LandRaiderConversion(40KFans). PortfolioPiece.
Hey guys, I'll start off by saying this is my first attempt at doing something that I am doing purely for putting in my portfolio. I am going to try and make this the most awesome thing possible and if you feel you have any advice for me or question anything I am doing etc then feel free to say and I will reply 
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The reason why I am doing this piece in particular is because I feel it covers quite a few aspects that I think is correct for a portfolio piece (this is something I am sure many of you will probably question haha); I feel it covers some hardsurface skills which I am interested in improving, it covers what I feel are complex shapes, it will cover artistic lisence while still conforming to what is realistic or the current art direction of the piece and finally its something that I think is cool and when I find myself tearing my golden locks out it keeps me coming back.
So yeah, basically as you will see I have gone for this ork conversion of a space marine land raider and if I am not correct, a chopped up rhino tank as well. If you are familiar with warhammer stuff feel free to skip this next bit.
(Read only if you have no idea what this is).
In a short sweet summary, its a war vehicle that is comprised of many different parts of machineary into something of a crazy ass tank thats far larger and different in terms of asthetics etc. Think of it as a pimp my "tank" but there are no 18" subs, spinners (unless saw blades) or swade headliners
. This particular tank is made by a species called ork who take other speices/armys vehicles and change them to their needs. Please look up land raiders on your own search engine to see what the original looks like.
Here is the main reference picture I am going by.
I think this is a cool piece to try and recreate using my own twist on this to show off the things I have previously mentioned. I know that warhammer tanks are usually very popular but honestly I have never come across a 3D modelled tank such as this which seems strange as these look awesome and as a once avid table top player I always wanted to add more las-cannons to my tanks even though it was never legal :poly127:.
So yeah here below is a quick picture of progess so far. Its all pretty hi-poly at the moment but there are some edges that you will probably pick up on in terms of edges being to hard, for example around the tank doors as I have not as of yet started chamfering these. I have decided to change a few things from the reference shown into this, such as the exhaust pipe I think looks cooler straight up and along the bottom of the tank I have decided to use bolts and not rounded rivets (if thats the correct name) as I feel it gives it a more bolted on look (excuse the pun haha). From looking at the picture I can also see if I indent the area where the bolts are I think that will look better
Theres obviously a lot of work to do however but I thought it would be cool if there is any advice from you lovely people then I would really appreciate it.
I will be turning this into a low-poly model at the end once I am happy with the hi-poly. Hopefully it should not be to hard to bake it although the only experince I have had of that is by doing a wooden door tutorial from a book... however it went swimmingly :P. So yeah feel free to say whatever you think, hopefully I will have lots of updates soon enough, just got back from a 2 week holiday in america along the lovely sunny west coast. Anyone who loves driving in awesome scenic places I can not recommend enough the big sur from san fransico going to LA.
Anyway thanks alot.
ps this is my first thread doing anything like this so this so sorry if its a bit long winded etc, just thought I should try and give out as much info as possible :P
.The reason why I am doing this piece in particular is because I feel it covers quite a few aspects that I think is correct for a portfolio piece (this is something I am sure many of you will probably question haha); I feel it covers some hardsurface skills which I am interested in improving, it covers what I feel are complex shapes, it will cover artistic lisence while still conforming to what is realistic or the current art direction of the piece and finally its something that I think is cool and when I find myself tearing my golden locks out it keeps me coming back.
So yeah, basically as you will see I have gone for this ork conversion of a space marine land raider and if I am not correct, a chopped up rhino tank as well. If you are familiar with warhammer stuff feel free to skip this next bit.
(Read only if you have no idea what this is).
In a short sweet summary, its a war vehicle that is comprised of many different parts of machineary into something of a crazy ass tank thats far larger and different in terms of asthetics etc. Think of it as a pimp my "tank" but there are no 18" subs, spinners (unless saw blades) or swade headliners
. This particular tank is made by a species called ork who take other speices/armys vehicles and change them to their needs. Please look up land raiders on your own search engine to see what the original looks like.Here is the main reference picture I am going by.
I think this is a cool piece to try and recreate using my own twist on this to show off the things I have previously mentioned. I know that warhammer tanks are usually very popular but honestly I have never come across a 3D modelled tank such as this which seems strange as these look awesome and as a once avid table top player I always wanted to add more las-cannons to my tanks even though it was never legal :poly127:.
So yeah here below is a quick picture of progess so far. Its all pretty hi-poly at the moment but there are some edges that you will probably pick up on in terms of edges being to hard, for example around the tank doors as I have not as of yet started chamfering these. I have decided to change a few things from the reference shown into this, such as the exhaust pipe I think looks cooler straight up and along the bottom of the tank I have decided to use bolts and not rounded rivets (if thats the correct name) as I feel it gives it a more bolted on look (excuse the pun haha). From looking at the picture I can also see if I indent the area where the bolts are I think that will look better
Theres obviously a lot of work to do however but I thought it would be cool if there is any advice from you lovely people then I would really appreciate it.
