Anatomy WIP

[Zachris_Pensar]

Sorry for the absence guys! And thank you for the kind comments Hybryd75 and MonGo1337.
I will post more pictures of the process so far very shortly Daniel Biggers! ;]

I will definitely share the ztool at some point. There are still areas of it that I don’t feel satisfied with and waiting to grasp the structure/form of, so will wait until I have it nailed down to my satisfaction.

I feel for you MonGo1337. Living with chronic pain is not easy, I hope you find a way to solve it. I did’t know about TMD until your post here and did read through what was on wiki about it.
Let me know how its going for you with that. I have also been coping with chronic ache/pain every day now for 10 years, with the diagnose Ankylosing spondylitis, and its no fun experience at all,
and of what I read TMD seem quite similar to it in nature.

[Zachris_Pensar]

Hello fellow zbrushers and anatomy enthusiasts!

So, every time I’m about to post here I end up not doing it, as I always when preparing the images find something with the model that I just “cannot leave unattended” (“Naaaaah wait, gotz to correct that! …and this…and that… how didn’t I see that before???” same story every time ö_ö ).
So now I’m posting anyway! This is a wip after all. There is a mountain of things that needs more tlc, or to be corrected, and I get tired just thinking about it.
Any feedback is very welcome, and if you have any input on things that I should/could think about as I continue, since there are most definitely tons of things I haven’t realized are wrong or have yet to figure out.

Since my first post I have now tweaked the shape of the skull a little, made it slightly unsymmetrical, although everything needs to go through a lot of desymmetrization, but thats something I’m leaving for when I have it fully nailed down, especially in the case of the skull

Of the limbs I have only done the upper arm and the radius/ulna and scaphoideum. The rest, including the lower extremities, are just roughly blocked in at this stage to see what proportions I’m aiming towards.
I’m sure the proportions will be changed as this quest continues.

So far there has been a lot of time spent tweaking different parts, especially the rib cage which has undergone plenty of iterations, and needs more attention yet.
On the skull I still have left most of the paranasal sinuses to sculpt in. Also the area where the ethmoid/maxilla/lacrimale/inferior nasal concha interacts I still have more enlightenment to acquire!

Thanks for droppin’ by!

Sacrum

Columna vertebralis

Cervical verterbae

C1 - C7

Thoracic vertebrae

Lumbar vertebrae

[Zachris_Pensar]

Thorax

Intrinsic Muscles of the back/neck

[SilverNightSigh]

These are really beautiful…

[Daniel_Biggers]

Great Job so far! I really think this kind of detail should be seen on THE TOP ROW!!!
You have my vote

I know how much work goes into this type of project and you are doing awesome!
This is some of the best detailed work I have seen in regards to anatomy.
I unfortunately haven’t been able to have any time on Zbrush in 2 months , but I am glad to see you have
been working on this. I was starting to wonder since it has been awhile since we saw any images posted.
I had some issues too with the ribcage, where I tried several different ways including Zspheres and shadow box.
The way that worked for me best was that I grabbed a sphere dragged it into the shape that would form the cavity
of space under all the ribs. I think I Zremeshed it and divided it up some, then masked out all the places where the ribs
would go and did an extrude from the mask, then zremeshed the extruded ribs once I had them close to what I wanted to work with. This helped me keep that flat area of the ribs contouring to the cavity shape inside.

Keep it up, and thank you for posting your work.

[FynnGB]

awesome work man! thanks a lot for sharing these very helpful references!
I struggle a lot with the pelvis so thanks for sharing the views of the sacrum!

[Lawrence.Kaplan]

I need to look at these a lot. Fine works here!

[Zachris_Pensar]

Thank you SilverNightSigh!

Haha cheers Daniel Biggers! >_< Yes that is a much smarter way to do it. I started with one rib, then copy/re-shape, but its hard to make a choice of what overall shape to go for when most of the anatomical illustrated references look one way and then on x rays they look another way and then the real skeletal references that are out there aren’t so much as it is upheld in the living body. I’m still not fully satisfied with the side silhouette of it, so will tweak that sometime a bit more. I’ve been searching a lot for x rays of torsos from the side view but there hardly are any out there, at least I can’t find them. Maybe you can jump in the machine at work for us and provide us some, all in the name of science?? Hihi! small_orange_diamond
Btw, I was thinking about sutures the other day, since I have a plenty of work still to do on that, and was thinking to maybe find a nice reference image where the detail of the suture is clearly visible, of say the parietal, or any other skull bone; try sculpt that detail and then just do a bolean with the particular bone it articulates with and that way get perfect matching sutures. I think it will give better results with less ache than the method I used before. Anyway, hope to see you continue on your project soon! (;

Thank you Fynn! Yea the pelvis is a tricky one, I was going to post some more images of it for you but then saw so many things I needed to correct so ended up working on it this whole evening and still not done. I’ll give you some more angles tomorrow! (;

Thank you ArtBot! Glad that it can help (:

[Daniel_Biggers]

One rib at a time…ooosh I tried that and it was not fun. Sorry I didn’t tell you how I did it sooner. The method I described that I did was much easier for me (of course after trying several different failed attempts), I know cause I tried the way you did it too and did not like the result after 3 ribs.

