Male Human Bones Scapula

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Guys N Gals,

Thanks for all of the comments. Sorry I don't have the Clavicle done I had to model its shape several times because basically the term "Medically Accurate" is well not so accurate. I have 16 Anatomy Drawing Books and the Primal Pictures CD set. The Primal Pictures CD set is pretty good on the accuracy sometimes its missing a few details or they are under played but otherwise its pretty good. The books kind of skimp on this bone it seems its not a very popular bone if you can imagine a bone being popular or not. lol Right now I am working from a rather small window to see the details from the Primal Picture CDs, I have an older copy so that probably makes a pretty big difference on the size of the window, and a small medically accurate drawing. I have found a bunch of pictures that are suppose to be the clavicle but are not an actual real bone and are missing a lot of the details. Frustrating this bone is.

Top of the Clavicle:


Bottom of the Clavicle:


Cheers,
Nate Nesler

[Mcronin]

No comments except to say this stuff is looking really great now.

[MatrixNAN]

Hey All,

Well I know this is a bit of a detour but I need to do this model to show the students good form and how to go about modeling a character in high detail. Of course our computers at work are not good enough to do high detail modeling and I am doing this at home as a personal project to show to the students. This is why I need to be ripped apart on the model. I have not gotten to the hands, feet and arms in these pictures. Also I have touched up the back a bit since these pictures were screen captured. I am going to touch up the back a bit more yet. I am not totally happy with the legs. I feel pretty good about his stomach and chest although I think I need to make the sternum more visible before the muscles attach to it. Crits Crits Crits Please. Hopefully by this coming weekend the actual model will be done and I can start sculpting up the female model. I can't start on the bones again until I get all of this school stuff out of the way.

Thanks Mcronin

Model is 3.67 Million Polys and still not enough. lol





Cheers,
Nate Nesler

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Guys N Gals,

I touched up that cheek bone I also Touched up the muscle running from the mandible to just under the zygote bone. I also touched up the muscle that runs along the neck. I know the name of the muscle I just remember how to spell it. lol I also did some rough work on the arms they are far from done. Also I decided to go back and emphise the muscles on the legs some more. I think I am going to play up the muscles on the back of the legs some more. I am also going to bring out the muscles on the lower half of the legs. I have not had time to bring those out more yet. The back has been shaped better adding mass mainly to the lower back where it was lacking most.

I also played up the should blades where the scapula is and the trapizius muscle on the back. I probably spelled that wrong sorry guys I will get the spelling of these names of the all the muslces down better in time. I know the bones pretty good. I still have not even touched the hands and feet yet so yeah I will eventually get to them this weekend. If I am lucky I will get all of the masses properly defined over this weekend so I can go to work on the veins later on. Comments and Crits Welcomed. Special thanks to Chris Volion for his input on my mistakes in the definition of the form. I love being told when I am wrong so I can get better and fix it. Learning a lot from you Chris thanks so much man.

Here are the Updated Images So far I have spent about 4 days solid on this character man:






Cheers,
Nate Nesler

[LEO-oo-]

Nice job Nate - lot of details!

[deecue]

hey nate,

just wanted to say that i think these are looking great.. sorry not much a crit, but they're really nice.. if i wanted to be really picky, (and i'm no doctor so could be totally off on this), his overall head looks a bit small for the size of his chest/shoulders.. maybe it's cause he's bald.. i dunno.. just seemed a bit tiny.. also, fingers and toes seem too skinny for the way this guy is built..

but like i said.. really nice stuff.. those are just little things i noticed and they could be right on for all i know..

-dq

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Deecue,

Yeah its just because he is bald the head is the right size its slightly larger than the neck. The only way to make the head bigger would be to make the neck bigger too, but the head is the right size in the number of heads across the shoulders. If he had hair his head would look a lot bigger. Someone pointed out that the ear is too small though and they are spot on I totally forgot to go back and get it and boy am I glad they brought it up because I kept meaning to get around to it but I had totally forgotten. Keep the crits coming because the next one will more likely than not be a mistake that I have made. Thanks for the comments and crits guys. The crits always make me better but yeah I went back and double checked the head size against the chest to make sure it was the right size.

I think the pit between his lower arm and upper arm is a bit off and I need to really work on it but like I said the arm is pretty rough right now it needs a lot of work. Thanks guys for everything.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

[stu]

Great stuff!

Can you go into detail regarding your modelling techniques, etc.? It would be interesting (to me, anyway ) to see where you started and what some of the steps were along the way.

Again, excellent work!

