Tyranid Fleshborer WIP - When bullets don't get the job done, fire beetles!

SaarlemSanders

Hey all,

I'll try and be brief (cos I have a habit of writing too much). I've been making a Tyranid Fleshborer (for those uninitiated in Warhammer 40K, it's the gun held by this guy: http://www.fightingtigersofveda.com/fbtermie.JPG).

I wanted to make an unusual gun, so I went for this Tyranid one; the short explanation of it is that it's a living, fleshy hive, fused directly onto a Termagant's arm, that fires...beetles. They bore into the target and die inside them.

Anyway I've put my low-polys below, and obviously any and all crit is welcome. I've modelled it for use in FPS games; the low-poly comes in at 4882 tris. To make it a tad clearer, I've assumed that someone has hacked the arm off the alien in order to steal the gun.















I'll post better reference images of the gun when I have them - I modelled the weapon using a plastic miniature I have as a reference.

Selaznog

Very cool, can't wait for the highpoly sculpt, that'll be fun!

A few things I noticed...You didn't sculpt the eye in there, gonna do that in the highpoly for baking? I think it would be neat to have separate geo for the eyeball and get a nice shader on it. Alternatively you could skip the eye (I notice a lot of people shave the eyes off on their guns on the models as they look kinda silly)

Another thing is it looks like you have a bone sticking out of a fleshy arm. Tyranids have exo skeletons so you might want to have a look at some crustacean reference to really get that hard exterior and gooey fleshy interior

Moosebish

I won't ask too many questions about how exactly it works :P

But how come you decided to model the entire thing as one piece?

If you are doing a high poly, it might be easier for you to have separate pieces so you can explode it for the bakes.

That's just how I would do it..

Steve Schulze

You might be better of working from a nice sharp piece of concept art - the old fleshborer model it bit low on detail


You're going to need to retopologise before you do much in the way of sculpting - those long thin polys and poles are going to be a pain to work with.

SaarlemSanders

Hey guys, thanks for all the responses - I'll do my best to address them all.

Selaznog; Yeh, the eye is kind of silly, but I don't remove it from my models. I was planning to work it into the sculpt, but hopefully make it into some sort of pulsating/faintly-glowing boil rather than an eye. Also, your point about the exoskeleton makes a lot of sense; I admittedly gave myself some leeway on that bit, but I'll definitely look into crustacean references and see about remodelling it - thanks for the idea! Also, yeh, really looking forward to doing the sculpt - that's where I get to play with all the grisly organic details that make Tyranids interesting.

Moosebish; I modelled it as one piece because it felt more fitting with the organic shape, but in the process I did think that some areas might need to be separated when baking - I'll take that on board.

Jackablade; Ahhhhh the classic concept - I didn't think of making the older, pointier versions, but I have my old Codex somewhere that must have a wealth of images like that. I have a modified version of the gun for sculpting on; I still need to add more loops to some areas, but it should be much better for sculpting than the low-poly.

InvertedVantage

Cool. Your poly lines are a bit wavy; I realize it's supposed to be semi-organic, but stuff like the top cover on the barrel don't look as smooth as they should be - they're kind of bumpy and wavy instead of creating nice curves. This is kind of a problem throughout the model; on the right side of the gun you have a vertex pulled out of alignment with the vertical loop, giving the model a weird shape. Just below the rear guards on the left side of the model, it looks like you have too few polies - especially at the front of the forward thing on the top. It's already generating some smoothing issues.

You're also using too many polies in certain areas; the fang/horn on the front of the magazine is smoothed a lot into the mag and it doesn't really need to be; the eye socket (?) is lumpy and probably uses too many polies as well.

Overally it's a neat start and a challenging subject. My biggest advice would be not to be afraid of modeling stuff as separate components and just sinking them into each other. The guards on top of the mesh especially would benefit from this.

Good luck and keep at it!

SaarlemSanders

Hey InvertedVantage, thanks for the tips; I just wanted to check whether you were referring to the low-poly images or the images in my later post? The model in the later post is something I'm planning to use purely as a base for sculpting, so I didn't think that some of the heavier poly groupings would be a problem. However, I'm fairly inexperienced when it comes to sculpting, so any advice on how best to prepare a model for the process would be greatly appreciated.

