Friday, May 20, 2011

Back to building a 3D dinosaur - research

Our subject in the Field Museum, Chicago.


After a brief hiatus I've managed to post the latest in my occasional series on building a 3D dinosaur over at  Paleo Illustrata. This post outlines the research involved before preparing to model a Triceratops in 3D; some of this will be old hat to may of you but hopefully it will provide pointers to anyone wanting to have a go at creating ancient life reconstructions on the computer. This subject is already being covered by some fine artists and inspiration can be gained by swinging by Angie Rodrigues' brilliant blog where she's modelling an Olorotitan which is setting the standard (gulp!) by which all other 3D modellers might be judged, and also have a gander at thoracosaurus.blogspot.com where Evan Boucher created an animated Thoracosaurus neocesariensis for his masters thesis and is a accomplished piece of reconstruction complete with the methodology.

What differentiates all of these blogs is that there are as many ways of constructing a workflow, methodology and artistic experience and creativity to create 3D reconstructions as there are artists, so hopefully I will be adding to rather than reproducing the work of other workers. As ever, comments very welcome!