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Stu,

Your work is amazing by the way. I think my jaw drops everytime I see it. Basically I start off with a low poly model of about 7,000 polys that I made in XSI. I made it in XSI because I can do it faster in that package and XSI handles polys by being very light and fast. I also own a commerical copy of XSI too so that is a part of the reason too. I make an organized mesh in XSI because although ZSpheres are cool they do not give you an organized mesh. I have also learned the hard way not to do detailed organised meshes because then you lose flexibility which is reall important in modeling and I also can't reuse the model as much or as easily. Then I export it to ZBrush and double my ZBrush Document size and then AAHalf it then zoom it. I load the character tool and go into the edit mode and just start dividing the model up to about 5 or 6 times. I tend to use the standard and smooth brushes the most, then the inflate and pinch brushes next.

For more of the art side I have been studying Anatomy for the last 3 months like crazy. I am drooling over this particular model and I plan to get one in the near future.
Muscle Bone Model
Also I bought 16 figure drawing books for reference plus I already had the Primal Pictures CD set which is excellent and I use it on a regular basis, and I highly recommend it. These prices are based on Amazon.

1 An Atlas of Anatomy for Artis $10.36 1
1 Drawing the Human Head $13.57 1
1 Dynamic Anatomy $15.72 1
1 Dynamic Figure Drawing $13.57 1
1 Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery $15.30 1
1 The Figure in Motion $13.57 1
1 Artistic Anatomy $15.72 1
1 Drawing Dynamic Hands $13.57 1
1 The Artist's Complete Guide t $22.05 1

Also Some Good Links with This Regard:
http://www.artnatomi...t/uk/index.html
http://www.reybustos.com/04er/er.html
http://www.reybustos.com/03ra/ra.htm

Basically I work on the Torso first particularly the back and then the Chest. I think I start of the back first because it always gives me more trouble than the chest and stomach. Well everything branches off of the chest and the back so I just kind of bounce around between the legs, arms, and the neck shoulders and head. I do the hands and feet last because they have the least overall impact on the model as a whole but make a big difference with the arms and legs for everything being layed out right and weighted properly.

Then once I have all of the forms layed out I do fine etchings with a very small brush and set the strength of the brush pretty low. I go back along the edges between the masses and cut in lines along the form and then go back and smooth over them. This allows me to basically highlight these forms in the modeling process long before I ever get to the actual shading. After I get all of these masses properly layed out then I go back and detail. I make the model then not quite symmetrical and I add veins and skin pores and such things like that. I don't use projection master for this detailing stage. I like having that fine control right in my hands to define exactly what I want it to look like.

I do skin pores by changing the edit curve so that it has noise in my brush and I set this value fairly low. I change this value based on where the skin pores lie because skin pores vary based on the various areas of the body.

To be honest I will probably ditch XSI for most of my modeling when ZBrush 2.5 comes out because I can then make organized meshes very quickly that I can then load into Houdini. Where I use Houdini for modeling will be for the procedural aspect of modeling so that I can quickly alter forms and rig and animated based on presetup digital assets so that I can get a fast turn around. Basically the XSI and ZBrush are just building Blocks for Houdini. I can gernerally create the forms faster in other packages but once I have these basic forms I can manipulate them far better and faster in Houdini so that is my preference.

I will still keep XSI around when ZBrush 2.5 comes out for Mental Ray, Game Real Time Shaders and some other aspects. More and more of my pipeline however in the near future will be ZBrush and Houdini.

In a couple of months I am going to post a Zscript that will show my modeling process because several people have asked for it on the ZBrush Forums. I am just going to model the patella which is a small bone but it will show my workflow which will probably be useful to some people. So if people want I will post it here also.

I hope I answered your question if not feel free to ask away if I glossed over anything. Again I love your work man.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Guys N Gals,

Well I am still refining the form. The arms are getting a massive overhall and they are defantly still in Work In Progress. I think my biggest problem with the arms is the radial bracialis. I am sure I butchered the spelling of that but that muscle running along the forearm is giving me a lot of trouble.

I moved the elbow back came to the conclusion that the elbow is not in the center of the arm because the forearm is actually longer than the bicep. Ugh that was defantly throwing off the placement of the forearm muscles. I think I made the radial bracialis too large and I need to shorten its width. The underside of the arm is pretty good along with one side of it. The top and the side facing the front of the character needs a lot of work still.

I did a massive overhaul of the legs and now they are looking a lot better. I also reworked the neck and it still needs some more touch ups. I still have not made it to the hands and feet. I think this is just going to take me awhile to get it right. I fixed the shoulders on the back some more also.

Whatever help you guys can give me on nailing down those arms better would be of a great help. They are very frustrating to nail down. Comments but mainly Crits are very welcome. Please rip me apart.