I will be turning this into a low-poly model at the end once I am happy with the hi-poly. Hopefully it should not be to hard to bake it although the only experince I have had of that is by doing a wooden door tutorial from a book... however it went swimmingly :P. So yeah feel free to say whatever you think, hopefully I will have lots of updates soon enough, just got back from a 2 week holiday in america along the lovely sunny west coast. Anyone who loves driving in awesome scenic places I can not recommend enough the big sur from san fransico going to LA.
Anyway thanks alot.
ps this is my first thread doing anything like this so this so sorry if its a bit long winded etc, just thought I should try and give out as much info as possible :P
Replies
Remember 90* angles don't bake on flat surfaces, so you have to angle them slightly to show up. Good luck with it
Can't promise that it will look crazy good like most of the stuff posted on here but I thought I may as well drop myself in the deep end and just plow through it. Hopefully I will have an update later today showing some extra stuff I have included. At the moment I am creating a gun platform that comes out at the back of the landraider
Thanks for the tip with the 90* baking. I know that if it is straight up it doesnt show/correctly so I am sure I will have fun going around all the edges -_- haha.
you doing this as a game asset or just a high poly? (sorry didnt read your text in middle of dinner haha)
gd luck and will keep eye on your progress
As you work I highly suggest you use a material that has a high spec, very dark diffuse, and low gloss value. This will help you see your edges and flat planes much better and will add in finding high poly forms that will translate better to your low.
When it doubt make the edges softer then you might think.
Go crazy with the details.
@cvdavidson, Yeah I know it is, specially since if you check out my "portfolio" if you can call it that, you will see that this sort of project is really pushing my skills, the only thing I can think of that would be even harder would be character art as that is by far my weakest skill. That will come in time
@Visceral, from my experince its never a good thing, I am sure being a 40K addict is more expensive than crack haha.
@Quack, I think I know what you mean by "loose with your support edges", do you mean be careful not to have to many so that they do not get in the way when I round the edges off? Or do you mean to make it more rounded than what I think looks right to help with the "readability" of the piece, so for example softer edges look better from a distance?
Ah thanks for the tip
Oh dont worry I will
Hey, just a small update. After a while of trying to figure out what gun I was going to do I have decided to mix and match parts together. I am trying to keep to the orginal look and feel however
@Selaznog, Thanks alot
@Luther4, Would you like to explain?
"Or do you mean to make it more rounded than what I think looks right to help with the "readability" of the piece, so for example softer edges look better from a distance? " <---- This is what I meant :]
And Luther4 is most likely a bot.
@Quack, Ah I thought you might mean that, I saw a few guys talking about it to do with weapon sights and how a hard edge might look better up close, from further away it looks too crisp. However I have run into a problem with that if I try and chamfer alot of my edges it becomes a huge mess
Also here is a update pic. I have decided to scale back the model a little bit for the moment as I 1) Want to finish this fairly soon. 2) I am pretty sure I have not done it the best way possible from the start meaning that my mesh in places looks like complete chaos which is not good.
Anyway as you will see I have moved the rear gunner ledge further forward and now the rear door I wanted to make it into some sort of staircase that leads up to the top of the tank which will be some sort of deck with a large weapon on top. How do you guys think this looks? My opinion is that it looks like it could work but it also looks out of place, I was thinking about making it smaller; specially as I was thinking about surrounding it in a mesh cage sort of thing instead of just open stairs.
Other things are that I have realised I need to maybe ork it up alot more, as it looks WAY to clean. I made my own custom tracks which I think look alright, maybe when I texture them I could make them look dirter etc but I really want them to look beat up in shape as well. Any suggestions or other crit would be great.
Also apologies for not doing alot thus far, its being a large learning curve with best ways to approach this plus how I want it to look. I know from coming on here alot people bash out insane pieces alot faster than what I am doing so I wish to thank you guys alot for your patience if you are still following
Megalmn has a great point. Get the entire vehicle blocked out using basic forms. An easy way to think of this is limit yourself to a low number of triangles, say 200 and complete the entire shape of the tank in that or less.
As for 'support edges' I don't mean chamfer. Chamfer is a destructive act that should be used only when you are 100% sure about its placement. Support edges is non destructive in that it is easy to edit later on if you need to.
This is a great read to get the basics. http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/rounding_the_edges/rounding_the_edges.htm
And of course this: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56014
I suggest that you mostly use support edges and turbosmooth, and only chamfer in the certain cases that you need it.
Thanks again for the help and Quack! thanks alot for the links, the quad chamfer looks awesome, however I did see a quad chamfer pluggin but that is not free
Think of modelling this in levels of detail, you start with the big shapes and get smaller till your down to the intricate details very last. It'll make it easier for you in the long run.
Also remember not everything needs to be attached topologically, where possible intersecting floating elements can save time and avoid messy wires.
