[Squad] 3 Tank Scans + Interior Panospheres

ghaztehschmexeh

Hey everyone! I recently took part in a trip to scan some tanks for Squad. I wrote an article about it, which you can read here. Basically, we wanted some scans to replace the blockout phase of development on these tanks. It insures accuracy and saves time. Thought I'd post the results here as they came out pretty solid. You can view the interiors here and here - great references if you're doing a tank interior!

Feel free to ask if you have any questions about our process!

John Baxter

I've really wanted to do something like this, in fact I almost went to the Tank Museum! It looks like you got to take the photos when there was no one else there. How did you organize that?

ghaztehschmexeh

John Baxter said:

I've really wanted to do something like this, in fact I almost went to the Tank Museum! It looks like you got to take the photos when there was no one else there. How did you organize that?

There were a few people around, but we did start before the museum actually opens. We were working during the week, so it wasn't that busy. If someone wandered into our shot, we'd just wait for them to pass. I have a feeling the software wouldn't care too much about the odd person in the background anyway.

Keep in mind we had a special arrangement with the museum to do this. I'm sure if your work is non-commercial it won't be an issue, but it might be best to talk to them before pulling your tripod out and taking hundreds of photos of one tank! We made heavy use of ladders to capture the top of the tanks, which I guess you'd need to arrange with the museum too.

Shrike

Really nice but wont that be insane work to get a workable lowpoly ? And wont that use way too many vertices? 

ghaztehschmexeh

Shrike said:

Really nice but wont that be insane work to get a workable lowpoly ? And wont that use way too many vertices? 

We are using these as 3D reference. It'll replace the blockout phase. Our vehicle artists were getting aggravated with inaccurate blueprints and having to eyeball things. Accuracy is particularly important for Squad, and so getting this right was taking up a fair amount of time. So the artists will simply do normal subd work over the top of these, and these will insure accuracy in terms of proportions and details.

SwiftHatchet

Well that's handy. All pro refs there! Good job, can't wait to see the final product. 

ghaztehschmexeh

SwiftHatchet said:

Well that's handy. All pro refs there! Good job, can't wait to see the final product. 

Thanks! Honestly I was pretty stunned at the quality of the results. Can't wait to do it again and shoot HDR to fill some of those holes. I'll post the final results (if the artists are okay with it) when they are done (if I remember...haha)