I spent about 4 hours on this today starting from a box. Its not far enough along to show all sides or wires yet. The goal is to add all of the muscles, and perhaps do both a interior muscle with bones model, and the superficial muscles and bones models. I may get to use Zbrush for the muscles. This is my first attempt at modeling the foot in any 3d medium. My reference is a real skeleton foot that I can handle freely.
From what I can see, the bones are all welded in one piece. Are you planning to separate them?
Possibly. I was going to have them at least creased deeply. It depends on how big the poly count gets. I want it reasonable since I will be adding lots of ligaments and muscles as well. I plan on updating this at least once a week. I think I have a 4 week deadline.
Week 2. About 6.5 hours of work. All of the phallanges and metatarsal are fully segmented. I have to rework the topology at the top for the tarsal bones at the top. These are quick renders, please don’t focus on the graininess or shinniness [sic]. They are not going to be adjusted until I’m done modeling, but they will be addressed. I will be modeling all of the muscles and most of the ligaments, and I have yet to model the tibia and fibula bones that attach to the tarsus.Any suggestions for approaching the topology of the tarsals will be much much much appreciated!! There are 2 front views one is forshortened because it is close to the lens, but you can see the toes better. No bottom views though, the bottom isn’t interesting to look at yet without the tarsal bones seperate. Is there a way to set up 6 cameras so I can have them render the 6 views at once? Or sequentially?
All of the bones are formed, they definetly need to be tweaked more. I’m curious is it possible to edit the SUB-D’s sub divided mesh with the B-brush script? I’m not sure how to use this script either. It might make detailed the bones easier. This was another 6.5 hours of work total. If you see huge problems with the forms let me know. My topology isn’t amazing, but its not horrendous either. I have been adding detail via loopcuts. I think I forgot to turn on sub-d’s on the middle toe, I turned it off while editting for some reason.
it looks nice.
To bbrush it you should probably tweak it just as you want it ahead of time and then apply the subsurf modifier.
Is there a way to add geometry without totally ruining your topology?
knife and loopcut as far as I know of.
hey, that looks pretty cool, but i do think the bones in the centre are to smooth. The edges shoud be sharper.
I added more geometry so they mimic the model as close as I could get. I won’t be able to spend that much more time on the bones for some time. The one toe is bothering me a bit. We started adding muscles and tendons so next update will feature a few muscles and tendons!
First muscle completed! With wires too!
Very cool. I think I’d try blending the tendons into the muscle more instead of an abrupt, sharp change. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know.
looks nice. You should try rigging the foot. I you can do that, you’ll have a fully ‘working’ foot in the end…would be cool eh? but i guess that would be very difficult, and cost a lot of time…
I’m not sure how to blend the tendon into the muscle. I’m using two different materials and one mesh for the muscles and tendons. The big toe and little toe are rigged. Haven’t had time to rig the others. I’mlso not sure how to cause ik/fk bones to cause the muscles to deform. IF its really hard I won’t do it, I just don’t have that much time this semester as of now. Its a sculpture class after all, its all about modeling. I did save a file of just the bones. So its possible I may come back and try animation muscle tests.
you could try using uv mapping it’s pretty simple if you know how to use it proberly.
niels
I think the toes are way too long!!!
I’d hate to have toes that long…“Ouch!!!Stubbed my toe again” :x
They aren’t. Skin covers up the metatarsals and I possibly (not there yet in understanding) part of the toes.
Actually i dont think they are too long.They seem anatomicaly correct.
So far great work. I agree on making the tendons blend in more but hell, i dont know what they look like in the real world either. Rigging all that would seem a painfull task.
It looks really nice so far. If you want the tendons to merge more you could use vertex painting. You could kind of blend the two different material colors together. It’s easier than uv mapping. You baisically color on the mesh itself. I find it to be very usefull 
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Blender Render
YafRay Render
The only thing I changed from the blender render to Yavray was, I turned off the radiosity and changed a photon light to a lamp. And moved the lamp directuly above the foot. Yavray render was around 13 minutes, blender render was around 5-7 didn’t really pay attention that much. 
I’m just amazed out how much difference the same scene is rendered via two differen renderers! The foot isn’t quite complete yet, but the side shown is complete. I still need to add muscles and tendons to the bottom of the foot. I used vertex painting for the muscles. I did light for the blender render orriginally, but decided to play around with rendering for 2 hours. Could have had the foot muscles modelled in that time. 
