Updated T. rex skull - W.I.P.

[Dinoreplicas]

Blasting through the five digits, starting at the middle (digit III).

[Dinoreplicas]

Innermost digits I and II sculpted and detailed, that just leaves the IV and V to finish. Digit IV has five bones, the most of all the toes. Digit V is just a vestigial splint in the form of a single bone, it's barely there.

[Dinoreplicas]

OK that's the foot finished, let's see what's next.

[Mini Minmi]

It looks gorgeous, excellent detailing!

[Dinoreplicas]

It looks gorgeous, excellent detailing!

Thanks, just need to do the obligatory structure work and the foot can be made into a 3d print.
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For the life bust I'm going to model a base mesh around the skull and neck which can then be sculpted and detailed for the final appearance. The intention is that this will be a life restoration that the bones fit into. I've made a little drawing over a screen-grab so I can 'think out' the life model.



I'm aiming for a close fit initially so I can increase volume at the sculpting stage. Having the underlying bones will also be good for getting elements in the correct position, for example the eyes can fit snugly in the orbits and the ear opening should be placed between the quadratojugal bone and the depressor mandibulae.

I'll build in a little extra volume in places so I've got some sculpting 'meat' for the lips and the jaw muscles. (shown in green).

[Lone Trike]

I´m pretty exited about that bust. I´m always curious about other artist´s interpretation of the good old rex
What about the skull and foot, though? Did you already print them?

[Dinoreplicas]

I´m pretty exited about that bust. I´m always curious about other artist´s interpretation of the good old rex

Being a bone maker so far this is new territory for me, I expect it'll be a moving target in the sense I may revise the life models after a while. I've started work on a base mesh and I'll post a few grabs after I've tweaked a few verts (oops! tech speak ).

What about the skull and foot, though? Did you already print them?

The basic sculpts are done but I need to devise special versions for 3D prints. This entails poly reduction, constructing the movable jaw parts etc. and can be tricky to get working at the smaller scales. Shouldn't take me too long though, I'm getting fairly experienced at this part of the process. Also I haven't spoke to my photographer in ages and need to arrange a future date for a model shoot, that'll motivate me to get some models printed.

[Dinoreplicas]

Still at fairly early stages with the life bust, would've been further ahead with this but among other things, I spent the last three days messing around with a logo for Dinosaur Replicas.





Made a start by modelling a base mesh directly over the bones. I'm aiming for clean(ish) structure with quad-poly grids in the 'hero' areas. Because this part is more exploratory and intuitive than the bone work, it's more important that the subdivided polys are as square as possible to minimise stretching. They're a bit rectangular at the moment but I'll add loops to improve this once the basic shape has been roughed out.



I think there will have to be a couple of areas where I'll break my own rules to add details, probably for the eyes, lips and maybe nostrils and under the jaw. This will be to make 'helper' form for these areas. Think I'll make the eye it's own mesh too.

[Dinoreplicas]

Haven't spent enough time on this lately, too many distractions like life getting in the way. Might have a concentrated session over weekend.



Got the neck and top of head blocked out. Many of the base polys still too rectangular for my liking, it's tempting to go in and fiddle with this now this but it would be a mistake to do this before I fully know where I am with the shape.

[Dinoreplicas]

Gone ahead and prepped my little graphic for the scale sizes, I don't feel the need to show all scales visually as it just takes up space. When I (eventually) get the 3D printed models sorted this image will go into the carousel gallery on the Shapeways page for the product. Bit premature maybe but hey, it's done.



As I've mentioned previously I hope to supply 7 scales for the 3D print, maybe that's too many but what the heck, that's one of the advantages of working digitally. This checks out to these lengths (rounded)-

1:10 = 152mm
1:12 = 126mm
1:16 = 95mm
1:18 = 84mm
1:20 = 76mm
1:24 = 63mm
1:32 = 48mm

[Dinoreplicas]

been neglecting the old tyrant again 'cause I've been pasting my new logo across my web presence, also started messing around with an Artstation portfolio. Anyway, made some progress poly patching and shaping the mouth interior. Latest theories are that dino tongues were crocodile-like so I'm going to keep rexy's tongue flat and low in the mouth.