To answer your query, the socket-thing is what the creature's other arm would connect into, but it's been torn out at the wrist.

Nonetheless I take your point about the wavy lines and peculiar smoothing issues, so I'll do my best to rectify that. I'll also separate some of the components to make life easier when it comes to baking.

Anyway I'll keep this page updated with my progress, expect more images soon!

JoshWilkinson

Dog this is a really cool concept! I love the idea of severing an arm off and modeling the arm/ gun. That's something I've never personally seen that could really help this stand out. That said, I would really consider breaking it up into separate pieces. As moosebish pointed out (cool name, btw), it helps with explosion baking but not only that, it also helps cut down on geometry in a HUGE way, saves a lot of time by not having to connect and merge all those vertices, and I suspect that thing would be a confusing nightmare to UV.

Also it looks like your poly density is pretty inconsistent right now, as though the model is a hybrid between a high and low poly mesh. A lot of your bevels don't need to be there because they're too close in proximity to really effect the silhouette and the normal map will help them to catch the light. Attached is a picture focusing on poly density and in the middle is a crudely drawn box of what the wireframe could look like if the geo was separated and intersecting instead of connecting.

And to answer your question from your other thread about the prank pulled on the girls, yes it's absolutely true. My cousin was one of the guys and they went on to make the prank even more elaborate by having the crazies confront the girls (while one of them was in on it) but none of that part was relevant to the blood description

SaarlemSanders

Hey BringMeASunskist. Thanks for the kind words on the concept, I was hoping that this idea would stand out, cos obviously guns are such a common thing to make. As per your advice, and the advice of others, I've gone about breaking up the geometry so I can do an exploded bake. I also went along with your suggestion and used the opportunity to remove a few tris that were no longer needed.

The higher-poly images I posted were of the version of the model I'd edited to take into a sculpting package, hence the excess geometry. However that model still needs to be tweaked as others have pointed out.

In response to the prank, wow. If their goal was to give those girls nightmares for years to come then I imagine that they succeeded. I wish I knew anyone with the motivation to help me pull a stunt like that; as I recall at university we once considered all wearing clown costumes on Halloween, in order to utterly terrify one of our more annoying flatmates who was scared of clowns. In the end we deemed it to be too mean (and too expensive).

Anyway the exploded mesh so far is below, I'm hoping to complete that today before preparing my other mesh for sculpting.

SaarlemSanders

Started properly sculpting my high-poly in Mudbox today, so thought I'd post some work-in-progress sculpts. Obviously there's still a hell of a lot to do.

SaarlemSanders

Found time to get going on the other side of the gun today, so here are the latest updates:







To clarify, I decided to highlight the organic nature of the gun by giving it some nasty-looking boils that had infected the gun and compromised the chitinous plating. I also tried to make the forward hand look like it'd originally been separate and then later become fused into the weapon, as the concept art posted by Jackablade shows that the hand can, at some point, be separate from the weapon.

Anyway I'll keep updating this thread as things progress - hopefully I'll get more time to work on this in the coming evenings.

JoshWilkinson

I like the boils idea but take a look at gnarly zits: the skin around zits doesn't recede. Instead, I'd make a bit of skin protrude around the boil and then an obvious bump in the center. The texture could really accentuate these imperfections.

SaarlemSanders

My apologies to the good people of Polycount for leaving this thread inactive for so long. To celebrate my return, behold, images! The low poly is unwrapped and I've been working on baking. After a couple more iterations of the high poly, I've landed on something that I vastly prefer to the original, but is still a WIP. I've lobster-fied it to really accentuate the chitin, ditched the weird boils (instead I have little dimples where the chitin isn't particularly healthy) and added much more obvious plating. It's a departure from the standard image of the Fleshborer, but I feel like it gives a more organic feel to the whole thing. Anyway, feel free to rip into it with any and all criticisms - I want to really get moving and get this gun finished by the first week of March, so the more problems you guys highlight, the more aware I am of everything that needs doing.

