Reckon it’s time to update my 3D printed Tyrannosaurus skull. I thought I’d try a W.I.P. thread to document my process.
The rex skull was my first Shapeways model and now it’s looking a bit lacking compared to my other products which are available in multiple scales and have improved articulated jaw joints.
Got my reference assembled and production drawings underway.
Fortunately there’s a lot more available reference these days including these free and legaly downloadable papers including-
Osborn, 1906
Osborn, 1917
Brochu, 2003
There’s also a 3D scan of the Trix specimen on Sketchfab, an excellent resource for viewing the bones in 3D. I’ll be exploring this one a lot, zooming in and rotating around to see the exact shape of bones.
Always good to get away from computer and go analogue now and again.
1/10th is an nice easy drawing scale so a 1.52m long skull is 15.2 cm on the paper.
Proportions based on Stan, Trix and the AMNH skull.
This will be the main working drawing for the skull and the relative sizes and external features will be traced from it.
I’ve just begun to print one base on a thingiverse free model, but I’m remodeling the vretebras to get custom individual and articulated ones.
I just have to unclogg my nozzle this weekend to be able to finish my print.
OK good luck with the 3D print. I hope it comes out well.
I think I’ve seen that model. Personally I’m not a fan of it’s poor accuracy and fudged details but it is good art.
Unfortunately I can’t make my stuff available for free but I think my prices are reasonable for the amount of research I do and the accuracy I achieve.
Added medial view of lower jaw.
Sue’s mandibles are much less crushed than the cranium so this view was drawn by studying the Brochu paper and also Witmerlab’s Stan photos.
I’ve been making a lot of sketches to familiarise myself with the structure of the skull, particularly the internal bones of the brain-case and the palette and how they connect to the inside surfaces of the exterior bones.
In addition to the other references I found there’s an excellent 3D PDF of the stan skull you can download from Witmerlab. Link - https://people.ohio.edu/witmerl/3D-Visualization.htm
With Adobe Acrobat you can cross section the 3D model allowing you to see inside as you rotate and zoom around the details.
Most of the sketches are little more than scribbles and difficult to interpret but this one I developed a bit further. The drawings really help me to understand the shape in 3D and are essential to the sculpting process.
Go for it. Personally I find it really rewarding but I’m a total dinosaur nerd
the PDF find in 3D is also very nice feature
not certain how you can add this 3D model in PDF from blender if possible !
I wouldn’t directly use the model from the PDF, it’s just for reference.
There’s usually some degree of distortion or crushing with fossils so it’s better to interpret the shape by looking at multiple specimens of the species or it’s closest relatives. That’s partly what the drawings are for, they help me explore the bones and find the shape of the animal.
Also from a technical viewpoint the 3D scanned meshes are high density and wouldn’t suit my sculpting workflow.
I prefer to work from my own base meshes which are built over my orthographic drawings.
Sorry I misunderstood what you meant earlier. You want to make 3D PDF from Blender?
As far as I know there is only commercial software for this (Adobe and 3rd party).
I agree this would be a good feature for Blender.
Don’t know if this would ever happen though, some capable programmer would have to want to add this feature.
for now blender does not have the U3D format for export
it would be interesting to have such export addon
right now I have to upload model to Meshlab which has the U3D export
then have to find a way to upload to PDF
I don’t have Adobe pro yet don’t know if there is some other free soft to do that
will look further if I can find one!
Ventral view
Probably wraps it up for the skull sketches. I’ll add more if I need the details.
Spent a lot of effort on this and need to pick up the pace or my (middle aged) attention span will sputter out. concentrate on neck next.
Tricky to find decent ref of the rex atlas bone (first cervical). It’s missing from the Sue specmen but the Brochu paper includes some photos from ‘Black Beauty’ (RTMP 81.6.1,), there’s also a few decent pics in the Osborn papers.
The Trix 3D scan was most helpful though, I had to rotate the view round the back of head and zoom in to see the form.
Needed to pick up the pace again so I’ve started poly modelling the skull. Method is to create a low-polygon model which is later subdivided for sculpting fine details. Still more drawing to do, especially for the foot but I needed a mode change to perk up my motivation a bit.
Giving the drawings a transparent background is the most unintrusive way to work with templates in Blender, the color-to-alpha filter in Krita does this easily. The main template drawing is 16 grid squares wide with each square representing 10cm. Blender lets me set the background image to 1.6m wide to precisely size the template.
Then it’s just a case of adding polygons (using the template to position vertices) to try to best represent the necessary topology and topography. It takes a bit of adjustment, shuffling vertices around until I get the correct form. I try keep the polys at a particular size. The model will be heavily subdivided when it comes to detail sculpting and I want to avoid areas of too high or low polygon density.
Roughed out jaw exterior surface. Made sure the pivot is at the correct axis centre (3 coloured circles) I can simply rotate the jaw on the X-axis as I’m modelling to check the upper/lower fit which is pretty important for a model with an articulating jaw.
Been thinking about the life bust.
As we’re probably all aware, there’s different ideas about the living appearance of Tyrannosaurus.
I’ll probably produce more than one version to reflect the variation of scientific opinion. I’d prefer to keep it at two variants and no more, the sketch is my initial exploration.
I think I’m leaning more towards #1 and #2 as the latest evidence seems to be pointing away from feathered tyrannosaurs.
I want the restoration to have interesting details but be credible and based on what the experts think. I definitely don’t want to directly rip off paleoart, although it’s impossible to avoid some influence.
