Dinosaur-step by step
 

I've been working on a dinosaur for a while now and have set up a pictorial of the work so far. There are a few video clips to watch also. One of them shows the dinosaur composed on a real background. Check it out.

http://www.morphicmotion.com/rexproject/muscle5.jpg

Morphic Motion

it looks awesome !!

continue the good job http://www.3dfaculty.com/images/foru...es/1/clup3.gif

hey, i checked out your site. good stuff.
a few things i'll say;

you rig will be problrmatic and fustrating because of your set up. if u are using muscle deformations, the idea is to minimize the number of skeleton influence and have the muscle deform the skin. you will have to tweak each of those rib cages and tail cage and weight them. but since u will use a muscle, theres no need for them.
i also notice you binded what looks like a subD mesh of your dino directly to your skeleton, again thats definately not the best way to go and it says this method should try to be avoided in the maya docs due to known issues [see the manual]
but this looks like a very good project. the model looks good.
as for muscles, i recommend looking at cgtoolkit's plugin, muscle tk. very good tool for this type of work.
good luck.

Thanks for the information!

I removed the tail bone cage and also the neck bone cage after I discovered that they were certainly causing a problem.

The model is a poly model, not sudD. I built a low poly model then converted it to subD then back to poly using the ADAPTIVE setting. After that I applied polygon smoothing and set up the UV maps. I'm painting it in DeepPaint 3D.

The way I modeled the muscles was by modeling them out of NURBS primatives then converting them to polys. I used the poly paint tools to get them to reside just beneath the skin then I made copies and remodeled them to simulate muscular contraction. I plan on setting up blend shapes then keyframe the muscles doing their thing. I did the same thing with the rib cage. Originally, I was going to use a copy of the head as a skull but after binding and adjusting the weights, I realized there was no need. I left the copy of the head in place for the sake of the pictures.

There is a "shape" in the belly area that I'm thinking of using in a simulation so that when the beast walks, the shape will move from side to side and maybe help deform the skin in a believable way. I don't know if it will work or be worth it though.

The most challenging task that I am dealing with right now is the skin bind weights. I'm posing this model is some very extreme positions so, as you can imagine, the neck and skin around the thighs requires a lot of smoothing. So far so good though.

Most of the rigging is complete except for the inverse foot rigs. Because the model has exposed toes that must bend in a way that is much different that a foot with a shoe on it, I had to come up with a modified design. I'll post some pictures of it as soon as I test it out some more. My inverse foot rig not only allows the foot to stay planted and not slide but it also allows the toes to curl up, spread out and close the distance between them.. I suppose I could have done all of that by building a more complex IK/FK skeleton system with a MEL script to switch between the two but I decided to save that for the next project.

Thanks again for the input :)

DAMN! You two guys just scared me away from wanting to try out rigging! :)

But good looking model so far, looking forward to updates!

I'll try to do an update this weekend. Right now I'm figuring out how to use a sub surface scatter shader. I got it installed last night but now I have to learn about the settings and why they do what they do. Stay tuned...

http://www.morphicmotion.com/rexproject/testpose.jpg

I just uploaded a video clip that show the T-rex in motion for the first time. It just a basic rigging test but it looks cool.

Rigging test

The file is a 2.4meg .avi..

I'm still figuring out how to rig the outer toes. The center toe is controlled with a reverse foot but I think the outside toes will end up being constrained to the center one or they will be posed manually with FK controls. The rest of the rigging was pretty straight forward but the feet are causing me so much trouble that I almost gave up ;) . More to come....

Pretty cool so far he would be fun to animate....

Kurt, I hope this thing will be fun to animate but I have to tell you, the rigging has been a real pain. Most of it wasn't too bad but it took me 4 weeks or more to figure out how to rig the feet so they would do what I want them to do.

http://www.morphicmotion.com/rexproject/footrig.jpg

I came up with a rig that started out as a basic reverse foot rig but it had to have the ability to become a forward foot while also allowing the toes to spread out and move close to each other plus I wanted to link it to the leg IK pole vector so I could rotate the foot outward with the same control that I use to rotate the knee. I felt like I was going insane but I finally got it to work by writing a MEL script, a few expressions and a lot of parenting and constraining.

Here is a clip that shows the rig in action. The control objects on the foot are red. That means they are in "reverse foot" mode so that the toes don't move while the leg raises then, the control objects turn blue which means that they are in "forward foot" mode. This means that the hierarchy has reversed so that the toes can be curled under without effecting the position of the leg.

Click here to see foot rig clip (2.5meg .avi)

More to come in the next couple of weeks :confused: :confused:

http://www.morphicmotion.com/rexproj...xportrait2.jpg

Here's a shot of the T-rex model with paint . The teeth are temporary. The rigging seems to be working but I can see that I have a lot of work to do with the skin weights. I haven't started painting the eyes yet either. I think the model will be complete by the end of February and ready for animation. Stay tuned!

Keep it up looking good so far..

http://www.morphicmotion.com/rexproject/smallport.jpg

I finished rigging the T-rex and have updated my website with pictures and a new video that shows the entire rig working. Now it's time to tie up some loose ends before I can start animating! Stay tuned.

Check out the rig pictures and video on my site.
Morphic Motion

http://www.morphicmotion.com/rexproj...xportrait3.jpg

Here's where the model is now. I've placed the teeth and gums in the mouth and set up an IK spine control for the tongue. Now I'm working on the skin weight maps so the throat flexes when the neck bends instead of poking out of the skin. I'm also painting and teeth and gums plus making the bump maps. In the picture you can see the rig controls that I set up. I'm thinking about simplifying the neck controls by setting up an IK spine but I'm not sure if I want to go that way yet. I'll be posting a link to the first animation test in the next couple of days. Stay tuned!

Here is a look at my first animation attempt with the T-rex. The results show a lot of flaws with the model, the rig and my ability to animate but, hey, you have to start somewhere. By the way, the inside of the mouth and the eyes are not painted yet.

T-Rex animation test

All comments are welcome.

Flaws....What flaws? Thats amazing!