UPDATE (April 4, 2007): I’ve been working on this project in my free time over the passed couple months as a way to enhance my modeling and rigging skills. The goal is to get the anatomy as accurate as possible and I’ll be learning to use Blender’s sculpt mode to do a detailing pass once all the basic modeling/rigging is done. Here is a close up on the skull, the hand, a full shot of the skeleton so far, and a link to the animation test I’ve done on the hand can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d5yuDU6ReY Please check the latest post for more details and C&C is always welcome. ORIGINAL POST (Jan 25, 2007):
Hey, this project sort of came up because I had an hour of free time during my Anatomy class and we were studying the Skull so I figured it might be fun to model it in Blender. Well, I made 3 attempts -the first two didn’t come out well at all trying to model it from a cube, but the third attempt I started modelling each part separately and it’s actually coming along nicely -everyone was certainly impressed.
Obviously, it’s not finished, but here’s what I have modeled so far:
This is just something I’m doing for fun on the side so I may not get a chance to finish it, but seeing as we’ll be studying the entire body -I might decide to model the rest of the skeleton as well.
Yeah, I’m planning to model out the basic features and use Sculpt Mode to do the fine details. I actually tried using a beta build of 2.43 but with Mirror Modifier and Sculpt Mode it gets buggish and it’s sort of buggy in general too.
I thought it was supposed to be out in December. It’s already nearly February. Oh well.
I modeled the scapula, clavicle, and humerus now (Still have yet to finish the skull -Don’t worry I’ll get back to that eventually) I’m going to work the radius, ulna, and the hands next and then do the lower extremities but first there’s some work I have to do on the back of the scapula to finish it off.
I’d like to hear any comments. Also, I’ve got a rough rig setup so I can start playing with the animation as I go. I think it should be pretty straight forward but if anyone with experience in skeleton animating or whatnot knows of any challenges I should look out for, the advice will be welcomed.
I’ll try and post some close up renders to show the details on different parts if I get the chance, but it’s not textured or anything yet so they won’t look that impressive.
Even without the texture, I’m impressed. Nice elbow joint. Looks just like the illustrations in my anatomy book. Good job! Skull still needs some work. Have you tried the wiki illustrations of the skull for background image references?
Thanks for all the encouraging replies. I modeled the bones in the hand now, and hopefully I’ll get some more done soon. As I mentioned before I’m rigging as I go so I might stop to setup the hand rig. I still want to play around with the scaling and positioning of the bones and they seem kind of flat so I’m going to try to fix that.
Haven’t done any work on the skull. I’ll get back to that eventually.
When I started modeling I had actual physical bones to use as reference from my Anatomy Class. I’m using this as my background reference in Blender:
[](http://img405.imageshack.us/my.php?image=skeletoniv1.gif)
I haven’t found a good skull reference image yet which I’ll need to find, but I definitely agree with the statement about the eyes and I’ll try and fix that as soon as I get time to work on the skull some more.
I do have a collection of detailed diagrams of all the bones from my anatomy class as well as photos, but I’m on vacation in Orlando and left my scanner at home, so I can only get so much use of them on paper.
I am having a little bit of trouble with the Scapula. I can’t quite get the topology to get it to look right. Here’s a set of comparative images of the render/ mesh/ reference to show what I mean (You can also see the back of the head of the Humerus which I haven’t shown yet):
More to come soon. Thanks again for the replies.
(I’m using smaller images now. With the last renders I had forgotten I left it on that high resolution.)
Sorry for the long break -I’ve been busy with other things, but I’m turning most of my attention to finishing Bill now (That’s what I’m calling him now by the way)
So anyway, I’ve been getting back into the swing of things with his hand rigging. I’m using Bassam Kurdali’s technique in which one bone can control the entire finger with the option to scale it to get finger curling/stretching. I used this for the thumb as well, but I’m looking into other maybe additional constraints for the thumb I think.
I also added an image texture I found after a brief google search -Nothing too impressive -I’m not very good at texturing so you’ll have to bear with me there.
Anyway, here’s a render of the fingers curled:
And here’s an quick animation test of fingers in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d5yuDU6ReY -A little rough, I know. I’ll try and smooth it out if I can.
I’ve been starting to model the outline of the ribs too and the sternum -I need to widen up the area between the front and back substantially though before I can go much further:
Thanks for your patience and more to come soon. Crits are always welcome.
Sorry AGAIN for the long break -I just can’t seem to stay on top of this project, but anyways, I’ve been working on it a little bit -I fixed the sternum/rib cartilage so that they curve like they’re supposed to and I also adjusted the position of the scapula and where the arms are so it lined up with my side reference better (I also added a rough vertebrate to mark the top of the pelvis):
I also made some minor adjustments to the skull so here’s a close up of that. When I did this close up render I realized how repetitive the texture was as well so I adjusted it slightly, but I’ll need to probably find a better bone texture at some point:
No one’s been giving me any feedback :(. Hopefully that means I’m doing an exceptional job, but more likely it’s because I’m only posting updates once a month lol -This week I’m SERIOUSLY going to try to get this guy done though, so stay with me.
Started modeling the femur:
A wire view to show the outlines I did for the remaining leg bones (to make sure scale is correct):
And a close up of the femur head, which proves even moreso that I need to improve my texturing skills:
…though I have to say, if I were you, I’d try doing some Visual FX shots with this guy, because it would be a shame to make such a nice model and rig it then never really do anything with it.
Thanks, well I would do more with him, but he’s really not a big priority of mine (which you can tell by the time gaps I skip working on him). I do plan to (sometime in the future, probably not immediately) model and rig muscles to him and then perhaps some skin. Although it would be nice to see this guy, bare bones, jazzing away at the piano or tap dancing or something lol -Or I could always take the usual route -skeleton sword fighting.
