Prehistoric Diorama

Before I started any modelling or sculpting the Permian diorama piece, I roughly sketched out on how I want the inostrancevia diorama piece would look for this piece. The depiction I originally wanted to create was inostrancevia sitting upright and looking at its surroundings.

For this geological period, I tried to create organic 3D model of Inostrancevia during Post-Production but I struggled to make it look anatomically accurate to the real animal. Also, I couldn't find any good references to match the proportions and anatomy based on recent reconstruction of inostrancevia. Luckily, I decided to create its skeleton than trying to create its organic look as it was lot easier to model to create the skeletal parts of the animal skeleton to create accurate 3D skeelton model of inostrancevia. Here is the scrapped WIP of creating WIP inostrancevia organic 3D model.

Like the method that I used for edmontosaurus, I use 3D cube mesh because it meant that the model is already three-dimensional so I didn't need to extrude the mesh which helped me to make the mesh look more clean and topology simplistic so I can modify the mesh to better match the proportion of the actual animal as I tried to pull and stretch vertices/edges/faces of the mesh.

Next, I deleted the faces to create the mouth/jaw and move the vertices to better match the skeletal reference to match the proportions of the animal jaw. However, I noticed that it had limited amount of faces which greatly affected on continuing modifying the mesh as if I add more edges to the mesh, it would make the mesh look more untidy and topology more complex than it really needs to be as, I want it to look more tidy and clear on how it outlines the anatomical features of the animal. The complexity of the topology makes it more harder for me to continue modelling as the mesh will stop letting me to insert vertices and makes the mesh look more crumbled after apply smoothing, this causes the mesh to be unusable and causes loading times to slow down the software due to high topology being applied. Eventually, I decided to stop using Maya as I wasn't really experienced on doing low poly in this software and there were limited tutorials that help Maya users to do low poly modelling. I decided to shift from Maya to Blender to try to create the low poly model of inostrancevia as fast as possible so I can create the base of the animal to complete the Permian diorama.

Originally, I tried to shift from Maya to Blender as I find Blender better software when it comes to making low poly meshes due to its simplistic and manageable but creative workflow to create creature/character models for games or short films. I use Blender back in the past when I tried to make my Dorito commercial for unit and found it to be better experience in terms of workflow and understanding on how to use tools in Blender due to massive amount of tutorials and more easily accessible than Maya. While Maya is best for animation and rigging, I found that the software wasn't great when it came to low poly modelling so I had to shift into Blender so I'm able to reach the deadline and create the base model as quickly as I can to complete this project of my geological eras diorama pieces project. However, I was running lot of time as I was late during Post-Production so I wasn't able to create organic mesh of inostrancevia so I decided to create its skeleton instead as an alternative to create the animal 3D model to complete this project. Doing the skeleton of inostrancevia is probably better option for me to do as I only need to focus on sculpting the form and shapes of the skeleton to create the skeleton which can help me to boost my workflow and make me more engaged in the project so I can meet the deadline and enjoy the sculpting process of creating the inostrancevia skeleton 3D model to present for my FMP. Also, I wasn't great at doing low poly at the time so I decided to give up doing this method in order to try different approach to create the prehistoric animal that I want to showcase for my FMP.

When it come to the organic sculpting to create organic mesh of inostrancevia, I only gone far as making its body and its head until I started to give up on organic mesh and shifted into skeletal meshes. This is mostly because I couldn't find any good references that have good skeletal reconstruction that have the animal in different angles like dorsal view, side view and front view to help me to match the animal anatomy to make full 3D model. I ultimately decided that I will try to make its skeleton instead as I was able to find more good references on its skull, bones and legs to help me to make full 3D model of inostrancevia skeleton to complete the Permian diorama piece.

Scrapped skeleton:

I tried to create the base sculpt to make the inostrancevia model during middle of Post-Production but, I couldn't find any good references in all angles of inostrancevia in general to help me match the skeletal proportions and features of the animal. Also, I was running out of time and had to decide on what geological era diorama pieces that I need to scrap so I can focus on the other ones to complete for my FMP so I decided to sadly scrap the Permian diorama piece to focus on the other geological era diorama piece. However, I can talk about on how I made WIP progress of Inostrancevia skeleton model before scrapping it. So far that I made for the inostrancevia skeleton before I sadly scrapped it, I only made its skull of its upper and lower jaw but I wasn't satisfied on how it looked as the meshes itself looked messy and disproportioned of what the actual inostrancevia skull looked like in real life, this eventually lead me to scrap it and focus on the other geological era diorama pieces.

For the skeleton sculpt, I started off by creating the upper jaw of inostrancevia to match the proportions of the skull. Next, I tried to sculpt the upper jaw skull of inostrancevia in the upper view to match the proportions on how it would look in upper view to make it look more accurate to the actual inostrancevia upper jaw skull. I use the trim brush to cut out of the mesh to create the orbit (where the eye would be) and the nostril to match the actual skull. Next, I use the mask brush and pulled/scaled in the upper jaw skull to create the hole outline of inostrancevia skull, specifically near the end of the skull and smoothen it to make it look more organic mesh to make it look life-like to the actual skull.

I was able to complete the lower jaw by duplicating or rather mirroring the lower jaw mesh to complete the lower jaw mesh itself, I didn't properly align both the bottom jaw meshes as I referenced on how the lower jaw of actual prehistoric animal skulls such as prehistoric reptiles and dinosaurs don't always align when displayed in museums so I did the exact the same method but in a digital space. However, it didn't work as it looked too mushy when I aligned them together so, I decided to scale the bottom jaw and sculpt out the top and bottom surfaces of the mesh to create the massive hole while keeping the side of the lower jaw mesh is still intact.