WIP: warhammer 40k drop pod

waffledoodle

Hello everyone! I've been lurking for awhile, decided I should probably nut up and start a wip thread. I recently started doing a space marine drop pod from Warhammer 40k. I'm just about ready to call the hi-poly done:



I had this possibly stupid idea to go buy the actual model kit, and then scan the individual plastic parts for image plane ref. Which is exactly what I did. Maybe it was overkill, but hey it was fun. I've been thinking about getting into the miniatures as a hobby anyway (I ended up buying a bunch of paint and shit too).



I'm really anxious to start up on the low poly so I can get bakin', but please fire away with any crits or advice you've got first. I'm still sort of new at realtime 3d stuff (2D/UI artist here), so any noob tips especially are appreciated!

waffledoodle

I'm starting up on my lowpoly today, as soon as I get to work -- I've got nothing else to do this week. I'm not sure what sort of polycount I should aim for though. I was imagining this as a to-scale vehicle in an FPS that might plop down in front of you during an in-game cutscene, as opposed to a tiny RTS unit. What should I be aiming for, around 12,000? Something like that?

Here's some space marines next to one for scale:

seth.

Great HP...almost looks like you have modelled in the injection moulding seams in some areas...now that is accuracy !

As a slightly more serious crit I think that some area's of detail such as the piston looking things at the top could pop a little more, they are sunk into the side of the plastic model cos its necessary for production rather than that being the intention, at the moment it's like you modelled the model instead of modelling the object that the model is depicting.....does that make any sense at all?

should have kept the parts on the sprue so that you could refund it afterwards

cant help with the polycount I'm afraid, just add as many as you need to make it look nice

looking forward to seeing this textured, other than my niggles I really like what you have so far.

waffledoodle

Haha wow, I didn't notice the seams on the fins until you mentioned it. I think I flip/attached those and forgot to merge the verts.

And yeah, the "modelling the model" crit makes total sense. Sounds like I should do another pass and think really hard about what some of these plastic bits are supposed to be representing instead of just modeling them verbatim. Do you see any other specific areas you would call out as being too "model kit"?

waffledoodle

Welp, here's the current state of the lowpoly bake. There are still some areas that seemed warped or glitchy, and I'm still trying to figure out where exactly I should and should softening edges/normals. I feel like I'm doing everything totally wrong, ugh. This is after my third or fourth pass trying to clean things up:



Wireframe (just under 20k triangles at the moment) :

Quack!

It doesn't look like your normals are shown in that last render. Are they? Looks just like the ao pass.

If you were trying to hit your 12k budget you could cut tons of tris from the inner part of the drop pad. Also some of the small details seem to have micro details modeled on them that, depending on what view they would be seen at, could be removed.

Will you be taking this into a game engine or just rendering it?

Jessica Dinh

Wow, nice! Can't wait for textures!!

waffledoodle

jessica - thanks! hopefully I can finish getting all the little problems in the geo/normals worked out soon so I can get to coloring.

chaosduck - the normals are on in that last shot, but I had the AO map on as a diffuse to help preview how the textures might look. Here's some shots of just the normals (both this and the last shot are in marmoset). Also this is mainly for self-education, and if I wind up with a presentable final I would like for it to go in the portfolio, but it's just going to be a few marmoset grabs.

Quack!

Ok just as I thought. Your normals were hard for me to see for a couple reasons. The lack of a strong specular is one. The onther is that your chamfers/edges are super tight and seem very tiny. So from the pulled back shot they weren't reading well. I personally would loosen up your support edges and exaggerate many of your details to help sell the normal map.

You also seem to have 2 large triangles showing in your maps, on each of the 'arms' one at the top and one right above the circular vent thingy. Those are very distracting and don't seem to be part of the reference model you posted.

With that said this does look lovingly created, especially crazy by actually modelling the parts of the kit, great job there.

Can't wait to see more.

waffledoodle

My new computer showed up on my doorstep last week, and I lost a few days to copying junk, transferring licenses, etc, but then I got back to work on this sumbitch! Here's an updated shot of the low poly with normal map, hopefully for the better:



I started playing around with colors as well, but haven't gotten too far with it yet, just masking in stuff. I figured I'd post it though just to give an idea of where I'm going with this:

Envart

This is looking great. can we get a higher res shot of the interior please?

waffledoodle

Sure, here's where it's at right now...




I sort of regret trying to do something this complicated before getting a better grasp on all of this stuff. This is only my second or third attempt at doing a lowpoly / game-appropriate model, and my first attempt at baking down something entirely hard surface. But hey painful learning experiences are the best ones, right?

waffledoodle

Still chugging along on this...

Envart

This is looking cool man. My only real crit is that the scratches should be more than just a line, as they peel the paint in the surrounding area, like the scratches/wear at the bottom of the vertical support strut. E.g. the bolter in the middle has a scratch running around the rim, this looks a bit odd because it's not scratched anywhere else on the bolter, and I'd say that's a place that would recieve little wear. I imagine a fairly sheltered place like that would have more grime/carbonisation from firing than scratches. The place that would receive most wear, imo, would be the bottom (from landing / orbital entry ), the area around the exits (from incoming enemy fire, and the walk-plate (from heavy stompy marines trampling over it). You could also simulate damage from atmospheric entry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_entry

waffledoodle

Thanks, those are all excellent points. I didn't get a chance to work on this yesterday, but I'm hoping to put most of it into practice today/tomorrow.

BlazeF

Walrus has the right of it. If the pod were in space, few scratches would show on it. But after that bitch has torn through the atmosphere and slammed into the ground with whatever may be lying around it. Tell a bit about this pod just through some of that texture

Looking pretty badass

waffledoodle

Here's another update. I banged her up a bit, especially around the base. The doors got some extra scuffing since I figured they'd get banged up a bunch from slamming into the ground on opening. I'm trying not to be timid with the damage, but also stay conscious of how much is too much. Do I need more? Less? Am I missing anything?