3D Anatomy Tool (Student Project)

markholland

Hi Polycount,

I thought I'd start this thread to keep you all up to date on my final year project. I'm developing an interactive 3D human anatomy tool that will focus on providing a reference for artists. I'll be sculpting the skin, muscles an bones of the male body in ZBrush and developing the tool in the wonderful UE4.

Here's some of my progress so far, i'll post more as I go.


If this all sounds like your kind of thing I'd really appreciate your response to this questionnaire. Your feedback will help me to create a better tool and also do me a massive favor when I come to writing up my dissertation to go alongside it. Go on, you know you want to help me out.

Thanks,

Mark

SuperFranky

If you can, provide an option to choose arms positions or even better, the model should be freely posable.

Frankly, if you're gonna do it by hand(skin, muscles, bones) you need to know your stuff to perfection. Otherwise, I don't see a reason. If you have access to 3d scanning, you should use that for whatever you can.

There already exist many interactive 3d anatomy systems out there, some of them are really good. You're gonna need to make something better to convince us to use your's.

markholland

Thanks for that SuperFranky.

I'm using 3d scan data as a reference for my work, but i'll be modelling it all myself from scratch to create cleaner and more optimised geometry. This project is also a really good platform for me to improve on my own sculpting and anatomy skills.

I agree there are some great tools around, although few are focused on artistic form and hopefully that is where mine will excel.

Unfortunately the model will be static, I think dynamic bone and muscle systems are a bit out of the scope for this project. Although I agree it'd be great if I could add more poses in the future, I have more than enough to do at the moment. The tool will be interactive though, I hope to give the user a lot of controls and options. I'll be prioritising features that are popular in the survey results.

lotet

sounds like a great idea. If your not gonna do poses I would atleast suggest having one arm T-posed and the other in a more relaxed pose.

markholland

Here's some more progress on the skeleton. It's still a work in progress but I thought i'd post to see if you lot have any c&c.

I blocked some of it out in maya but did the majority of the work in ZBrush.

Mask_Salesman

Don't take this the wrong way but straight off the bat I can see a ton of anatomical inaccuracies even with the skull alone. If your doing this as a guide for other artists then this really needs to be very high level, get some beefy reference man.

markholland

Hey Mask_Salesman,

All of this is still very much a work in progress, so if there are any areas in particular you think need more work please just let me know where to focus.

The skull was done using a lot of references including 3d scan data, here's a comparison.


I realise that the final piece will need to be very accurate to meet my aim for this project. But at the same time please bare in mind that this is student work, I'm still relatively new to ZBrush. I chose to do this project to challenge myself and to improve my skills, I'm still learning as I go. So if you do have any advice or more specific feedback that'd be really helpful and much appreciated.

Cheers,

Mark

Sampo

I'd recommend using this for reference: http://www.zygotebody.com/

Your Humerus is oriented wrong and because of that Ulna and Radius are also wrong. They don't cross each other like that.
Also ribs are attached to Sternum with cartilage tissue. It's not a single solid bone structure.

For advice: Expect to spend a lot of time on this. Take one bone at a time instead of rushing to get the whole body ready. The human body is very complex.
Patience!

markholland

Thanks a lot for the advice Sampo.

Zygote body is a great resource that I have been using. I couldn't use it much for the arm though as I chose a different stance. I'll make sure to find more references and look back over that section in particular. I agree that it needs more work, so thanks for pointing it out.

I don't want to rush through this at all and I know it will take a lot of time to get right. However as this is for my final year project I have to keep my deadline in mind. Now that I have the skeleton blocked out I am refining it one section at a time and adding muscles as I go. I'll probably post some progress in the next few days or so.

markholland

I'm making some more progress with this project and focusing on the head for now. Please let me know what you think so far. It's still a work in progress so any comments and criticism would be really helpful.



Also thanks to everyone who has already answered my questionnaire! I've got almost 40 responses which will definitely help me with the direction of this project and my dissertation. I'll probably close it next week, so please check it out before then if you haven't already.

Cheers!

Noren

I think for a final year project this is fine, but right now the quality is far from what it should be if it's meant to be a reference for other artists.
You need to look at a lot of actual scans with better quality than your skull if you want to improve this considerably. Otherwise all errors, blurry parts, errors in other source material and interpretation errors by you will all accumulate in your version.
One obvious example are the eyeballs, which seem quite large right now. Imagine what that means for finer and more complicated detail.
Harshly put, any interpretation introduced by you at your current level of experience has a good chance of being wrong.

markholland

Thanks Noren, I'll certainly look at some more 3D Scan data as I go. I'll also take a look at the eyeballs too and see if I can find further reference. The current ones are really just placeholders, but I agree that they do seem very large at the moment.

