Stan the T Rex

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Happy Christmas Zbrushers,

Some WIP from a project im working on for Dr Phillip Manning. Phil is one of the worlds leading paleontologists specialising in dinosaur anatomy using scar patterns on fossils to asses and calculate muscle attachment etc. Phil and his team use sophisticated tech to calculate muscle mass and weight and the images Im showing are the early results. The model will be used in printed publications along with some animation for a sequence in a national geographic produced documentary.

[Pride]

I like a dinosaur with guts....

Nice work, as usual.

[fabianloing]

totally one of the coolest dino i have ever seen! Love it!
The detail is just amazing and the level of realism is niceee!
Awesome texturing work too!
Top Row for me!

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Thanks Michael,

The poly count on the T Rex is around 18 million..sort of the max for my machine at the moment. I could crank up the sub division even further but I find it best to live within my means and I tend to use "Smooth normals" in BPR to enhance rendered images.

Pete

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Thanks Guys..appreciate the feedback. This is a tough one as everything I do to the model..every tweak is inspected and commented on by academics before final approval...sort of sucks the joy out of working on it.

[Dman3d]

Whoa nice

[ioster]

great detail in the scales on the face - any trick to that, or just painstakingly sculpted?

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Hi all,

Some more WIP from a book Im working on. This is Giganatosaurus...absolute monster of a therapod that dwarfed T Rex by a meter in height.

Pete

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Hi Shadows,

The colours are imagined but based on science as we know it. Creatures like the T Rex had huge ocular cavities and brain scans show the area of the brain that dealt with vision were quite complex. These guys had great stereoscopic vision. If you look at present day nature...birds through to reptiles there are plenty of examples that show bright colouration with the most random "blotches" of colour that simply serve to attract the eye of an observer to that feature. Birds especially demonstrate this feature when trying to attract a mate. Other creatures use it to demonstrate and emphasize the fact that they are dominant etc. Its a given now in scientific thinking that birds are basically dinosaurs and as dinosaurs were around for millions of years its pretty safe to assume that they developed ways to attract..threaten etc through visual displays.

The next model Im producing is a juvenile T Rex as evidence is stacking up to tell us that they lived in family groups. The most startling new thinking is that many juvenile dinosaurs may well have been feathered. basically a fibrous coat of simplistic feathers.

Back to the T Rex colouration. I havent finished painting the adult yet (By the way..its called Stan as its based on the fossil nicknamed Stan by the people who found it. There are many casts of the skeleton around the world and the one Im using is at the manchester university Museum in the UK)

As always..thanks for your comments.

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

No problem fair cat... will post steps soon.

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Hi Ioster...

Its a tried and tested old technique..

Using mask I draw the scales....invert the mask...and use a mixture of inflate and other brushes.

Hope this helps.

[MightyReg]

Very good dino, the texture looks great!

[Polo2011]

Thanks for the tip!

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Thanks Nolan

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Thank you.

Its time well worth spent playing in "fibre mesh"... Love this Zbrush update so much