I've got them all into the same scene, but in different layers, this will hopefully help me get everything to scale.

Working in XSI is still very alien to me, but I'm getting it done...

Thanks for all the comments, and helpfull hints folks.....

This is the Grasshopper Knights Weevil Mount.














Weevil ( Eupholus bennetii )

I need to beef up the lags give him longer antenna, but the wife is going to be home soon so I'm going to give this a rest for now..... I've got till the 30th of April to complete this... as long as I dont get lazy, I should be ok :D

Tortoise beetle, Aspidomorpha miliaris:

This is going to be the shield:



















Grasshopper, Aplatacris colorata....

I've taken a bit of artistic license here, the back legs on the grasshopper I'm looking at are next to the middle legs, but this wont look good when I have him sitting on his mount.

Oh and if you've noticed the timestamps on my blog so far and think 'My God this man can model fast...'

The model so far has taken me a couple of evenings... after work... when the daughter is in bed... and the temptation to play on the Wii has left me :D .... the blog I've just started.

I've cut the grasshopper into 3 parts, by deleting all the poly faces that looked like they shouldn't be attached, then exporting what was left as a model.

For example, first I saved what I had done, then I selected the head, deleted the shell on the back, along with the underbelly and arm sockets and exported what was left as Head, then reopend the last save and did the same to the rest, then opend a new scene and imported the 3 parts.

After a little tinkering...( needs a lot more to make it look more organic ) I'm left with a model that should hopefully be easier to texture.

The arm sockets on a grasshopper are very cool, never noticed this before.... the things you learn huh!

As you can see, I'm modelling this in XSI using a subdevided poly
( set to 2 in case you are wondering, or not as the case may be )

Though I think I can see future problems texturing him, time to get out the scissors.

Working on the chin now, the little stubs are where some mouthparts are going to be attached.

This is my fifth save, remember... note to self .... save... save...save

A lot of the tools in XSI are very good, I've just used an extrusion along a curve here to create the antenna.

Thanks to the 3DBuzz modeling course for Maya, alot of the techniques I use in Maya also work great in XSI.

After looking at the photo again I can see that the eye is part of the shell, or coverd by a thin layer of the exoskeleton.
( just to be correct incase there is the slim chance anyone looks at this post, and starts thinking 'p*&t, grasshoppers don't have shells' :))

I've been using Maya for a long time now, and swithching to XSI has given me some trouble.

I tried selecting the qwerty setup, but the raycast, really got on my nervs as I couldn't stop it selecting the back faces, and all the settings I found to disable this didn't work?

I'm now using the xcv for editing the poly and I almost remember not to select the W, changed the pan dolly and zoom to how it works in Maya, but still occasionally prass Alt instead of the S key.... I'm sure I'll get used to it soon :D

3D World (www.3dworldmag.com) is running a competition to create an original character or creature using XSI 6.

I downloaded the free demo from here:

www.softimage.com/products/xsi/free_trial

I recently baught a book from a garden center with Photos of the rainforest in ( it cost £25 and I got in serious trouble with the wife as we are beyond skint at the moment :D ), the poisonous Grasshopper from Peru has inspired me to create the Grasshopper Knight.

Thomas Marnet... Rainforest... A Photographic Journy....
Fantastic book.


Wish me luck ;)