Making a generic sauropod but I have no idea about topology for animation. I don’t expect to do much more than a basic leg swing, so the texture shouldn’t stretch to much.
Advice welcome, and any ideas for simple rigging welcome too. Could I adapt another quadruped do you think?
dino.blend (997 KB)
It looks like you’ve got the basic idea of it.
Having modeled a dinosaur myself, I can advise paying attention to the joint areas. Some elbow and knee structure… that sort of thing.
You may want to add some detail to the feet - some toe geometry.
Maybe try to make it look less “blocky”, for lack of a better word. Like in the neck area, for instance. Selecting some of those corner edge loops and doing a Shrink/Fatten [Alt S] should help. Edge Slide [G G] can help even out the spacing too. And generally if you notice your quads are stretched more like rectangles than squares, it’s probably time to add some loop cuts to even that out so that the deformations won’t be too biased in one direction… if that makes sense.
As for rigging, I’m no expert, but a good place to start could be with some reference photos of what this dinosaur’s actual skeleton looks like. It might provide some insight into how this creature can move.
Good luck!
Depends on how realistic you want it to look, how far the camera is, scale, and detail related to those. Reference image wasn’t included in the .blend.
It’s big so if you want it to look believably realistic close up, probably need to model detail that would be texture work for human size character.
https://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/backyard-dinosaurs/reconstructing-animals.cfm
https://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/backyard-dinosaurs/images/46.sauropod-skeleton-large.jpg
https://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/backyard-dinosaurs/images/47.sauropod-muscles-large.jpg
https://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/backyard-dinosaurs/images/48.sauropod-skin-large.jpg
Could start by having basic proportions set and if you need detailed forms, maybe start with dynamic topology sculpting
Top viewport:
Joints in the skeleton. They’re weight bearing ones so the simplified edge flow would be like in a cylinder, and the two lower ones could start with three loops where the joints are, just like a human finger. Depending on the detail and skin form, they might wrinkle and smooth out as they bend
Bottom viewport:
Shoulder area is covered with muscles so the spans from the cylindrical feet would spread out. If you want to show muscles contract and extend as the leg gets lifted and moved, would have to get at least some of the muscle flows in the topology depending on how thick the skin is.
Spans marked with red would follow muscles but the side might have loose/stretchy skin so most of the marked lines would connect with the flow on the front leg and probably be more parallel.
Simplified, it would be horizontal and vertical cylinders connected.
Oh I thought I did pack a background image… thats odd. Thanks everyone, it’s probably going to be a long shot not closeup model.
Here’s an image showing how they added some face loops at the knee and ankle…
Steve S
Oh wow, thanks Steve S. Thats mighty helpful.
Hmmm, running out of time so I will have to ditch the proper modelling and rigging. Might just go for a basic neck and tail rig (chain) and perhaps a little photogrametry of the scene? I think I should put in a bird flying over too…
Test image to date:
I forgot to add the final render to this thread. Here you go. It’s very basic due to time constraints. Oh well. At least it was a fun challenge.