Cheers,
Nate Nesler

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Guys N Gals,

I want to give a special thanks to Chris Volion for his help and illustrating where I was making my mistakes. His help made major improvements in my work on my characters arm. I had the misunderstanding that the muscles wrapped underneath the arm well they don't the kind of wrap on the side of it and the arm is not flat on the bottom its rounded and that roundness is do to the placement of these muscles. Those references were great chris they made all the difference. I have the book you were refering to, and I just pulled up the pages with regards to the arm and oh man did micheangelo nail it. Dang it I am studing him even more for now on for the human form. I know he exaggerated the form on purpose but I prefer it to see the muscle systems.

I am currently working on the hands. They are far from done. I have done nothing more than the inital rough in and the large placement of forms. I have also started to do detailed sculpting of the muscles and tendons in the underside of the hand as a first rough pass. Generally I end up modeling the same forms many times before I get the surface built up the way I like and smoothing it out over and over again. It really helps me define the surface and get those shapes going and nail down my placement and forms. I also reworked the head a bit and the back got some touch ups. I have not touched the feet at all so they look pretty bad right now. I guess the question I have for the community is whether or not I should cut in the detail form on the arms the way I did the legs? The head needs more work, the nose needs more work, etc.

If you guys see anything that is off please shout it out because I am getting closer and closer to the detail stage. Eventually I will sculpt in a lot of the veins and their placement. I have not decided if I am going to use projection master to stroke them on from the brushes or if I can just going to sculpt them the way I have been doing the rest of the model. I don't have enough divisions to do texturing or skin pores. I need at least 1 to 2 more divisions to get good detail on the character. I think I will wait until ZBrush 2.5 comes out for that.

Thanks to everyone you guys have been a big help.







I plan to rig this character among other things in Houdini.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

[MatrixNAN]

ZBrush 2 Houdini =P

Hey Guys N Gals,

I have been asked how to get the Bump Map / Normal Maps to work in Houdini in a private email. Well I figured it would help the community more if I just posted it for everyone to read.

Ok So here a model that I did the base modeling in XSI, Unwrapped the UVs in 3DS Max, then Sculpted up in ZBrush, and then Rendered in Houdini. Note if you have a commerical version of Houdini then do the unwrap in Houdini and import it into ZBrush. If you have XSI there is a Peltmap add on tool that is in Beta that you can do an attribute transfer on from the flattened surface back to your model during the pelting operation. Understand Houdini has the best Peltmapping tool they invented it. Also Maya has a pelt mapping tool now too if you are coming from maya. Lightwave people as far as I know you are screwed. lol

OK now use ZMapper in ZBrush and setup your Normal Maps along with your Cavity maps the way you want. Now export your Image Map that is generated in ZBrush to Tif for Houdini. Ok for the options for exporting an obj under the fly out under the Tool Pallete sub section Export: Set the following on Obj, Qud, Txr, Flp, Mrg, and Grp. Click the Export button and now save it as an OBJ. Ok one problem is that Houdini for whatever reason does not like the capital letters in the extension of OBJ so you have to make them lower case obj. After you do this throw down a file SOP and load in your OBJ. Great now slap down a Shader SOP node and connect the file node into the Shader node. Ok now go to VOPS and lay down a displacement shader. Dive into the Displacement Shader with i and lay down this network.



Ok the uv comes from the a special variable, speical thanks to Brain Goodwin for reminding me about it, called uv in lowercase letters. Replace all of the names for the parameter with uv lowercase and set the type to vector. Ok good in the uvxform1 set the scale in the 2nd column to -1 this will flip the UVs along the V axis. I prefer to do my manipulations in the end program in the pipeline because I might be using the ZBrush files with multiple programs and this generally just saves headaches because you only need one set of files from ZBrush instead of a set for every program you are exporting.

I went ahead and did the same thing for the surface shader and all I did was changed the Bump Map VOP node to a Texture VOP Node and piped that into my light model's amb and diffuse. This is great if you need to put a surface texture for the color channels on your model. Here I just used the same Normal Map to show that this works properly with the UVs and that there is not surface cracking at the Texture Seams in Houdini when you render for all areas of Houdini which is totally awesome and is a major problem in some other 3D Apps. Cough Max Cough 3DS Max. lol Alright Final Result.



Things to come because I know I don't post that much. I kind of stay low more now it seems due to lack of time more than anything. Here is things to come from me something I am moving towards soon. The Concept Art is going to a remodel of my male character that I am finishing up and then texture painted, displaced, and then exported and rendered in Houdini. Have fun guys and gals. I hope this helps some people.






Cheers,
Nate Nesler