animal sculpt primitive

[benk]

I have been playing a bit with trying to set up a sculpting work flow for making a variety of animal forms. Referring to Goldfinger's Animal Anatomy for Artists I have modelled and rigged in Blender a generalized animal form that can be posed and altered to reflect various kind of animals. This in my mind is somewhat akin to a figurative sculptors approach to blocking out a subject on armatures. I am just beginning to see how functional this approach might be by importing into 3dc a big cat test derived from the general animal form in Blender. Do others see any value in this approach? Too tedious or systematic? Always happy to see any input the community might have.

 

Regards,

 

BK

 

[Michaelgdrs]

Interesting , could be used as a manikin in 3d coat

[digman]

This is in fact an outstanding workflow since we do not have a real posing tool for that kind of posing in 3DC yet... I know how to do basic rigging in Blender... This would work great on animals and for humanoids use one of the two rigs which already are available in Blender now.

I know what my next book is that I am going to buy...

Edited March 12, 2015 by digman

[benk]

Thanks for the input Michaelgdrs and digman. I have refined the big cat posed primitive a bit to see how the work flow pans out. It does seem faster than loading up a number of primitive objects in 3DC. Especially so if one wishes to sculpt a number of different animals in a variety of poses. I guess some would argue that a finish sculpt of a subject should be done in a neutral pose and then posed afterwards. I have had problems with this in regards to animal forms as I have never had much luck getting the limb to trunk relations to work well when posed...especially in compact poses. I guess one could always separate the limbs from the trunk and pose them separately to overcome this problem.

 

I would like to use a technique of posing a skeleton model and laying soft tissue forms on top of it. I think that is done in Zbrush but I haven't had much luck doing that in 3DC. Since I am a veterinarian that is more akin to how I think about anatomy....from the inside out.

 

To test this technique a bit further I have manipulated the general form into more of an elephant form.

 

Digman I can highly recommend Goldfinger's book as a good reference to multiple animal species anatomy. In fact I even like Goldfinger over some of my veterinary textbooks.

 

Regards,

 

bk

 

 

[Malo]

Thats a nice idea.

Keep up your good work.

[arumiat]

Looking great Ben!

[benk]

Just to see if I can push this concept in another more literal direction I put together a rigged canine manikin in Blender that when posed exhibits muscle stretch and bulging. I don't yet know if this can be manipulated to resemble other species. It certainly cuts down on rough sculpting time in 3DC which might hopefully translate into some efficiency increase as well as imparting a bit more anatomic accuracy.

 

bk

 

 

 

[syunikiso]

hey benk, interesting that I'm attending to a "Creature Anatomy" class and we are using this approach (at least the blocking phase). And yeah, it really works!

On regards to posing, it depends on what you are going to do with the model. I do some speed sculpts sometimes and I sculpt the model already posed (I use spheres + boxes to block the major masses and then start sculpting). 

 

Also, one thing that helps a lot is, instead on jumping straight on each muscle/form, we did another "blocking pass" looking for the major forms and then opened anatomy books and start putting all the info we need. 

I'm uploading my attempt on a canine. I still didn't sculpted the final forms itself. Hope that helps, and keep it up!

 

 

[L'Ancien Regime]

hey benk, interesting that I'm attending to a "Creature Anatomy" class and we are using this approach (at least the blocking phase). And yeah, it really works!

On regards to posing, it depends on what you are going to do with the model. I do some speed sculpts sometimes and I sculpt the model already posed (I use spheres + boxes to block the major masses and then start sculpting). 

 

Also, one thing that helps a lot is, instead on jumping straight on each muscle/form, we did another "blocking pass" looking for the major forms and then opened anatomy books and start putting all the info we need. 

I'm uploading my attempt on a canine. I still didn't sculpted the final forms itself. Hope that helps, and keep it up!

 

 

 

 

Excellent work, particularly the musculature of the hindquarters.

[arumiat]

Fantastic all round

[benk]

Looks great syunikiso. I think Goldfinger's system has a lot of merit. My interest is to see if it can be easily manipulated to quickly get to a number of different animal forms demonstrating good spontaneity and gesture. That is why I spent the time with Blender to see if the form can be easily pushed into a primitive that can be morphed into a broad range of creature morphology.

 

Looking forward to seeing your project progress.