JoshWilkinson

This has really come a long way, dude! I'm not too adept in ZBrush so please excuse my lack of terminology, but I feel like some pinching here and there would really help this guy out. All of your edges have a soft organic feel to them and appear to have the same softness. I feel like some nice hard edges would interrupt the monotonous and really allow your surfaces to distinguish themselves.

Wesley

Yeah I'd have to agree about things appearing soft in places. Have you thought about maybe actually sub-D modelling the hard metal parts in Max and then overlaying those onto this? It looks like you might be struggling to get the metal right.

SaarlemSanders

I entirely agree that some of the edges need to be harder, especially to create some variety in the model. I think this is particularly true at certain places where the plating joins, like the overlapping plates on the upper rear of the gun. However in response to Wesley, the entire weapon is organic and there are no metal parts at all, so for the most part my intention was to make it feel smoother, as it grows directly out of the creature that carries it. The gun's exterior is made of chitin, much like crustacean exoskeletons.

SaarlemSanders

More images! I tried to pinch some of the joins, and otherwise tweak them so that the plating overlaps are more defined. I also removed the pointy bits on the central top of the gun (they looked a bit out of place to me, and they didn't bake well because the geometry wasn't set up for it to have those spikes) and added more little protrusions on various areas to break up the flatness a bit. I also finally got round to putting the gooey innards into the arm where it's been severed. I might tweak the high-poly a bit more depending on feedback, then it'll be time to go about doing a proper bake.

SaarlemSanders

An extra update, after resculpting the socket where the Termagant's other arm has been torn out. I've gone for the look of calcifying muscle:

Steve Schulze

A lot of your details are still quite soft and squidgy. While you are wokring on a firearm that's formed from flesh and chiton, I think it'd still benefit significantly from a pass with the the polish and damStandard brushes to give yourself some cleaner, sharper lines and more distinct shapes. It doesn't need to be so sharp that it appears manufactured, just to the extent that you might find on the plates of a beetle or crustacean.

Kazperstan

Try getting some trim dynamic to smooth out some of the areas like the lip of the barrel, and as Jakkablade suggested use that damnStandard, go quiet heavy with it on a layer and reduce it to what you like from there. also you could grab the pinch brush to tighten up those creases. =]

SaarlemSanders

Thanks, I'm quite new to Mudbox so I appreciate the direct advice in terms of brushes that might help. I'll do another pass tomorrow and try to sharpen up the plating and edges, then I'll update with more pictures.

SaarlemSanders

So I've been looking at more references of chitinous plating, in the hope of making the exoskeleton look tough rather than soft. I've retained the curves but pinched and narrowed all the edges, and I've also smoothed out the surface detail, with the intention to add subtler, smaller pocks over the model, rather than the rough texture that it had before.

Wesley

Ah that's more like it! Much better direction. If you're worried about it looking like metal rather than organic don't, a lot of that - most - will be defined by your textures and shader. Also it'd be great to see cracks and bits broken off on the plates. I'm sure you could find some nasty reference images of squished beetles. Looking forward to seeing more.

SaarlemSanders

Here are some image updates addressing Wesley's suggestion to add cracks - given the angle the arm is severed at, it seemed to make sense that the front right of the exoskeleton would be smashed by a blow that knocked the gun to the side, exposing the arm to a blow from a bladed weapon.

I've also added a bit of surface detail based on reference images of beetle shells.

SaarlemSanders

All the maps involved here are WIP, I just wanted to give a quick update of how things are going. There are still seams and artefacts in the normal map, and the only thing really done on the diffuse is the bits of red plating (which also still have seams), but anyway, updates:

Hazardous

I dont know what your using to preview but try flipping your Y channel in your normal map - it looks totally inverted at the moment.

SaarlemSanders

I've just re-baked my normal map using Xnormal, and also baked out the ambient occlusion map. The results are much, much better than my previous normal - a lot less seams and artifacts. I'll tweak the map to dispose of the lingering problems, then I can properly begin the diffuse texture.