Zbrush Dinosaurs and 3D Prints

[edu]

First if all... hi, guys! I am new here. In terms of prehistoric life knwoledge, i come from the past. Specifically from the early nineties, when i was a dinosaur-freak kid I left them aside and two years ago i received as a present a Papo T-Rex (the big one). I thought it was completely accurate... until i found this forum. And then, i discovered animals i couldn't have imagined.

So... i am thinking on starting collecting and painting some models, and your Paras, Gorgonzola, are great.
End of off-topic.

I have a doubt about this models though. I don't intend to nitpick! It's just a doubt! Aren't the back feet too long? As if the back pad, "the heel", came too far back or were too big. I say it just by seeing the fossils, but probably the footprints are like this and i don't know it... Just a question.

Great models!

[Gorgonzola]

TyrantQueen, I'm saving that to my computer, hahaha.

Edu, you're right with the earlier versions of the Para, I made the foot WAAAAAAY too long initially. Wings was kind enough though to give me a diagram to follow in making adjustments though, so the new leg should have the correct foot length now.

The final model is more or less finished, I've just shelved it for a few days while I work on pose ideas so I can look at it with fresh eyes. I've been debating if I should add any scale detail at all, mainly for two reasons:

1) For it to be really noticeable, it would have to be a bit out of scale I think.

2) That sort of thing could work, if it was like an animal like Carnotaurus which had big scutes and osteoderms, but for Parasaurolophus it seems like it had a fairly fine scale make up, pebbly in consistency.  So I may be better off just describing skin folds and that sort of thing while leaving the very fine scales up to the imagination...

Which is a shame, because I sketched out an idea of some osteoderms lining the side of the animal, and it looked kinda cool...except they never had that. 

[edu]

Thanks for the answer, Gorgon! I've followed the whole thread, i wouldn't have noticed the lengthy metatarsal bones!  I am not refering to that. I was refering to your last models, to the foot sole, the "feet surface". Lets see if i can explain it. Seeing the fossils reconstructed, the Paras seem to stand over their phalanges. They don't seem to have tarsus, so they don't have talus. But in your models there seems to be a talus, a heel, in the back of the feet.
I insist, it's just a doubt, i am not trying to correct anything as i am a complete newbie. Just asking!

[jtn144]

True, the scales may come out a little over-sized, but they would probably look good under paint. At least it would help for my painting technique.

[jtn144]

In 72 scale, your'e right it might not be worth the trouble, but in 1/40 you might get away with it.

[radman]

Wow, these para poses are all just wonderful!  What a massive diorama they will make.  Now just a few ornithomimes, hypacros and grypos to round out the fauna ( I know, I'm being greedy  ).  Anyway, really looking forward to these, looking great so far.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Wow, these para poses are all just wonderful!  What a massive diorama they will make.  Now just a few ornithomimes, hypacros and grypos to round out the fauna ( I know, I'm being greedy  ).  Anyway, really looking forward to these, looking great so far.

Ornithomimids would be great. There's never enough good ones. You know , as far as hadrosaurs are concerned, I haven't seen any Anatosaurus/Anatotitan or Lambeosaurus replicas from anyone yet either. 

[radman]

Ornithomimids would be great. There's never enough good ones. You know , as far as hadrosaurs are concerned, I haven't seen any Anatosaurus/Anatotitan or Lambeosaurus replicas from anyone yet either.

Actually, Angie kinda started this whole thing with her set of Lambeos in multiple poses and sizes:

http://www.shapeways.com/search?q=lambeosaurus&s=0

I got an entire group of these and am having them painted up by a fellow DTF member, hope to show them off here sometime soon.  I recall Martin also doing a lovely diorama of the bunch on his thread somewhere.

[Gorgonzola]

That's where I got the idea initially!    Seeing Angie do it made me want to bring that to a bunch of other dinosaurs.

I saw Martin's Lambeosaurus buildup and I thought "holy crap, why isn't this done more for these?"

So when I started modeling these dinosaurs, I had the goal in mind to produce models that are active and naturalistic (or at least, as close to naturalistic as I can shoot for).  So that way if someone wanted to make a herd it wouldn't have to involve making modifications to the models.  It'd just involve picking out some of the poses you'd like, painting them up and basing them.

I just started off with Carnotaurus and Parasaurolophus since they're personal favorites of mine, but after that I'm aiming for cryolophosaurus next, then maybe a sauropod.  Would love to have a sauropod herd diorama...

[radman]

Can't wait!  A sauropod herd would be great.  Perhaps Galileo was the first to offer one, with a group of 5 or 6 shunisaurs, a few years ago.  I think they were 1:40, and Martin G., reliable as always, made a terrific diorama of them.  Anyway, looking forward to the latest creations, keep up the good work!

