Titanosaur Anatomy

[Tallin]

Recently, I started modelling a Dreadnoughtus in 3D with a view to making a highly detailed figurine that I would like to get printed - I may look at Shapeways for that.

Anyway, I thought this would probably be the best place to ask for some advice in regards to the anatomy of these creatures, in particular, the neck. I have a couple of titanosaur models but they are very small and are CollectA (amplelosaurus and Alamosaurus) so I don't know how accurate they are in terms of reference material...

Any help would be much appreciated!

Here is the basic sculpt so far ~



Based on this skeletal:

[DinoLord]

There's at least one paleoartist who has written a lot on titanosaurs. In general I think the main differences from other sauropods are the lack of thumb claws on the front feet and the extremely wide hips.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

There are many diffrences that do not present themselves easily to the outward appearance of the dinosaurs either. For instance one of the main diagnostic traits of titanosaur verts are their ball and socket arrangement with each other....however you would not notice it as much difference in the fleshed out animal

[Alatariel]

What program are you using for this?

[Tallin]

I am using Autodesk mudbox mostly. I use Maya to make a basic blocky shape and then do all of the organic modelling in Mudbox. Both of these programs are free for a 3 year non-commercial licence from Autodesk! Though I would love to give ZBrush a go too ~

[Dinoguy2]

As with all archosaurs, the leg muscles should attach to the tail and blend together smoothly, they wouldn't have distinct "thighs" like that. You might also want to look for some dorsal views of the vertebrae, I don't think the neck would be as flat sided as it looks in your current model. The fore feet should have a concave back to leave horseshoe shaped prints. It also looks like the hands in your model extend forward slightly when they should be totally vertical columns, maybe with a radially expanded fleshy pad. Sauropods in general had column hands with few claws. Titanosaurus are the most extreme version of this - not only did they lack all hand claws, they had no finger bones and basically walked on the tips of their knuckle stumps.

[reinier zwanink]

A detail i would surely do is the foldings on its neck to represent the bone parts in it
Like you see on SS apato and the one from papo

What scale are you making anyway?

[Alatariel]

I am using Autodesk mudbox mostly. I use Maya to make a basic blocky shape and then do all of the organic modelling in Mudbox. Both of these programs are free for a 3 year non-commercial licence from Autodesk! Though I would love to give ZBrush a go too ~

If you want to try Zbrush, they offer a free version of it called Sculptris