Mort is a figure I’ve been creating for Poser kind of by accident. Originally I started making a mannikin a couple of months ago with the idea of building something simple but reasonably accurate I could pose in Poser and then export to Zbrush to use as a base for figure sculpts. (I got fired up by Michel Lauricella’s Morpho series of books which are full of the most amazing anatomical pencil sketches. I want to be able to sculpt like that.)

Yes, the name is directly inspired by the book by Terry Pratchett.

I already had a basic skull I’d made several years ago, so first I gathered reference then slowly began blocking out shapes … and then found myself off work with an injury. Long story short, I’ve spent the last two weeks doing more modelling than I’ve done in ages - and grouping, UV’ing and rigging. Shout out for PhilC’s Hierarchy Builder - much easier than trying to draw out nearly 150 bones in the Setup room! Worth every penny.

Will this be a commercial release? Maybe. I have tried rigging a figure before and it didn’t go well but this time nothing has gone terribly wrong - yet. Still loads to do and I’m back to work so my pace will slow down unfortunately. The skeleton isn’t medically accurate and there are technical flaws - 95k so not terribly well optimised mesh (though all quads), some of the topology is downright scrappy, there are probably things I’m doing with rigging that are wrong etc etc. I'm happy though :D

Anyway, Mort says STFU - show don’t tell.

I put together the chart below in Photoshop based on screenshots from Poser’s ortho cameras as an exercise to check my work and try to show what I did when creating the mesh. Most of the modelling was done in Zbrush which has a proportional measuring tool. I set the units to the same height as the skull and then used that to measure and tweak the bones according to Richer’s 7.5 head canon (whose book Artistic Anatomy was one of my most used references). I decided to use this canon as it’s based on real world measurements and with scaling it should be straightforward to alter in Poser once I’ve finished rigging (I hope). I’ve ended up a little bit off, but not too much ;)

More renders. These were the first version - I originally rigged each thoracic vertebrae, then tried painting weights for the entire ribcage even though there is very little movement there anyway. Why? F**k knows. Because I don’t know what I’m doing and none of this was preplanned I guess.

The sword is one of Traveler’s Armoury props from back in the RuntimeDNA days with some Modo + Substance magic to make it shine.

Last one for a while. When I sorted the chest out, following how successful using a donor rig in the Setup room went (first time I’ve ever used it), I also decided to sort the knees. Now the patellas have their own wee bones (I was struggling to get the joint rotation to look good with my not-planned-out-enough mesh so I had weight maps on the knee, then I tried sorting out IK and it was a ghastly nightmare with Mort getting kneecapped, so I am going with mo’ bones and I’ll probably regret it but I don’t f**king care anymore). I can’t explain why I rigged each tooth either.

Next time I post I’ll have a texture map done, honest.

I added a language tag to the Original Post because Mort is giving the finger.

Looks great so far, btw.

This is excellent! I've always been a proponent of using anatomical references to inform poses, especially skeletal bones. My flesh figures always have a conformed skeleton within them to inform me of when skin weight maps are doing the wrong thing (usually at the Iliac crest or, surprisingly, when the topmost ribs protrude through the top of the shoulders, let alone the clavicles)

I'd really love to have a skeleton with a sufficiently articulated rib cage to follow correct thoracic spinal curvature when the chest bends forward and back. I've actually had medical folks tell me about "bucket handles", as referenced in this article Unit IV – The Thoracic Cage/ Respiration & Breathing and this Thoracic Spine: An immovable cage or a mobile spring?

Ok. Needs a black robe, with an omega sigil fastener... Glowing blue eyes... Scthye...

Nice work! I look forward to more and I hope we get to play with him...

(oh for Binky, I think Death may like Project Binky over on YouTube.....(pair of nutters making a rather special Mini...))

GNU Terry Pratchett

Pretty damned cool. Tons of potential. ???

WHAW, great work. Looks scary.

He needs a drink and a canapé

This is cool. Keep at it. ?

Very cool work caisson!

cool :)

Wonderful! Yeah, loss for words ... just wonderful.

funny you posted this so recently on the heels of a conversation i was having with someone -

part of the conversation was in regard to neither one of us feeling that we had seen a really good head-to-toe skelly model [these are opinions and not meant to offend anyone], and how we both would greatly appreciate stumbling upon one... and now here is your post!

looking foward to seeing some texture renders for Mort.

now i think i'll go have a convo with my friend regarding stumbling upon a suitcase full of free money... wish me luck!