The transverse poly edges are positioned so they will ultimately be stitched with the exterior mouth polygons. Still need to add some 'helper' definition for the lips somehow (yes, lipped version first), an extra loop should be enough but I'll add that after I've joined interior to exterior.



Also this. Here's looking at you, kid!

[Minmiminime]

It's absolutely incredible watching this progress. Thank you for sharing it, and thank you for the updates! The final piece will be well worth waiting for 😊

[Dinoreplicas]

The final piece will be well worth waiting for 😊

Thanks, I'm hoping so. I've know I've been slow and meticulous with this build. I'm really glad some of you aren't bored with me yet.

[Dinoreplicas]

The life model base mesh is now a single piece. As planned I've cut an extra loop around the rim of the mouth (the red lines). When subdivided to high-poly this will give me enough definition to sculpt the pocket where lip meets gum, it makes the poly strips either side of the loop quite rectangular but I think that should be OK for this area.



Squaring up the elongate patches on the face and neck was fairly simple, a loop added here and there followed by some vertex editing to reclaim the form. Not perfect by any means but good enough to sculpt without creating stretched details.



The patch encompassing the eye area has been positioned to bridge with the eyelid work I've been setting up. I'm finalising that now and should be able to post an update later today.

[Bombyx]

Very interesting because this is not only sculpt and give something a shape but also paleontology and research. Congrats.

[Dinoreplicas]

Very interesting because this is not only sculpt and give something a shape but also paleontology and research. Congrats.

Thanks. The nature of the project means I'm constantly changing modes between crafting and checking/representing the data. I guess that can make things a bit more varied for anyone watching the process.
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The eye section blended in without issue but I later decided to add an edge to allow form-fitting the mesh around the postorbital boss a little more snugly.



That'll do for a while. Going to leave it alone for a few hours and maybe make some tweaks after I've looked again with fresh eyes.

[Lone Trike]

Nice! That looks very promising! And I love that you explain the technical details of your modeling process. I think it´s very interesting!

[Dinoreplicas]

Change of pace, I've been on with this thing way too long now and it's time to have something tangible, I'll see if I can get some bone models ordered and work on the life bust while I'm waiting for them to ship.

before I can upload to Shapeways, there's some production work to do on the model. My usual workflow goes something like this.

• poly reduce the main parts
• make and test extra structural pieces, connecting sprues, jaw joint fittings etc.
• weld it all together
• create correctly scaled versions

For uploaded models, Shapeways allows a max of 1 million polygons but they prefer 0.5 mil or less. Personally I like to get the polycount as low as possible without compromising detail, occasionally it's tricky to get models past the qualifying checks. When issues arise it's usually an iterative process tweaking the mesh untill it's printable so I want small file sizes for faster uploading.

I've made fair progress this evening and I'm half way through step 2 finishing up the jaw joint. I've have to remove some small areas from the skull and jaw for the pivot parts (red objects) to work. The black wireframe wedge is a cutter object doing its job on back of the cranium.



Lower jaw is a simpler affair, I'm just going to sculpt down a small area until the hole in the joint knuckle is cleared.

[Dinoreplicas]

I'm going to exploit the flexibility of Shapeways plastic materials by using a spring tension joint for the Jaw. The articulation points are bent outward slightly (7° each side). To fit the jaw in place you have to pinch it slightly at the back, the tension will hold the jaw in position whatever angle you pose it.



I've learned through experience to add some transverse bars to increase stiffness and stop the front of the jaw flexing. That's this part ready.



Got the sprues ready to connect cranium and jaw, the blue object is for drilling out a mounting pinhole under the brain-case. Next job is to sort the neck, might be a bit tricky.

[Dinoreplicas]

That's a production version of the head ready (I hope).



The neck is a bunch of floating bones, 9 cervical vertebrae and 16 neck ribs. I wanted to connect them into a single mesh and for the connectors to be as inconspicuous as possible so I spent some time making a central connecting tube (red) and small struts to attach the ribs (blue). I also wanted to reinforce and reduce flex so there's also some discrete connectors at the top (yellow). The magenta block will connect to the head.



Just got to weld this together and make a head/neck version but it'll wait till tomorrow. Got the foot to do too.