Example Frog Models from Tool
This was my final project I decided to work on for my Houdini class. I wanted to explore designing a tool which could create varied models of a certain type of object as opposed to just a single focused model and I just think frogs are neat creatures that are relatively simple in shape, which is how I came to creating a frog model designing tool.
Using various frog anatomy diagrams I broke down the various major sections of a general frog into: body, leg (back legs), arms (front legs), feet (back feet), hands (front feet), eyes, and tympanum (frog hearing organs). Each of these sections either has a major controller to vary many parameters of that general section or was simple enough in this prototype not to warrant a controller (such as the eyes which are just spheres).
The most interesting sections I focused on were the body and the feet. The body provides ramps for the scaling options in the x-axis and y-axis to vary the height and width of the body along varied sections of the entirety of the spine, another ramp section to control the dorsolateral dermal plica (the dual ridges on the back of most frogs) as this was a major component of many types of frogs, and finally many sliders for locating the various extremities along the body (such as the legs and eyes).
The feet are also a major component of what makes a frog look like a frog, so those were my other detail focused part. The controllers for these help with the general shaping of the foot itself as well as the location of the toes (which also impacts the spread angle of them). The other main controller deals with the webbing of the toes, as this can be varied to create more or less webbing curvature as well as shifting the webbing further up or down on the toes.