When it comes to accuracy nothing is really going to beat a 3D scan at the end of the day and the new tool from Ten 24 looks really cool. I'm not trying to compete with this as I've explained I'm just creating this for my own educational purposes. Hopefully the final tool will be strong enough to help some artists out, although many of you are at much higher level than I'll be able to achieve by then.

markholland

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I have been working on this project and several of my other university units. One of those was a ZBrush lion sculpt, you can check it out here https://vimeo.com/113645955.

Here's my latest anatomy progress. Any suggestions/improvements would be really appreciated. Thanks!

Anatomy WIP: http://i.imgur.com/BJGOzNT.jpg

markholland

Here's another small update, just made a few adjustments. Any other suggestions would be really appreciated!

Image: http://i.imgur.com/UU6MiLB.jpg

markholland

Here's some more progress:



[SKETCHFAB]d2d9086d12e34f0f9131df86eb70214c[/SKETCHFAB]

markholland

Here's a screenshot. Running in chrome using Unity and Marmoset Skyshop.



Still lots of features i'd like to add. I've got two assignments due in the next two weeks though so that will probably take up the bulk of my time. But i'll keep going with this whenever I get a spare moment.

Muzzoid

Why are you sculpting the bones rather than processing the scans in something like meshlab?

markholland

I'm not using 3D scan data because this is my student project and I don't have access to that kind of equipment. I used some data from online as a reference but it's all sculpted from z-spheres. I chose this project so that I could learn more about anatomy and sculpting. I'm not trying to make this the next Zygote Body, i'm just doing it because I want to learn and improve my skills.

almighty_gir

Is your student project to create an application that will be useful to industry professionals? Or is it to make something that demonstrates your anatomical knowledge? I highly doubt it's both as that's an insane task for a student to undertake.

My worry here is that you're presenting something that people will potentially use for their own reference in future, and to be blunt, you're just not good enough for that yet.

The application itself looks really cool, i would pursue/push that agenda quite heavily. But i would also find an actual expert to make the reference material, because (and i sincerely believe that in 6 months or a year for now you'll look on this and agree with me) your work as it stands right now is more likely to harm the growth of people who don't know better, than help anybody.

markholland

Don't worry I know that this is far from professional quality. I only sculpted for the first time last year, but I wanted to challenge myself and I've learned loads from doing it. I already know that I could do better if I started again now and that shows just how much I've learned from it. This tool will only feature on my own personal portfolio and i'll put a disclaimer to state that this is merely student work. In hindsight I should've made that clearer in the title of this thread, apologies for any confusion.

My final year project had to involve the development of a tool so I chose this as a way of incorporating sculpting in to my work so that I could practice. I'm proud of how far I have come and I'm looking forward to improving further. Please let me know if you have any general feedback or advice, I'll be sure to take it on board.

[EDIT: Changed thread title to include Student Project]

neilberard

If this is just to improve you own understanding of anatomy, I would take a screen shot of what you have now and overlay it on to top of some good reference in Photoshop. http://www.anatomytools.com/anmfv1-1-3scale-p13.php

markholland

Thanks for the advice Neil, I appreciate it!

markholland

I've now completed the tool and you can check it out here!

I'm now writing up my dissertation and would really appreciate any responses to my survey.

Thanks for your guidance and I hope that you like my project.

iadagraca

Just a suggestion but I personally tend to find artists anatomy tools more useful when important features are more exaggerated and a little stylized.

markholland

That's an interesting point and it's something that I so nearly did actually. The emphasis would have helped to exaggerate many of the features as you said. But in the end I decided not to do this and instead go more towards realism.

It would've been cool if I had done it as the anatomy of a game character and actually designed my own stylised character with anatomy such as this. That's certainly something i'd like to try out in the future.

Eric Chadwick

I helped you rename the thread, and moved it to the critique section.

I did a similar project as a student and found it really rewarding. Keep going, it's a great way to learn anatomy!

markholland

Cheers Eric! Yeah I've learned a lot from doing it, I'm definitely going to keep on practicing.