[tyrantqueen]

Perhaps you might consider making a version of the Para with a webbed crest? Some people like their paras to have them I thought Angie R's Para was beautiful (and it also had a webbed crest)

Just an idea to keep in mind

[wings]

Thanks for the answer, Gorgon! I've followed the whole thread, i wouldn't have noticed the lengthy metatarsal bones!  I am not refering to that. I was refering to your last models, to the foot sole, the "feet surface". Lets see if i can explain it. Seeing the fossils reconstructed, the Paras seem to stand over their phalanges. They don't seem to have tarsus, so they don't have talus. But in your models there seems to be a talus, a heel, in the back of the feet.
I insist, it's just a doubt, i am not trying to correct anything as i am a complete newbie. Just asking!

Like all birds, "all" dinosaurians are digitigrade animals which means that they walk on their toes. That is why you can see in figure 2 (below) that these specimens are mounted with their feet angling up instead of planted flat on the ground (unless they are doing a crouching walk or resting when they place their feet on the ground but that is beside the point). I'm not sure whether they do or they don't have ankle bones (tarsals), they might but just wasn't found (they are probably flat and shaped like a disk if they were found; as in other dinosaur species which were found with tarsals). From what we have perhaps they are simply not preserved. One thing to be certain is that they do have ankles (unlike sauropods or advance stegosaurians that their ankles were not as well defined due to the proportion of their feet).  When you are looking at any bird feet, they always have fleshy pads at the end of their "metatarsals" and their toes so it is likely that hadrosaurs have these too. Kind of like the "heel" pads on elephants (see figure 2 below). Also probably what you refer to as "heels" are just the fleshy pads of the animal. Often these pads don't correspond to the segments of the digits. We do know that they have "heel pads" (as seen on papers like this one http://www.igme.es/4empsla/libro/59.pdf) but we have no idea on working out the exact volume of these pads yet.

As to the length of the foot, if we take Ostrom's measurements of P. cyrtocristatus (see figure 1 below); We can then make an estimate of the leg via the ratio of these elements. I couldn't find a decent picture of the outermost foot bone (metatarsal IV) so I've opted to use the specimen from Zheng et al. (2011) paper and scale it to fit the reconstruction just to get an overall shape of the leg.

[edu]

Wow, Wings, that was a perfect explanation! That's why this forum is so cool. Doubt solved!

[Gorgonzola]

Wings explained it better than I could, Edu.  Glad to hear the doubt is assuaged!

Tried out one of the poses with the current version of the high-res model.  This is honestly near the end, after fiddling around with scale detail on the body I did decide to give it a bit of a leathery belly (which I know will reproduce nicely at both 1/72 and 1/40), but the scales just aren't working - they're too small to reproduce at either scale I suspect.  So I'm going to fiddle with this more, see if I can think of anything else to push it more, otherwise I'll start moving the poses over to the finished model so I can wrap this fella up!

[tyrantqueen]

Looking good I don't suppose you need another guinea pig this time? 'Cause I'd be happy to do it again

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

i think it looks great. The underbelly does have some really nice texture to it now.

[Jodee]

I think at these smaller scale less may be more.  This 1-40 scale Allosaurus model is from Geene Models and I notice how he emphasizes more detail around the distal parts of the body (head, hands, feet) and leaves bigger spaces to be influenced by light and dark shifts from surface contours following bone and skeletal structures.

Jodee

[wings]

Now seeing a bigger picture from the front; I think perhaps the chest is probably a little too wide.



The front part of the shoulder blades (the coracoids, in red and labelled as "Co" in the middle diagram) are almost touching in well articulated specimens. For this reason the chest is quite narrow.

Also, I'm not so sure about the hands either. From looking at integuments of other hadrosaurs; it seems like apart from the last finger the whole hand is encased in a fleshy sheath with no nail showing (see how far the skin draped over the last segments of these digits...). Maybe the only digit which has a hoof would be the digit III since it has a slightly "rougher" texture than the other fingers.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

At 1:40 Detailing should be fine to go with..at least for larger animals like this Para and the Allo above.  Small details should show up in a higher grade material, when cast in resin it should certainly be there. Not sure why the Geene Models Allo would be sparse on detail there, though my 1:15 Acro is as well..yet the first Yangchuanosaurus models were fully detailed all over and only about 4" long. 

Wings has a point about the chest, I was really surprised at how small the chest was compared to the rest of the animal and had to keep checking it against my figures. lol

[Gorgonzola]

Yeah, I'm quite surprised by that news!  I was pretty much winging it on the width of the animal, since top view orthographics are scarce to find (or my search abilities are lacking.)  I'll be updating the chest dimension to be thinner.