Prehistoric Diorama - Cretaceous

Before I started any modelling or sculpting the Cretaceous diorama piece, I roughly sketched out on how I want the edmontosaurus diorama piece would look for this piece. The depiction I originally wanted to create was edmontosaurus fixing its nest to keep her eggs warm.

Props:

Originally, the Cretaceous dioramas were supposed to have environmental props to reference the planned sketch that I made before to help me on how I want to present my Cretaceous diorama for my FMP. I made the edmontosaurus eggs and the nest to be used for the Cretaceous diorama piece before I had to sadly scrapped it due to time management and focusing more on the geological era diorama piece that I find can be more easier to complete as my final assignment for FMP.

Hadrosaur egg reference from this video

To create the low poly, I increase the subdivisions to smoothen the cube so I can create organic mesh after I outline the skeletal reconstruction to create the base of the edmontosaurus. This method would help me to create the mesh look smooth and clean so I can create an high poly of the 3D model.

After outlining the base of the animal figure, I tried to extrude to create the 3D model look more three-dimensional so I can modify the mesh by pulling the vertices and scale to match the proportions of the actual animal. However, the mesh itself looked extremely crumbled and ugly after I extruded the outline which caused me to think that I need to fix it or redo it to make the mesh look more cleaner and organic by making the topology less complex and use the 3D cube mesh to create the base of the edmontosaurus model.

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 I 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.

I tried to retopologize the mesh itself to have less complicated topology to make it more manageable when it came to trying to modify the mesh to match the proportions of the actual animal based on the most recent skeletal reconstruction. However, the retopology effected the mesh extremely badly as the base of the edmontosaurus looked off on how I originally made the low poly so I had to redo the topology but it still didn't even work after doing it again. Ultimately, I had to redo the entire mesh so the new improved mesh has less complicated topology to modify to stretch/pull to further match the proportions of the skeletal diagram.

Using 3D cube mesh 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. Also, this makes the process of low poly modelling more manageable and workable when it came to make the base of edmontosaurus anatomy. Also, 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 struggled on making the low poly model as I was keep repeating the same process like making topology more complex than it needs to be so I decided to not use Maya to create the low poly modelling and rather use Blender as there is more resources on how to do proper poly modelling and it is more user friendly on how you can use Blender interface and tools to create 3D models.

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 edmontosaurus so I decided to sadly scrapped the cretaceous diorama piece.

Harvard Referencing: