workflow for anatomical model

Hi! my name is Tonatiuh and I come from Spain, I’m a physiotherapist, osteopath who also teach.
I’m new to blender artists and to blender an 3D programs in general. I have a project to make an anatomical model for my clases and to illustrate books or videos with accurate human anatomy with almost all the anatomical accidents. So my question is in regards to the best approach to have this done. At the moment I’m working in the bones part and so far I came with this workflow:

  • Find and use anatomical pictures for references.
  • Make by hand a low poly approximation of the bond. (or use the skin modifier)
  • Sculpt the form, and the basics detail with dyntopo
  • Re-mesh.
  • Make a multi res, and sculpt again. (I don’t know if I prefer after this to do normal maps or bump maps, or just use the hypoly mesh.
  • Materials:
  • uvi unwrap, and textures (in the TODO to learn)

In the other hand I need help in regards to haw is the best approach to organized the objects. Al separate, and then link to an other blender file, and in that case the objects have to be exported in .OBJ or in the blender file? or all in one BIG file?

Example of a bone I’m working on:

I hope you can help me, because the options in blender are enormous and I’m a bit overwhelm. Thank you! and sorry about my English!

Attachments


in my opinion you dont need the second sculpting. You could bake bump or normal maps, textures and so on and create lower poly objects with that textures. I would do everything in one big file. Like a library. If you name all the objects in a good way to remember every single bone :) you can start a new blend file and link in the object in you need. There is no need to export .objs when you anly work in blender.
btw. one helpful addon is “Edit linked Library” need to edit the original Meshes and scene in library.

Wow, for a beginner modeler you’re really good at this. I don’t think I should add anything more that Piet said.

thank for the replay!
I don’t know if I can bake bump or normal maps, of a dynotopo mesh to an other complete different mesh build from scratch, but snap to the face of the dynotopo mesh… y tried but fail (maybe I don’t know how to do it…) I thought that it have to be done with a multi-res object.

To kept me motivated, I went to try to do a realistic portrait of my father, so I learn some tricks like paint a displaisment image in the view-port (whit cycles in the upcoming blender 2.77… something) and then apply it to a mesh. I think that can be apply to my workflow to, I put an image to show you my progress so far. It has been fun!!! especially the hair.



It brake in many places because it is a dynotopo mesh preeetty bad, and I uvunrap and the change things, so it broke the continuity of the image of the bump map when it went to the mesh, but for a prof of concept I think it is very good test.

So I will rethink my approach, and post it hear.

For the big file, I learn abut link and append so I may have an idea of how to do it.
So fare so good, to much to learn, but I’m confident I’ll get there.
Thank again, and if you have more ideas, please share with me.