Futuristic Russian Helicopter (Hind inspired)
Hello polycounters,
Before I talk about the heli I just wanted to give a quick intro. I've been a longtime lurker of this site and have gained a lot of insight and inspiration from many members, especially over the last 12+ months as I've been overhauling my portfolio. My background in games started back in 2004 when I joined a PC mod called Desert Combat as a vehicle artist. This eventually lead to roles as an art supervisor for Kaos Studios where I worked for 6+ years until its closure last June.
Because my last supervising roles kept me fairly tied up, I was itching to take on a next gen spec vehicle from start to finish. The Russian Hind was one of my favorite helis as a kid so I decided to create a futuristic version that had its own unique look but still shared some resemblance to the Hind. I made deliberate attempts to give it an animalistic yet sleek and aggressive appearance. Hopefully this is conveyed.
There are a few more images on my site as well as higher res versions if you are interested: http://www.brianburrell.com/3dper_mi27r.html
Maya viewport 2.0 video capture:
[FONT="]
Direct link to video: http://vimeo.com/34507513
Some more notes...
1) Software used = Maya, Mudbox (lots of detail sculpting w/ vdm), photoshop, xNormal(ao), ndo2/crazybump (minimal)
1) I didn't weld certain sections because I was planning to make a destruction version later on but ended up moving on to another project.
2) The texture specs in all of the images except the 2 mental ray renders above this post are: 2048x2048 set, 512x512 set and 256x256 for the glass. Diffuse, spec, gloss, and normalmaps used for the first two sets.
3) The poly count is around the 35k range with all moving parts and weapons included (target platform = next gen consoles)
4) In order to gain some slight visual boosts I used certain methods that were fairly time consuming and wouldn't exactly recommend them for normal game production
Thanks for checking out my work and feel free to post suggestions/crits if there are things that bug you. Since I haven't touched this in maybe 5+ months I already want to re-visit some areas but have been a bit too tied up with other projects.
Before I talk about the heli I just wanted to give a quick intro. I've been a longtime lurker of this site and have gained a lot of insight and inspiration from many members, especially over the last 12+ months as I've been overhauling my portfolio. My background in games started back in 2004 when I joined a PC mod called Desert Combat as a vehicle artist. This eventually lead to roles as an art supervisor for Kaos Studios where I worked for 6+ years until its closure last June.
Because my last supervising roles kept me fairly tied up, I was itching to take on a next gen spec vehicle from start to finish. The Russian Hind was one of my favorite helis as a kid so I decided to create a futuristic version that had its own unique look but still shared some resemblance to the Hind. I made deliberate attempts to give it an animalistic yet sleek and aggressive appearance. Hopefully this is conveyed.
There are a few more images on my site as well as higher res versions if you are interested: http://www.brianburrell.com/3dper_mi27r.html
Maya viewport 2.0 video capture:
[FONT="]
[vv]34507513[/vv]
[/FONT]Direct link to video: http://vimeo.com/34507513
Some more notes...
1) Software used = Maya, Mudbox (lots of detail sculpting w/ vdm), photoshop, xNormal(ao), ndo2/crazybump (minimal)
1) I didn't weld certain sections because I was planning to make a destruction version later on but ended up moving on to another project.
2) The texture specs in all of the images except the 2 mental ray renders above this post are: 2048x2048 set, 512x512 set and 256x256 for the glass. Diffuse, spec, gloss, and normalmaps used for the first two sets.
3) The poly count is around the 35k range with all moving parts and weapons included (target platform = next gen consoles)
4) In order to gain some slight visual boosts I used certain methods that were fairly time consuming and wouldn't exactly recommend them for normal game production
Thanks for checking out my work and feel free to post suggestions/crits if there are things that bug you. Since I haven't touched this in maybe 5+ months I already want to re-visit some areas but have been a bit too tied up with other projects.
Replies
Your portfolio is off the chain. :poly121: :thumbup:
Computron , double thanks to you! I actually thought there was a ratio issue with embedding vimeo videos here so I'm glad that's not the case.
And I guess you are probably really good at solving puzzles
I love this work, how long have u been working on this?
Awesome work
the helicopter execution looks great. a truly autistic level of detail to the modeling even down to the interior, it looks like it was a ton of fun to model the high poly for the whole thing. the texture has some really awesome shapes as well--4096 is nuts. i'd love to see the full spec map to get a better sense of the thought process behind the materials.
you should have another job in no time.
You're a killer! xD
Incredible stuff, man. It's pretty much fantastic from concept to execution
Seriously, wow.
Teh Splatt, Powermaennchen: Thx!
Battlecow: Too kind! I actually liked my original version of the cockpit framing more but there was one big problem: It wasn't functional. Oops!
Paul68: It was roughly two months of work total but a lot of that time could have been trimmed down if I didn't go the insane route of sculpting the majority of the detail in mudbox (meshes got very, very dense and my 24gb of RAM went bye-bye quickly)
TeaAndCigs: That made me laugh. Good one! By the way, I remember checking out your environments while I was working on mine and was blown away. Sick work.
Rhoutermans: TY!
Cupsster: Yep by hand but I have a lot of hotkeys and custom mel functions I've made over the years to make the process smoother and less painful than normal.
Xoliul: That's pretty funny you were thinking that and I'll take it as a nice compliment. :thumbup: Alan/polygoo has some mad texturing skills for sure and he was a big influence on me so I'm grateful I was able to work with him for FL and HF. His latest car for Ravaged is one of my favorite vehicles. Also, Alan and I worked with a vehicle concept artist named Nathan Campbell who was a positive influence on my vehicle concept abilities.
Racer- Evan: What up man? Good to see you on here. Your version of the Goliath was already pretty tight but I decided to re-texture the diffuse at the last minute due to how much the green version was blending into the SP maps. I should have had you do that from the getgo so that was my goof. Thanks for your kind words on the heli. The modeling was a blast up until the part where my meshes got a bit too dense in mudbox even though I had everything broken up efficiently. Good learning experience though. Just to be clear, the 4k maps are only used on the renders up top. I'll try and post the full spec and NM on here later this evening.
Alloa: Your env work on deathmonsters and crasher is very tight! I remember seeing it awhile back and dropping my jaw at the style and execution.
aobond, nathdevlin, LoTekK, Walrus, Samfisher84, tacit math, Hang10, Havoc89, BenH - Thanks so much guys! Wish I had something more clever to say but I haven't had enough caffeine yet
- hope I didn't miss anybody
awesome dude.. i like the style and the texturework !
You made me quit my quake match and go back to modeling - right away..
awesome job overall
How many hours did you sink into this?
Nice folio as well...
You also worked on one of my favourite mods ever.
By far the best looking Helicopter i've ever seen
And yeah, you got an awesome portfolio...
The biggest issue that stands out to me is how mushy the hard surfaces look.
The closeup highpoly render of the cockpit shows this issue well, the beams that make up the window don't look like they are precise metal beams with proper seams between elements, they look as if they're made out of clay.
A lot of the body seams and bolts look a bit soft, like they're just sculpted in rather than separate elements that are holding an aircraft together.
I'm not sure why your specular map is blue, it should be greyscale for the most part, painted surfaces especially the type of material on military vehicles have a greyscale specular response. I believe this is contributing to the gamey look inside of UDK, where the highlight is hitting the surface is getting more saturated which is incorrect.
Disclaimer: color spec map is a bit exaggerated regarding its metallic attributes and saturation and I'll go into this more when I reply to Jordan. Just wanted to mention that so newer artists don't download it and consider it fully accurate ref for realism sake
Diffuse:
Color specular: