[WIP] Dinosaur: Kosmoceratops

tkellaway

Hi Polycount people, I've been working on a dinosaur (kosmoceratops) for a Uni project that I'm going to import into UDK. The anatomy has to be realistic, but we are able to use our own designs for scales/colour. So far I've only got the sculpt for the normal map within Z-Brush, which still needs some work:





Here is some reference I collected of the anatomy and various artist's interpretations (not all Kosmoceratops):



Any feedback would be appreciated - advice on how to approach adding scales would be useful, and the legs/feet might need some changes because I've not been able to find any reference of this for the kosmoceratops specifically.

praetus

You are sculpting at way to high a fidelity right now and it is showing in your mesh. As a whole it looks very blobby and your anatomy is very wrong in some areas. Most notably the sternum and muscle structure associated with it as well as your stomach is very high up. Look at animal anatomy to see what I mean, most notably hippos or even horses. Look at how the muscle structure wraps around from the chest, shoulders and front legs. It looks like you made your low poly, turbosmoothed it like crazy in max, and then imported it in ZBrush for those details and it is not going to work.

Make a base mesh for ZBrush (something simply but evenly divided for subdivisions) and work up from a simple mesh. Don't subdivide into the next mesh until you get as much sculpting detail as you can at the current level. The only reason I would recommend working at the level you are at is if you were well versed with the ecorche method and plan on using the Rake brush.

tkellaway

Thanks for the feedback, we recently had a lecture on sculpting, so I'm going back for another try.

I forgot to mention that I did use a base mesh from 3ds Max and do sculpting before increasing each subdivision, but I needed to find reference images for the anatomy. Also I did some practice for the scales, but now that we've had the lecture I'm happy to go back and try again from scratch.

Busy with some programming stuff so if anyone has suggestions for the current version below (with some reference to a ceratopsian dinosaur), I should have a day or two before I have to move onto the scales. I've tried to mark some of the areas I want to change.

DWalker

Have you considered raising the hips and lowering the shoulders a bit? Most renders of certopsian species show a spine that slopes (slightly) down.

The feet also seem... odd. I'm not familiar with this species, but in general as they evolved from their small, bipedal origins to the hulking behemoths, the feet became thicker and heavier. A rhinoceros' feet would be a good reference for the last few species (e.g. triceratops).

tkellaway

Thank DWalker, I never would have spotted something like that. I've tried adjusting the spine a bit and it looks a bit better - it looks like the weight of the head is offset a bit more realistically. I'm still not sure what to do with the feet, but that second image you posted made me change some things overall:



The Uni forums are having trouble at the moment so your help is much appreciated

nosyT

The front shoulder looks really awkward to me, as if he's going to fall forward. Also the front and rear legs are almost the same size, where as usually the front leg is noticeably smaller than the rear. The front shoulder looks sort of odd and bulky. But other than the front leg, this is going along great :]

Sparr

Pull the front feet forward so they're under the shoulder and see how that looks.

tkellaway

Thanks - now that you've mentioned it, it does look like it's leaping forwards a bit. This is after some nudging:

nosyT

Much better!!