Skeleton Modeling Adventures
polycounter lvl 10
...well, more like skeleton modeling tragic happenstances.
As you can tell from the title and my throwaway sentence up above, I'm trying to learn how to model a skeleton bone by bone in an attempt to learn organic modeling. Specifically the human spine, as I thought it'd be a good place to start out at. Seemed simple enough when I was first checking it all out. The shapes seem pretty basic, and I've already gotten bits and pieces done here and there. A little bit of a skull, for one, and a couple of far too smooth, not nearly bony enough to look like bone vertebrae. Which leads me to my question...
...where can I find a good skeleton modeling tutorial? Despite my original assessment of "oh hell, that looks easy", it's actually quite a bit more difficult than I first though. All I can do decently is the round part of the spine, but the knobby extrusion is giving me trouble. How it goes from hard edges, to smooth swooping planes, to knobby ends, and back to hard edges is hard for me to work together without making my geometry a huge mess, or goofing up other places on the model.
So far, I've found a ton of medical references, but no actual video tutorials beyond the skull. Anyone have any links or suggestions that'll help me out here?
As you can tell from the title and my throwaway sentence up above, I'm trying to learn how to model a skeleton bone by bone in an attempt to learn organic modeling. Specifically the human spine, as I thought it'd be a good place to start out at. Seemed simple enough when I was first checking it all out. The shapes seem pretty basic, and I've already gotten bits and pieces done here and there. A little bit of a skull, for one, and a couple of far too smooth, not nearly bony enough to look like bone vertebrae. Which leads me to my question...
...where can I find a good skeleton modeling tutorial? Despite my original assessment of "oh hell, that looks easy", it's actually quite a bit more difficult than I first though. All I can do decently is the round part of the spine, but the knobby extrusion is giving me trouble. How it goes from hard edges, to smooth swooping planes, to knobby ends, and back to hard edges is hard for me to work together without making my geometry a huge mess, or goofing up other places on the model.
So far, I've found a ton of medical references, but no actual video tutorials beyond the skull. Anyone have any links or suggestions that'll help me out here?
Replies
The spine is split up into 3 sections (4 if you include the sacrum). Lumbar, Cervical, and Thoracic.
1. Make a rough vertebrae.
2. duplicate it along the spine making up the different sections.
3. Adjust the vertebrae according to their section
4. Post progress
5. Update based on critiques
6. see steps 4 and 5
7. Adjust each vertebrae individual to your desired level of final detail.
Part 1 is where I'm currently stuck. I can't quite seem to make a vertibrae that I'm happy with. What I'm about to show below is my 4th attempt, which is the best of the bunch.
One of the shots I used this as reference...
....and of course my skull.
...which looks good from that angle, but is totally guffed up everywhere else. It's not too bad for my first attempt at per polygon modeling, but it still needs a helluva lot of work (or really, a redo). I'm gonna come back to it later.
Once I get part 1 down, I'll go to 2, 3, and 4. But for now, I wanna concentrate on that first step, which I'm struggling with.
Okay, I've worked and worked at it, and finally got to a point where I'm actually sorta pleased with the outcome. Dunno if it's anatomically correct or not. Some guy sporting this spine would probably have serious issues for all I know. But it looks realistic enough for a newbie attempt.
Once I got the spiny extrusions done, the rest fell into place. Then I just slapped them in according to this nice chart I have, sculpted the bladed bony bits for variety, and....
While doing these little exercises, and studying anatomy, I've come to realize just how gross people are on the insides. Also I'm hungry for ribs for some reason.
So critique away, people. And if you've all got any video tutorials, I could still most definitely use them.
This is the final sculpt of my little spine model (linked because it's a large image). My only regret is not imported the entire thing in one go, because it'll be a pain in the ass putting everything together piecemeal in Zbrush.
if you look closely, you'll see all the various bits and pieces don't line up perfectly (poor dude's gonna have some severe back issues), and I should've made a few more cuts to the big blades to maintain resolution. I'll have to subdivide it up to 3m polys just to get the granular detail up to standards with the rest of the model. Other than that, I'm actually kinda pleased with it. This is a first for me when it comes to modeling.
Next up, the coccyx and the rest of the spine...then the skull. I guess I'll be making this my work in progress thread from here on out.
One tip at this point: Don't get too obsessed with the details of the skeleton just yet. Instead do your best to get an entire skeleton to the level that you've got this section of the spine. This will give you a better picture of how everything is fitting together and should help you then spot areas that need to be improved.
Keep on going.
From the coccyx, I've gone up to the 9th vertebrae. From the looks of this diagram I found, I should delete the top four I've already done and start a new model for the next 12 up.
Yup. I know. Thing is, I can't resist sculpting stuff, since I figured out I was kinda good at it, so I kinda got ahead of myself there. What I'm thinking about doing now is getting the skull, spine, ribcage, and coccyx done, then bringing that into Zbrush for the final work. If I can pull that off, I'll bring in the arms, hands shoulder blades, hips, legs, and feet in for the final bit.
Other than the skull, which I'm having a little trouble with, the rest shouldn't be all that hard to do. Hopefully I'll get it all done pretty quicklike. Like a month or so, if I keep at the pace I've been going at.
That's right. The neck and butt areas. Damn, I'm eloquent. Anyway, here's the WIP:
Sacrum done, and ribs on the way. Contrary to what I believed, the butt bone was the easiest part to do. Just an hour of goofing around with the shape, a subdivide, and some quick sculpting inside of Modo, and I was done.
The ribs, on the other hand, have been a pain in the ass. I figured they'd be easy, cuz comeon, they're basically tubes. That's easy. But no, I've spent 3 hours and a couple of redos getting them to look halfway decent. I wouldn't say they're anywhere near perfect at the moment, but they're getting there.
Also, I learned that the coccyx isn't what I thought it was. It's actually that little dangly bit below the sacrum. This has been an edutaintional experience for me on all kinds of fronts here.
So after a surprisingly large amount of pain, hardship, and redos, I've finally managed to get my ribs and sternum looking decent. Save for some questions over the shape, I'd say they're mostly done by this point. I'm doing the rib cartilage now. Next up is the pelvis and shoulder bones. From there, my torso is done.
I've got one question concerning the overall shape of the ribs, though. From the shot below, they look a little too bowed out on the edges. Since I can't find a good overhead ribcage shot, I have to guess a bit on the shape. Does it look pretty decent?
Picture
It's pretty easy to fix if it doesn't look right. I've spent so much time working on it, though, I don't wanna touch it unless I absolutely have to.