 

Attached is a sculpt I made some time back in Blender working more from the inside out rather than the outside in. I did skin it to an armature and it does pose OK although I did not retopo it. Pretty much useless for animation purposes but it 3d prints fine.

 

bk

 

[syunikiso]

 

Looks great syunikiso. I think Goldfinger's system has a lot of merit. My interest is to see if it can be easily manipulated to quickly get to a number of different animal forms demonstrating good spontaneity and gesture. That is why I spent the time with Blender to see if the form can be easily pushed into a primitive that can be morphed into a broad range of creature morphology.

 

Looking forward to seeing your project progress.

 

Attached is a sculpt I made some time back in Blender working more from the inside out rather than the outside in. I did skin it to an armature and it does pose OK although I did not retopo it. Pretty much useless for animation purposes but it 3d prints fine.

 

bk

 

 

 

Hey, thanks!

 

And how is it going for you? When I did this exercise I had to do 3 animals. My choices were dog, lioness and horse. 

I started with the dog and at first I thought I could just mess around with its shapes to get the other two done. But the shilhouette of each animal were so different that I just decided to start over for each one. 

 

And nice work on the dog! I don't know where and why you'll use these sculpts but if you allow me, on an artistic point of view you could try to preserve some of the bony landmarks such as the scapulas and the hipbone. It helps to give more structure to the overall figure. 

Also one thing I always do regardless of the software I'm using is changing the materials to see how it behaves. A flat color one is specially useful to check how the silhouette is going. 

 

Keep it up o/

[Javis]

Nice work. Would love to see a canine primitive in 3DC by default.

[L'Ancien Regime]

OK, you prodded me into action... a quick sketch in 45 minutes  And it's all built on spheres and cylinders added in layers with symmetry.

 

 

 

 

Next time I'll build muscles on the skelton and take some more time and do some serious thinking about anatomy

Edited April 22, 2015 by L'Ancien Regime

[L'Ancien Regime]

 

 

His ribcage is too wide particularly in the front and its interfering with his uh..elbow..

 

Fortunately the frontquarters are still a separate layer so I can change the ribcage width without affecting the shoulders directly.

 

 

Edited April 23, 2015 by L'Ancien Regime

[L'Ancien Regime]

 

 

 

And that is that pretty much except for some work on the shoulders and ribs,  though I've left the ears on their own layer; I don't like clipped ears and I think I'll try various floppy ears on her.

 

Now i've got something to 

 

1. experiment with fur on.

 

2. experiment with quadriped rigging.

Edited April 23, 2015 by L'Ancien Regime

[benk]

Looks great L'Ancien Regime. What was your total time to get to this level? If you would like to try the primitive approach I illustrated at the beginning of this thread I can (I think...the 3b file is 1.3 MB) post it for use or email.

 

I have tried direct sculpting fur effects and haven't had much luck. My view port navigation seems to bog way down when I get in the neigborhood of 1.5 million polys. I was going to push it until it crashed but got tired of waiting for the pen cursor to catch up with my strokes. I must have something set up wrong because I assume 3DC should be able to deal with poly counts in the multi millions. I am running a Linux build on a first generation I7 chip with an nvidia 460 SE card. Older hardware, but I shouldn't think that old. At any rate I am comfortable with the Blender hair system and will probably stick with that for renders but it would be nice to maybe get something that might work for view port shots.

 

Looking forward to see how your dog progresses,

 

bk

[L'Ancien Regime]

Looks great L'Ancien Regime. What was your total time to get to this level? If you would like to try the primitive approach I illustrated at the beginning of this thread I can (I think...the 3b file is 1.3 MB) post it for use or email.

 

I have tried direct sculpting fur effects and haven't had much luck. My view port navigation seems to bog way down when I get in the neigborhood of 1.5 million polys. I was going to push it until it crashed but got tired of waiting for the pen cursor to catch up with my strokes. I must have something set up wrong because I assume 3DC should be able to deal with poly counts in the multi millions. I am running a Linux build on a first generation I7 chip with an nvidia 460 SE card. Older hardware, but I shouldn't think that old. At any rate I am comfortable with the Blender hair system and will probably stick with that for renders but it would be nice to maybe get something that might work for view port shots.

 

Looking forward to see how your dog progresses,

 

bk

 

 

I'd say 12 hours total. 

 

Time for both of us to get new rigs.

 

I'm running two quad core Harpertowns that use DDR2 ECC  RAM and I've  got 64 gigs of it on an old Tyan Tempest Server motherboard. Nvidia 560TI X2  GPU...it's over 6 years old now. 