As far as the hard choice of what shapes to go with on this type of project I 150% understand what you mean which is another reason I know this is top row stuff. The difficult part is not necessarily the sculpting its ALL the time
it takes getting reference looking and re-looking and deciding what looks real and has the same level of detail you want to achieve, and having enough of that reference from the same model. For me continuity is key and I can work better if most of the reference comes from one source/skeleton, which seems damn near impossible, unless you have a real skeleton just sitting around, which I don’t. As a side note I have learned the way to find a Dr’s weakness is to ask them about anatomy…a joke I heard from an awesome Director of Anatomy Professor that has helped me in the past. So even if you studied medicine you would still feel the same way of wanting more “normal” reference, which is the difficult part of being an artist and deciding what is “normal” in the ever changing structure/details of the skeleton. I am sure we both overthink this process to achieve a realistic body but you sound just like me in being tied to those details where they suck up most of our time in just the reference/research process. Also things like the skull of which you have done an amazing job there is so many intricate details, that unless you study the skull regularly you just will not know how these things look. In my mind the last thing I want is to waste time modeling something that is not right. As far as getting an Xray to give I would love to do that but you know I cant besides I work in a pediatric hospital so the ribs I have and see daily are not as mature as the model you are creating, and also many of them have scoliosis in the spine which would really screw you up. .

As far as the skull goes I am not sure what method I will use yet since I have not started to split it up. I was thinking about if I could incorporate the Zmodeler into it so I can learn/get used to using that too. I might be weird but I enjoy poly modeling and miss it, so I am excited to have this mix where Zbrush has given us a tool that allows us to use some similar features directly in the program that I missed using before because of being stubborn, or goal oriented and trying to do it all in Zbrush. Also the dynamic subdivision levels means things will feel a bit closer to what I have done for years. If you have any other ideas on how to do the skull separations just let me know, and if I come up with something I find useful I will do the same.

I know you have done the skull but I found these links that looked useful to me and may be useful for you or others.

A video of the 22 skull pieces being put together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJHxNkkz898

A website of skull pieces.
http://www.boneclones.com/bc-191.html

[Daniel_Biggers]

One more thing that might help, I was watching Michael Pavlovich (thank you Michael) and he mentioned an image viewer for reference photos in his GDC 2015 presentation.
The program (Kuadro) was made from someone he knew and he shared the website info in the presentation. It is free to download here http://kruelgames.com/tools/kuadro
I have not used it yet but it looks great. For creating a reference page I have used Picasa to create a collage which is another free program that is super easy to use and has
a lot of very cool features that I like. However for some things like reference images that can be pulled up and taken down quickly, and saved to a set I can see how this new
program can be more flexible. I will be trying it out hopefully tonight.

[Zachris_Pensar]

Thanks for the links! I think I have that image already saved The video answered some questions regarding the lacrimal/inf nasal concha I had, so I will continue with that area next. It would be cool to print out each bone in the end and add magnets like in the video!
Skullsunlimited.com sell real human bones. I’m tempted to get some, $10 for a set of real human carpal bones, $12 for set of phalanges! I’m still not sure about ordering though, don’t know how I feel about having real human bones in the apartment. Maybe they’ll bring some voodoo magic down on me! o_O Nah, jokes aside, I’m getting some carpals and vertebraes as soon as I have some money to spare for it! ;D

Hehe, I had mixed up the words in my memory, was thinking podiatric. I hear you on the reference situation. This would’ve been so much easier with the real thing next to you. But you learn a lot by studying tons of references that one model can’t show you. Which are the more common form variations, also relative to age… etc etc. I guess only through studying as many examples as possible we can get an idea of what definitely is more out of the ordinary. I always find myself wonder about the reason for each shape and want to know more and more and get frustrated that it is such an mission to attain information and answers to all the questions that come up. I want also an anatomy professor to shower with questions…! hihi!
Thanks for the kuadro link, looks like a neat little app that might become useful.
Poly modelling definitely has its charm. Haven’t tried it in zbrush yet though.

Anyway, jumping in bed. I will try to post here more regularly from now on!

Did some fixing of the pelvis since last post.

[PawWS]

Hey Zachris,

great work you’re doing here! I’ll keep checking this thread as you go.

cheers,

[Daniel_Biggers]

Nice job on the pelvis its looking good. I did try Kuadro out last night and it works very well for my purposes.
Tried to start on the skull but didn’t get far into it, maybe tonight??? I have found a couple of useful videos on youtube.

