MBT-70 Tank
polycounter lvl 12
This is the second tank in the series of vehicles that I am doing to beef up my portfolio, hope ya like it... and now a bit of exciting education!
The MBT-70 was a joint US-German heavy tank project that was launched in the 1960s and formed the source vehicle for both the Abrams M1 and Leopard 2 main battle tanks. The MBT-70 incorporated some radical new design elements, including a main gun that could fire wire-guided missile munitions as well as conventional rounds, and a bustle-mounted automatic loading system for the main gun, thereby doing away with the need for a loader and reducing the crew to three.
The MBT-70 was a joint US-German heavy tank project that was launched in the 1960s and formed the source vehicle for both the Abrams M1 and Leopard 2 main battle tanks. The MBT-70 incorporated some radical new design elements, including a main gun that could fire wire-guided missile munitions as well as conventional rounds, and a bustle-mounted automatic loading system for the main gun, thereby doing away with the need for a loader and reducing the crew to three.
Replies
How about some close up renders of areas? And perhaps some wires?
No this would definitely be his high poly render.
This is probably one of the best high poly detailed tanks i've ever seen. I'd love to see this baked down and textured.
Yea I was being sarcastic, unsuccessfully apparently.
I actually don't like seeing it with the wall of text. Ah well.
Looking forward to see wires
i'm actually slightly impressed.
now the part i don't like:
the hull. you've made it a cast assembly, when the real thing was welded.
another problem is the width of the hull. i'm not sure if its the turret that isn't wide enough, or the hull that is too wide, but its one of those. the turret ring should nearly touch the part where the sloped side armour begins.
the MBT-70 had a very special turret, all 3 crewmembers was housed inside of it, and the driver had his own counter-rotating cupola on top of it.
oh, and would be nice if you could make the 20mm gun extend from the cupola:
Like most other people, I'm also interested in knowing how you got the weld look and honestly about how you rendered this if you don't mind sharing
throttlekitty- because this model is really heavy I had to make the tank in three different parts. So, I ended up with one max file for the head, the body, and the tread. But, before I separated them out I did a low-res version with all three parts in one scene to make sure they fit together, (but it seems like I still need to do some tweaking; as dejawolf pointed out, that either the turret or the hull needs a bit of adjusting). After I finished the high-res of each piece I brought them into Zbrush to do the welding, and just to knock the model around a little bit. Then going back to Max I set up my lighting and a camera so I can merge two of the three max files together, for example, the head and the body of the tank. I rendered this out using the camera. When the render is complete I go ahead and delete the head mesh, merge in the tread- then wash rinse and repeat.
SinisterUrge- how long did the model take? ummm... I want to say, and this is just an guessestimation: 1 to 2 days blocking out, 4 to 5 days on the tread, three days or so on the body, and let's say two weeks for the head? Zbrushing wasn't very hard, so a round a day or two, then you have to take in account lighting, rendering, and clean up, and I know that had to take a few days as well. So, with a little give-and-take, around a month, and I do put in a lot of hours for each of these days... I know I don't keep very good track of this kind of stuff. For the next model I will try to keep some sort of log, or start rendering out daily so I can give you a more precise time line.
Racer445 - I used the layer brush, (after making the mesh a morph target) to layout some controlled line work. After I was happy with where the welding was going I used to clay brush to go back in and give it some raised and evenly spaced marks.
dejawolf - I definitely notice a problem with the width of the turret/body, (good call) but I'm not sure if I understand the whole cast assembly versus welding subject. I don't really see too much welding unless it's on the side of the tank where it rises to the peak of the triangular backing. But I'll go back through my reference to take a second look. And oohh yes! It would have been awesome to be able to model the 20mm, and I was seriously considering going for it, but due to the lack of reference and time, I had to talk myself out down... still I think it would be one of the cooler things to model on this tank.
Well, I hope this answers some of your questions and thank you for all your positive feedback
the hull is welded together by a series of plates, with seams like in this picture.
on your model, you've made it look like its cast out of a single piece.
also some quick observations i made when i looked it over,
if you look at the picture above, the gunshield is wider than on your model, and has a somewhat different shape.
also:
in this picture, you can see the 20mm gun barrel sticking backwards, labeled -1.
which is in the stored position.