 

Even with all the ram the mobo's bus is going to get jammed.

 

I'm looking at getting an X99 motherboard with as much DDR4 RAM as I can afford and the i7 CPU, either the $500 one or the $1000 one I'm not sure. The GPU is is still up in the air too. I'm favoring Nvidia but lately I'm thinking AMD's latest gamer cards are the way to go. 

 

I'll post more on what to buy later; I've got a friend that's an EE and he's advising me. 

[benk]

Here are a couple WIP using a pose able dog bone and muscle prim proportioned to be more like an elephant form. Spent about 30 min so far.

 

bk

 

[Tony Nemo]

Great start!

[benk]

 A couple hours later and about ready to move into surface mode. Have essentially no experience with surface mode but looking forward to seeing if I can push some surface detail on an animal with a lot of skin detail.

 

bk

[L'Ancien Regime]

Looking good, particularly the top view. I bet a rear 3/4 view looking down slightly would be good for capturing shadows and musculature.

[benk]

Decided to a quick rough armature in Blender to pose it. Just beginning general surfacing.

 

bk

[benk]

Surfacing moving along. Probably will try to paint a bit and see if it will go into Blender for a bit of hair.

 

bk

[Tony Nemo]

Watch out for poachers!

[benk]

After a bit of painting.

 

bk

[benk]

A render out of Blender.

 

bk

[AbnRanger]

Thanks for the input Michaelgdrs and digman. I have refined the big cat posed primitive a bit to see how the work flow pans out. It does seem faster than loading up a number of primitive objects in 3DC. Especially so if one wishes to sculpt a number of different animals in a variety of poses. I guess some would argue that a finish sculpt of a subject should be done in a neutral pose and then posed afterwards. I have had problems with this in regards to animal forms as I have never had much luck getting the limb to trunk relations to work well when posed...especially in compact poses. I guess one could always separate the limbs from the trunk and pose them separately to overcome this problem.

 

I would like to use a technique of posing a skeleton model and laying soft tissue forms on top of it. I think that is done in Zbrush but I haven't had much luck doing that in 3DC. Since I am a veterinarian that is more akin to how I think about anatomy....from the inside out.

 

To test this technique a bit further I have manipulated the general form into more of an elephant form.

 

Digman I can highly recommend Goldfinger's book as a good reference to multiple animal species anatomy. In fact I even like Goldfinger over some of my veterinary textbooks.

 

Regards,

 

bk

Could you e-mail Andrew (support@3d-coat.com) and ask him to add this among the preset base models (from the splash screen), I'm sure he'd be delighted to. BTW, if you could move the transform gizmo to the pivot point of each segment/bone, 3D Coat will store it when the file is saved. That way, users can quickly pose the model first, before they begin sculpting. That's what you have with the Human Mannequin model. It makes it much easier to pose all the fingers and limbs and such. Thanks and great looking animal mannequin.

[benk]

Could you e-mail Andrew (support@3d-coat.com) and ask him to add this among the preset base models (from the splash screen), I'm sure he'd be delighted to. BTW, if you could move the transform gizmo to the pivot point of each segment/bone, 3D Coat will store it when the file is saved. That way, users can quickly pose the model first, before they begin sculpting. That's what you have with the Human Mannequin model. It makes it much easier to pose all the fingers and limbs and such. Thanks and great looking animal mannequin.

 

I'd be happy to AbnRanger. But before submitting anything I think I will make a basic manikin that is more skeleton like. The Goldfinger model is a good approach, especially for reduction oriented sculpting. I am more of a constructivist and find the reduction approach in my hands to lead to more of a blocky feel to the figure. I have noticed this in the elephant project after making some of the posted renders. Additionally I think it would be prudent to avoid any potential copyright issues by submitting something entirely my own. I already have a canine skeleton modelled and just need to simplify it to make a manikin. I'll post it in this thread when I get around to making it.

 

bk

[benk]

If anyone is interested, I am happy to contribute to the community a relatively simplified voxel model of a canine skeleton that can be posed and distorted to represent other species. Building a model from the inside out may not be a popular approach for the bulk of the community and therefore I will wait and see if there is any interest before figuring out a way to submit the file. Attached are a few renders of the skeleton. I didn't bother making the right limbs as they can be derived with the symmetry function.

 

bk