Both of these have several video parts so you will have to check those out too. I found other videos that could have been
good but just had really poor quality which is hard for me to follow along with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcGHRWW3Ueg

The skull in this video is real so it may be what you need as well for details
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vJ-tEyD68k

And this one… has an exploded view of a 3d model with a slow rotation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrpVzSK23Q0

The last video led me to a link with several PDF documents of that model that has
3d controls that allow you to rotate and get the angle you want for reference.
It has to be my favorite resource so far since it has the 3d representation that I can control.
http://www.oucom.ohiou.edu/dbms-witmer/3D_human.htm

The more reference I see on the skull, the more details I see, the more I am like…I volunteered for this???
Where is a cool stylized character for me to model instead?

[Zachris_Pensar]

Cheers for the comment PawWS!

Thanks for the links Daniel Biggers, all of them are very useful to me I’ve started re-working on the ethmoid and that whole area, but finding it very daunting, and its definitely the most complex are of the whole skeleton. Trying to understand the exact position of the bulla ethmoidalis, hiatus semilunaris, infundibulum among other things, and reading about them together with checking reference images is still finding itself being quite tricky a thing to grasp. Especially since the forms of this area vary so drastically relative to the actual size of the section and its bones, when compared with for example the vertebraes. But slowly everyday now things unlock for me, but it will take some time to really figure this one out! But I want this area fixed a bit before continuing on the carpals and hands. Should have something to show after the weekend hopefully.

And its true what you wrote before, I over-think things. Then again I feel that its the only way I know for me to reach the goal I have, and feel satisfied with it. So my own fault to set the bar so high, but can’t help myself, lol It’s comforting to know that there’s information out there to retrieve and meditate on to achieve that eventually. It will take “some time” though… hehe

I was thinking to put together and upload, for you and anyone else who would have use for it, a .rar file with all the images I’ve gathered so far in this project. Theres about 2350 images at this moment, half of them are of the skull and its bones, 645 of the vertebral column. Let me know if you would be interested. Many hours have been spent gathering these so it would probably save some people some time. Could include the full list of website links too, thats many hours of research right there too. I think at this day and age information about anatomy should be much more easily publicly available. Like for an example, a book filled with images with of photographs of 25-50 human candidates, different angle views and xrays of each of them in the same angles, and full body CT scans of them all! each of different age/body-type/fitness/ethnicity. That would be so cool to look at! Now this sort of stuff is in a way available in the form of many studies published here and there and articles of medical journals, but it would be so great if there was single resource that covered all that and more. There will be eventually I think, but ain’t got all dayyyy! Wants it nooow! o_o

[Daniel_Biggers]

Glad I could help. I think that would be awesome if you were able to share the reference you have found. Finding the right reference, like orthographic views on a good model with it split down to different sections, have taken up much of my time as well.
I sent you a PM, just so you know. I also tried last night to create a base mesh of the skull parts with zmodeler and, well …failed miserably. I feel the need to be able to extrude flat edges but I have not seen how to yet. I do think there are some cool things about it but
for the skulls complexity I am not sure its the right tool (for me) for this job to get finished this year :). At least not until I try something like modeling a box with it first.

[system]

Hi，

I really like your work! Actually I’m doing a skull dragon for my school project right now but the sculptrics just crashes every single time when I try to add an object to the body.
Since you are also doing the ribs one by one, I’m wondering if this situation ever happened to you?

Thanks!

[shyamshriram]

What a wonderful thread ! so much dedication!
Thank you for the inspiration and sharing your wonderful work here, I’ll be checking this thread from now onwards

[Zachris_Pensar]

I can imagine it wasn’t the most intuitive way to go with zmodeler for those parts Daniel Biggers. Probably just easier to cut out and dynamesh/zremesh. I remember I used shadowbox for the ethmoid/palatine and some other bones.
I still haven’t had time to continue with this since last post, but grab any opportunity I find to study the areas at hand. Hopefully I’ll have something soon to show. Hows your project going?

Thank you Vicky! I haven’t really any experience with Sculptris, but maybe someone in the Sculptris main forum can aid you with that issue. Didn’t have much problems with crashes yet. Hope your project goes well!

Thank you shyamshriram! Its great to hear it inspires. Awesome illustrations you have on your website too!

[Daniel_Biggers]

I haven’t advanced anymore with this project. I have been playing with keyshot and making my older projects look better, now that I am becoming more familiar with it.
It has done wonders for some of my objects in how they look. They were created in another program, so that is why I dont post it here. I wish I could though, since I like the Zbrush forum so much.
If you are interested you can see them on my website at www.cgdreamer.weebly.com. The most recent renders are the SSR, Dodge Stratus RT, and the Baby Grand Piano.
I still plan to get back to it but I needed a rest for my brain from the complex skull most days, so I decided to do some more simple stuff in CG for a bit, so that it doesn’t feel like work.
Coming home exhausted from my day job makes it hard to have the energy for the skull. I am sure you know what I mean.
I am glad you are getting recognition and I bet that after a few more updates and posts with the kind of detail you are already producing you will be closer to getting on the top row. Keep inspiring us!

[system]

Excellent work! I have been made my own human body model and I know how long its demand of our time,
great work