texture (especially the bump mapping of the head) is really excellent.

[cathuria]

Thanks, folks!
Yes, it came out a little more "candy" colored than I had intended...
<sigh> - :( - I guess I'll squeeze in some more tweaking time this week.

[lt_ethe]

Hey Cath, try using the Rope Rig plugin on your snake... I use it for the tentacles in my Pax machina image. Very good results. Very smooth deformation.

http://mapage.noos.fr/samuelLK/Plugins/RopeRig/Tutorial.html

[sparky]

the scale of the scales is off. There is a lot of variation in how much the scales bump up and their size over the entire snake.

[cathuria]

lt_ethe: I tried the splinamation plug-in first -- his rattle kept getting sucked up into his brain whenever I tried to move it too far :D -- so I gave up & slapped in bones.

sparky: good one on the scales; I'm still scratching my head over the best way to do them.

Here's the latest & a near-final vision...
new bones, new pose
texture tweaking (but nothing on the image map colors, yet)
a sneaky reflection map cheat...
Howzit?

[sparky]

well, I dunno... seems like you've got the scales on the head right.

hm... I have no advice... sorry :(