My nephew recently got a 3D printer and gave me a little articulating chameleon as a gift. I thought the design was so cool and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to recreate it in 3D and simulate some physics! Since it is essentially a toy I wanted to have a super playful aesthetic to these renders. I love how it came out!
Inspiration
This is the actual Chameleon that I was given. I really liked the way that it articulated. I figured since it was so fun to play with and move around in real life, it would be fun to watch in a simulation!
Renders
Under The Hood
This was a really fun exercise in look dev and high-volume simulation. Since the mesh that i ended up modeling was so high-res I needed to figure out a good way to quickly swap between the proxy and full resolution mesh for each of the chameleons. to keep viewport performance high I ended up modeling a different set of low-poly hulls to dial in the sim before swapping to the high-detail meshes for the final renders in Redshift. Between that challenge and capturing the tactile feel of the injection-molded plastic/glass coat look I ended up learning a few things along the way!