It also might be easier to straight up replicate it if you don't feel confident enough modelling yet, altho as you say it's not easy figuring out what's what on that awesome thing lol
Yeah I again completely agree, usually I am really strict on my modeling in terms of what I allow for. I am very much less is more; while that sounds cliche and obvious, I think if you really stick by it you can save yourself loads of polys/tris/verts and either help things to run better or to add extra stuff you might not have thought about
With saying that I must admit I think I went a bit crazy because I had not done 3D modelling for a while and I started the tank body before I went on holiday which was a super stressful time so I was kinda half hearted with this project, however now I am fully up for it
Ah thats pretty cool. I wasnt sure if it needed to be "water-tight". Also I wasnt sure if things also had to be evenly spaced out. I know with zbrush for example that keeps everything super neat for you, so I wasnt sure if it was "best practice" for it to be all super neat and tidy. Obviously I would imagine it is, but to the point of going through on purpose to make it tidy when its not needed seems a bit anal and time wasting, although I am not sure since I am hardly a professional haha.
I took your advice on everything not being stiched together and it saved me loads of time :P.
Well I think I love the idea of doing this to much to give up on it completely. I mean if I am to include this in my portfolio, I want it to be something that stands out and not just a simple tank. Plus everyone loves Orks and not so much space marines :P.
Anyway here is a picture of the small update, its basically had my attention for about an hour or so since Ive been busy all day. I took all of your advice (kinda) and basically started blocking out the body. I was going to re-start it but it seemed like I would be wasting time and I kinda like that fact I learning as I go and not just learn stop learn stop learn stop. So I mean for the next project I'll start off super simple but I guess I just fancy trying to keep this one until the end.
In terms of what I have done, I have just deleted all the middle part and re-did it. I have also cleaned up some of the mesh as well to help things along. So its all nice and simple for tomorrow when I can try and finish the rear end and get some stuff on the top
Just a quick thanks again for all the help, its really appreciated and hopefully tomorrow I can give you guys something cool to look at
Oh the whirlwind side pods will have like a chair that the orks would sit in. Hopefully ill get that done tomorrow
Luckily I found a "crane" that the orks have over on forge world so I have decided to throw that on top and instead of an open seat I'll make a tube frame cage for the guy to sit in. This is very much a blockout which while I like doing detailed stuff more, its cool to see the shape of the whole piece start to come together
The process has been a bit slow the past few days. 2 Days ago I still had major jet lag so I stayed up all night thinking "If I stay up I'll be sleepy tomorrow night and I can get lots of work done during the day". Stupidly I was just so tired all day that all I managed to do was create a cannon.... Also yesterday I managed to spill tea all over and in my keyboard, meaning if I were to press any keys it would keep pressing either 3, ., or E and Shift was broken as well so I couldnt carry on until I cleaned it all out and dryed it off... So sorry for the lack of updates and I will post an update tonight
https://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=ork+power+claw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=2133&bih=1026&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&authuser=0&ei=4h4EUPG_Iaq50QX4-fSPBw
Maybe something moore bulky and unprecise.
Heres the picture of the upate so far. I have started to hi-poly to lifta just to see if it will look good etc. Any comments/crits or questions are very much welcome.
Also the reason why the lifta part is a different colour, thats because I rendered that out in a seperate file and just photoshoped it in, I didnt want to pile in loads of pictures :P.
Can you post an image that has specular? Flat clay renders are not easy to critique.
Thanks again for the suggestions and crits
I really want to get a decent portfolio up and running and to continue to add work and if this isnt looking like it will be worth including then I shall drop this and do something else. So yeah, advice please would be appreciated
@Visceral; Thanks for the compliments, I do not understand what you mean by the grip part however... do you mean the whole lifta thing doesnt look orkish? or is it a certain part of the piece?
@Skiffy, Ah thanks as well
Its the claw part of the entire crane, the accutall blades of it. If you like them that way then go for it. But if i where in charge i would atleast make them a big moore bulky and random.
I have to say I agree with this, everything other than the actual bladey-claw bit is spot on but the blades are just too uniform and slender. Minus the bolts, they look that they'd be more suited to a Necron or Dark Eldar style. I'd say making each blade a little wider, maybe slightly crooked and at slightly different angles.
Your post from the 17th is much closer in this respect, it looks rougher, less slender and clean cut. The scale of the claw might be better a little bigger in comparison to the rest of the 'arm', if you look at the Ork style, weapons are usually slightly exaggerated and oversized in comparison to everything else.
It's looking awesome so far though, really promising
Everything else is looking sweet, though, keep it up!
So yeah I have two pictures for you, one of the resizing and the next of the cool scope thing :P.
Oh also I didnt resize the barrel type parts because I think they look cooler being bigger and as the cannon/grip is large it kinda seems a bit odd when they look small. So yeah crits or suggestions on that as well if you think I am completely wrong haha.
Thanks again massively for pointing that out, it would have been right at the end knowing my luck to see that its all wrong xD.
The claw parts do look a little too clean compared to the slapped/welded look of the rest of the claw.
The little plates everywhere in particular look awesome.
Anyway here is a quick update, I am not sold at all on the bottom plate, I wanted it to look more like it clamps down on the tank, however I am not sure of the shape/s of the clamp things. I am not sure if it should clamp down or the tank should clamp on it; if that makes sense haha.
Also I have had an idea for the claw things as I agree it does look a bit to uniform, so later on I am planning to maybe have different claws on it so it makes it even more random. So yeah only a small update and tbh I just wanted to post to say thank you for the help and support.