T-rex Skeleton by joefe

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Update 2/21/15 - I have been focusing most of my free modeling time (which isn't much between work, my wife and four kids and their activities) lately on designing my steampunk cube gears (which can be seen here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:684376 ) and the upcoming steampunk version of the amazing gyroscopic cube gears which should be done reasonably soon. I have not forgotten about this model though. In fact, I have started taking it apart and working to make the individual pieces printable.
I wanted to add a post here because while thinking about how to orient different pieces for printing, I had a fun thought about what I want to do with this model and started looking for references. I found a youtube video that shows pretty much exactly the type of thing I want to do with it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzBOvx5mP58
Making this a walking T-rex skeleton is going to be my next project after I finish the steampunk version of the amazing gyroscopic cube gears. If you look at my other moving creations, I think that it is reasonable to assume that it is something that I can accomplish. I have been doing some initial sketching and am excited to tackle this soon. Believe it or not, the hard part was doing all of the research and modeling. Making it move will be easy by comparison.
I just wanted to share this update that I am excited about and will start posting the printable pieces for the moving dinosaur as I finish each section. More to come!
Update 12/15 - I've been busy lately, so it has been a while since my last update. After doing more research on the bones in the tail, I realized that my original tail needed a lot of changes so I started over. I have added the new tail and am going to work on the skull next.
Update 8/15 - I have added the spine to the pelvis region and down through most of the tail so far. I am still working on the details of the tail right now. I will post files later when they are more complete. Then on to the Skull. I had originally planned to use the Makerbot Academy skull, but after putting so much time into modeling this, I figured that I really should model my own skull.
Update 7/6 - I have modeled the rough version of the spine, including the neck, back and ribs. I pushed past the limits that Sculptris will do in one model, so I started the spine in its own model. That won't hurt the final model however because I wanted to separate it into printable parts anyway. Like the other parts I have posted, I am posting the model here for show, but will be breaking it up into printable parts later after I have completed modeling the rest of the skeleton.
Update - I have added the pelvis, hip bone and I think its called Ilium? Again, these are rough versions of the bones that will likely be adjusted to scale some as the model progresses. Now on to the spine.
Update - I have completed the rough version of the legs. I will be adding more detail to them later.
When I saw the Makerbot Curriculum T-rex skull I was very impressed. Then I saw that they had the full printable skeleton and I actually said out loud "Awesome!!" as I stared wide eyed at the different pictures of it at the Makerbot Digital Store. I was ready to throw down my $15 and start printing until I saw a comment on the T-rex skull page that said the skeleton was in x3g file format???
Like may others I then went on a Google quest to find out what this strange file format was and how I could use it to print objects on my printer. After several hours of mining obscure forums and testing I stood defeated and crestfallen. I could not print their proprietary file format with my printer.
I decided to look upon this as an opportunity. I had been trying to decide what would be a good thing to design as my first real try with Sculptris and decided to call this inspiration instead. I am slowly working on designing a full T-rex skeleton to go with the excellent Curriculum Skull and make my T-rex printing dreams come true!
So far I have the two feet designed. Standing on the left foot and starting to lift the right foot. When I get the leg bones completed, I will design a mechanism to connect them, so please realize that these are a work in progress and the final versions will be different.
I will post updates as I add new files. The pictures are from Sculptris by the way. I will post pictures of prints as I create final versions.