I love him, I like how well he looks in poses. I'll definitely be buying him.

I think he's taken the dieting and slimming a little bit too far.

Awesome! I hope you do decide to release him.. Looks great

this is without a doubt, the best skeletal model I have seen bar none. Excellent work caisson.

Mort is a very cheeky one- especially when NOT having cheeks! :-) Nice work Caisson!

I really like the curvature of the spine and am curious how that's going to work in posing.

Khai-J-Bach posted at 1:11AM Mon, 29 July 2019 - #4355889

Ok. Needs a black robe, with an omega sigil fastener... Glowing blue eyes... Scthye...

Nice work! I look forward to more and I hope we get to play with him...

(oh for Binky, I think Death may like Project Binky over on YouTube.....(pair of nutters making a rather special Mini...))

GNU Terry Pratchett

And a rat skeleton dressed the same, and a cat, and a curry. :)

Thanks for all the comments, it's appreciated! I've been busy, with RL and Mort, but have some things to show.

Made changes to the obj - scapulas resized as they were too small, reduced the space between the bones of the forearm, tweaked the carpal bones, re-sculpted the knee joint to get the rotation right so I could delete the bone for the patella. Got IK working alright-ish. Avoided making any changes that played with the joint centres though as my willpower was not strong enough to redo too many!

I've made loads of dependant parameter dials for posing - I always thought Alyson2 was an interesting figure in the way it used advanced controls in the Body tab. With Mort I went through each joint and figured out what I thought was a reasonable range of movement, then forced limits, then figured out a dial hierarchy that made sense to me. As it stands most of the posing can be done without leaving the Body tab at all, though I can't get pose symmetry to play along (not sure if that's my fault or not). Spent a lot of time on the shoulders - Mort has three joints in the shoulder girdle (sternum to clavicle, clavicle to scapula, scapula to humerus) but in reality the muscle connections between the scapula and thorax act as a fourth joint as well so the dials for the shoulders move both clavicle and scapula together and try to take the fourth joint into account. I took many attempts and found the easiest way was when I posed both shoulders together then took note of the values to make separate left and right dials.

There are three sets of controls in the Body tab - Posing, Proportion and Shaping. The Proportion dials are mostly made with scaling body parts, including propogatingScales for the head, hands and feet. I've added some more since this screenshot was done, primarily for the hands and feet.

Shaping controls are all morphs, most of them for messing with the skull, some serious, some very very silly. Just because.

Bending - I keep looking at the spine and wondering if I didn't overdo the curvature a bit in the initial modelling. I may make another morph to take the lumbar curve back a bit.

Few more renders to post - these are all untextured. I have had several runs at texturing, still not happy with the results so I'll not post any yet. Technically I've gone for three material zones (bone, cartilage, teeth), a single UV tile with around 76% coverage, all shells at the same scale and 8k maps. I use Superfly constantly now but have got dual materials for Firefly as well - must be the first time I've used it in several years though ;)

Most says, I'm too sexy for my body.

Love it!

Mort is, I sincerely hope, close to being done. I have a long term goal as a figure is composed of three systems - bones and joints; muscle and tendons; fat and skin. The next step will be to take Mort as a base and start adding muscles, rebuild and retopo the mesh as I go, then attempt to rig the result. Full ecorche. I expect that's where things will get really tough as Mort is mostly separate meshes which don't bend so the rigging is straightforward - well, once I got my head around the process. Once the mesh is a single piece of geometry and everything bends I expect it to be much harder, but I figure if I know what the joints and bones are supposed to be doing it may make it obvious what the rig needs to do, even if I fail to get there! Ghost bones, control chips ... I have a lot more to learn.

Mort thinks I'm mad too.

Last one for now. I have to do textures and partial poses, but I might need to step away from Mort for a few days to get fresh eyes. Oh, and robe plus scythe - yeah, those were on the list. I like the idea of a supercharged Mini, but Lil Mort wants Nux's Chevy from Fury Road.

So shiny.

Impressive work caisson.

Looking very nice.

I must admit I chuckled at the Leia morph

Awesome!

Oooh! It's naked, in a temple... with a sword!

Ship it!

(seriously though -this looks pretty cool :) )

I'm calling texturing - and other material options - done for now.

