A skull prop

[Swizzle]

Well, it looks good. The normal map doesn't really seem to be doing anything, though. If you're going to use a normal map, modeling a nice high-poly and then baking from it would be the way to go. You can also bake the AO from the high-poly and combine it with the AO from the low-poly to good effect.

[Dekker3D]

hmm, it's only really smoothing out the skull at the moment, that's true. i've got a habit to just use a subsurfed version of the original for any high-poly bakes, like AO and normals. i'll admit that you might be right though, it could be a lot better. would it be a good idea to sculpt this, then?

[gsokol]

It is not necessary for you to sculpt it if you dont want to. You could just do a very nice high poly model.

[Dekker3D]

hmm, i could just do that. but i didn't. gotta get used to sculpting someday, right? anyway, i've been dying to use blender's own sculpt mode+multires on something that could actually use it. so i did :)
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c163/iriad/skull3.png
i finally got the normal mapping to behave. that makes me happy, at least.

[Dekker3D]

updated shots:

high poly
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c163/iriad/skull6.png
low poly
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c163/iriad/skull6LP.png

[sonomamashine]

Cool man, they both look almost identical, the only difference is the chin, the high one is squared and do not fit with the low one, but it´s not hard at all to fix such matter :)

[Dekker3D]

hmm.. somehow, the displacement got inverted. low-poly is safe, the high-poly got all sorts of crazy errors and i saved it over the good version i had. last good version i have is quite a bit back. i'm happy with how it is now, and i still have the textures and AO and lowpoly from the last screenshot, so i'm keeping it like this. in other words, i'm calling it finished.


not really that hard, no. and thanks :)

can't wait for the next version of blender though... there's a GSOC project on the way that'll allow me to modify a multires'd model's topology, which i've wished for quite a few times sculpting this.

[plunq]

Before working on your low resolution model, I would get some very good skull reference and just work on getting a great looking skull without worrying about normal maps or a certain polycount. Making a game model with a normal map from a high resolution model is a technical task and is not very complicated. Creating an beautiful accurate skull will help build and show off your modelling skills more.

Some thoughts on your skull:
What really sticks out to me on your skull is how round and soft the cranium is. The frontal eminence can be a bit more flat. You've almost completely lost the temporal line near the back of the skull. The orbits of the eye are too large. The widest part of the skull is at or just below the parietal eminence, from the angle you've shown, the widest part on your model is the orbit of the eye.


Take a look at Dr Richers skulls for good reference: http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=NUMM-205846&M=chemindefer

Hopefully that was constructive and not too harsh. Keep working at it.

[Dekker3D]

constructive ánd harsh, actually.
responding to each point in turn:

1: i'm used to vertex pushing, so sculpting is a bit new to me. that means i'm probably better off sculpting from a decent low-res. besides, blender's sculpt mode doesn't let me go all the way to one poly per pixel like zbrush might. i'm just working from what i know here.

2: actually, the widest part is the back of the skull, like the reference (http://www.bio.psu.edu/people/faculty/strauss/anatomy/skel/pics/Anterior%20Skull%20copy.jpg) i used. it looks quite like that reference from the front (http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c163/iriad/skull5LP.png).
(http://www.bio.psu.edu/people/faculty/strauss/anatomy/skel/pics/Anterior%20Skull%20copy.jpg)

[plunq]

Sorry to be harsh but sometimes it's better to be harsh than not offer any constructive criticism at all :)

1: low poly modelling is fine. I did not mean you should sculpt a high resolution model, just make sure your model is acurate. Then if you need to optimise you can optimise in the areas that do not matter much to the overall character of the model. Another way of puting it is, why limit yourself with a low poly limit if it hinders what you are trying to make. I've never used blender, but I assume blender has great tools to merge edges, verts together.

2: As I said in my earlier post, the widest part of the skull is at or just bellow the parietal eminence (pariental eminence is at the back of the skull). I see from the 2 images you've linked that you've matched your reference pretty close but the problem with your reference is the large amount of lense distortion that will skew what you are working on. That's why I added a link to Dr Richer's orthographic drawings. Here is another page with orthographic views from the top, back and bottom of the skull. http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=NUMM-205846&I=9&M=chemindefer If you loaded these images into blender and used them as background images, I think you'll find a few adjustments you can make.

Anyway, keep working on it, don't let me turn you off from your project :)

[XepptizZ]

it looks good, but the teeth al look alike. There is nothing distinguishing them as molars, canines and incisors. Incisors are flat compared to molars and canines are pointy.

[barrab]

I reccomend looking more carfuly at the reference. The skull has alot more holes.

[Swift3D]

you haven't been on msn for a while so i'll post here:

Dekker buddy, why have you joined the bottom and top jaw? Even the section just behind the teath is joined :S

Did you manage to recover the displacement yet?

[Dekker3D]

i connected it all because most of those parts wouldn't often be visible anyway. saves triangles.

i couldn't recover the displacement, by the way, so i copied it to another file and started again from the lowpoly.

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