Lightwave Modeling
By Mathew Duafala

Part 1     Part 2      *Part 3     Part 4

If everyone has been following along then his or her creature should look something like fig 1. The details might be a little hard to see, but you should have completed the eyes, and at least started the back spikes. As you can see I started the back spikes, however I didn’t finish them due to time constraints.

Fig 1

Now as promised, we will move on to modeling the mouth and teeth. The first step to make the process easier will be to select the polygons that make up the mouth area and cut them and copy them to another layer. We then select them and smooth shift them inward and then down. This will create the lips and bottom of the mouth. Now go into a fresh layer and load the mouth as the background layer.

Fig 2

We will now create the gums and teeth. We will start off by making a box and smooth shifting the top into the general shape of the tooth itself. See fig 2. Then we will delete the polys on either side of the gum and copy and paste several next to each other. After merging points, this will create a row of teeth and gums. We will make about four and then copy and past those as needed to fill the mouth.

Fig 3

You will still have to go in and push and pull some points as need, such as the fang teeth and possibly the molars. For a look at what should be completed thus far see fig 4.

Fig 4

Once this is completed then cut and past the two layers back into the main layer and merge points. Viola! You have just created the teeth for the bottom of the mouth. Repeat for the top of the mouth, and wherever else it might be necessary.

As you have probably noticed the lessons are getting shorter and shorter, with fewer pictures to guide you along. This is because I expect you to have a good grasp of MetaNurbs and to feel very comfortable with experimenting on you own. You should also take the initiative and do things on your own like smooth shifting a throat for our cute little friend. After all he has to have someplace to put all those people he eats (For you anal-retentive types I do know that dinosaurs became extinct millions of years previous to people, however, this isn’t a real dinosaur so it doesn’t matter). In the next lesson we will go into one of my favorite subjects and start surfacing our little critter.