This is very much WIP. I work at an agricultural suppliers so this time of year involves silly amounts of hours, but the end of harvest is in sight and I may actually get some decent time off soon. I'm having a bash at dynamic cloth, and the scythe (or at least the first version of it) is now rigged and textured. Piles of bones are also on the to do list thanks to a suggestion by Chris at Hivewire. I realised I can save the results of a Bullet Physics sim as an obj, so I'm very happy. As I use Modo Indie which has Bullet too, I did a quick comparison. Modo has more options, but in my little test using defaults Poser kicked its ass - faster and better. Heh.

Last render, my main focus now is the documentation - definitely a pdf, possibly a quick screen recording too. Here's the title page - Mort reading Mort ...

Fantastic!

Will it be available at Hivewire?

Hmm...I'm gonna be that guy.

How does it compare side by side with the skeletons (plural) that comes with Poser? A side by side please.

I needs to buy this now, man. Juss tell us where and when and I be there pronto. Cheers!

randym77 posted at 7:01PM Wed, 21 August 2019 - #4360026

Fantastic!

Will it be available at Hivewire?

He's been showing Mort off at HW3D as well, so hopefully he'll be selling him at both stores.

Hmmm, am I right in thinking that Bones Jr. has the full complement of adult teeth? Would it be too morbid or late in the piece to ask for a morph or morphs that hide a few back molars for pre-teen Halloween? ;-)

[Sorry, it just didn't seem right to call the little one "La petit mort" ;-) ] [Ooff, No! Bad hand!] [Sorry, don't pay any attention, I've just got a bone in my leg...]

Yes, I hope to sell at both stores - assuming it gets through testing of course! With luck I'll get Mort to that point within the next two weeks ...

Teeth - below is a screenshot of the hierarchy showing the skull - full complement of teeth, hopefully the names are self explanatory, all have bones, so visibility can be turned on and off at will ;)

At this stage of the project I can add morphs no problem; I'm not going to make changes to the obj file, rigging or textures now though unless I've made any serious mistakes (gulp)

Side by side comparisons - rendered in Superfly, single area light, no post. All figures loaded and only translated in x or z, so they are as default as possible (Mort was modelled and rigged in A-pose, and loads without textures by default). The figures (left to right, front view) are: Male Skeleton from the Anatomy folder (James Skeleton); Skeleton Man; yours truly; Male_Skeleton (which I believe is the same mesh as Ryan_Skeleton).

I've compared to the male skeletons as they seem a marginally better fit to the default Mort. Hopefully I've made enough morphs to cover both male and female characteristics though I have deliberately avoided gender-specific terminology as I think it's more interesting that way.

From the back -

Side view (might add another morph to pull the ribcage back a bit on the z axis) -

Thanks for the comparisons and views. While the default skeleton is quite good and does compare, I award the blue ribbon to Mort! Andy is out of the question, the first skeleton is out of the question because it's too stylized. The last skeleton goes to third place because of the weak pelvis. Even though a male has a smaller pelvis, that just doesn't look quite right from the side. Mort's patella is clearly too high from this view. Do you agree? Ryan looks good but I like Mort's textures and get that attitude! He's almost saying, "You want some of this?" (Ahh, no. Unless there is a golden fleece involved, I ain't fighting no skeleton no how, no way! (Quadruple Negative?))

I don't know if you did all 206 bones (average) but I have to say a wonderful effort with wonderful results.

The first place is justified. ?

@quietrob - thanks! I'll check my references on the patella - I think it's roughly correct, the placement on the others is so off it stands out. Will post tomorrow ;)

If anything, I say Mort's patella is pretty much right. The other skeletons are using a mid joint position which is only characteristic of the flexed knee, where the patella protects the anterior cartilage of femur and tibia. Of the tendons attached to the patella, the lower tendon inserting into the tibia is the major determinant of where the patella locates during flexion of the knee, essentially maintaining its distance relative to the top of the tibia, rather than any reference point on the femur.

Reference image chosen for best compromise of position and tendon references with a quick google search:

I'm not Dr. Ned Abendola. Heck, Ano might be right and you shouldn't change a thing. Here are more examples. No tendons cuz Mort has none. In both of these, the Patella is riding high and not centered. That may be natural.

Here's what I have done with the V4 Skeleton to meet my expectations of anatomical correctness (though I even went so far as to animate the origins of V4's shins according to how far the knee is bent [the human knee geometry maintains the length of the cruciate ligaments throughout the bend, with the cartilage surface curves reducing their radius the further the knee is flexed])

Apart from protecting the anterior joint surfaces, the patella also protects its tendons from wear against the femur and tibia by holding them away from moving parts.