What am I doing Wrong? - Anatomy question

[Hauken]

I've been using some free-ware anatomical bones in an attempt to make a skeleton for a MakeHuman body.
I've made some tweaks and resizes here and there, but for the life of me I cannot get the vertebrae to line up correctly:

(Ignore the protruding collar bone, I'm going to handle that later)
http://i891.photobucket.com/albums/ac11 ... ei073g.png

The issue is the coccyx. I believe it's supposed to higher up and closer to the back.
Various anatomy references seem to have trouble with this alignment too. Some depict it as resting almost at the center of the body when viewed from the side.
Others have it resting on the edge of the body very close to the skin. I know on some people you can see the outline of the tail bone up against their skin.
Placing my hand on my back, I can feel the tailbone, so I believe the illustrations depicting it much closer to the skin are the correct ones.

When viewed from the front, everything seems to be where it's supposed to be:
http://i891.photobucket.com/albums/ac11 ... i2wl2z.png

Yet, I'm not sure if I've scaled the vertebrae model correctly. For when I try to scale it further, I then run into issues where the placement of the pelvis doesn't look correct from the front.
This also messes up the rib cage.

I've seen various placements of the pelvis from references, but overall it looks in the right place.
I may increase the height of the pelvis, but not by scaling the whole thing. I would just adjust it vertex by vertex.

[brkurt]

I've been using some free-ware anatomical bones in an attempt to make a skeleton for a MakeHuman body.
I've made some tweaks and resizes here and there, but for the life of me I cannot get the vertebrae to line up correctly:

(Ignore the protruding collar bone, I'm going to handle that later)
http://i891.photobucket.com/albums/ac11 ... ei073g.png

The issue is the coccyx. I believe it's supposed to higher up and closer to the back.
Various anatomy references seem to have trouble with this alignment too. Some depict it as resting almost at the center of the body when viewed from the side.
Others have it resting on the edge of the body very close to the skin. I know on some people you can see the outline of the tail bone up against their skin.
Placing my hand on my back, I can feel the tailbone, so I believe the illustrations depicting it much closer to the skin are the correct ones.

When viewed from the front, everything seems to be where it's supposed to be:
http://i891.photobucket.com/albums/ac11 ... i2wl2z.png

Yet, I'm not sure if I've scaled the vertebrae model correctly. For when I try to scale it further, I then run into issues where the placement of the pelvis doesn't look correct from the front.
This also messes up the rib cage.

I've seen various placements of the pelvis from references, but overall it looks in the right place.
I may increase the height of the pelvis, but not by scaling the whole thing. I would just adjust it vertex by vertex.

You will need an extra layer of object--an armature--to solve your problem. Can you work in Blender? If you can, feel free to download one of my models and use the armature. The armature can control both the body mesh and the skeleton, at least for your first attempt.

[Hauken]

Quote

You will need an extra layer of object--an armature--to solve your problem. Can you work in Blender? If you can, feel free to download one of my models and use the armature. The armature can control both the body mesh and the skeleton, at least for your first attempt.

Yes thank you, those screenshots were taken in blender actually.

Where can I find a link to the armature? I've never used armatures before, actually but I'm sure I can figure it out after downloading.

I guess what you're suggesting is to align the vertebrae to the body with an armature? I will still need to reshape the pelvis I imagine, but at least I'll have a good starting point.

[loki1950]

Armatures are just technical way of saying skeletons there are several different ones available that have already been fitted to the makehuman mesh check the pose/animate tab and the user contributed assets for what is available might save you some headaches

Enjoy the Choice