Iron Horde Ram [WIP]

Dethling

Hi,

after I attended Blizzcon this year and saw the first artworks of the Iron Horde I decided to design a Iron Horde Vehicle.
After a few sketches I cam up with the idea of an Ram.
The purpose of the vehicle should be to simply crash thru enemy siege lines, walls or infantry formation.
It's designed for a frontal assault, something like a unguided heavy missle, but on wheels... and with spikes

Here a few shots of my WIP (no textures or smoothing applied yet):






Critics & Feeback welcome

Dethling

Worked a little bit on the Ram and changed a few things.
- Adapted the front shield (including the conection to the main body, not visible in this shot)
- Added the Fire-Wheel (front wheel) from the Garrosh encounter (thanks WoWModelviewer^^)
- Changed the boiler and added some parts to the top
- removed the doors



As always critis, feedback etc. Welcome

Erafic

Hmm, in some way I think it might be a little.. sleek?

I usually think the Warcraft models of the vehicles tell a lot through their silhouettes and their, at times, disproportionate designs. Earlier we've seen a lot of wood incorporated but the horde seems to be going for more and more steel/iron armor slabs in their designs.

Taking a look back at the different siege engines we've seen from the Horde so far~


The Catapult we've seen in orcish settlements, small and large.


Theres the Demolisher debuting with Wotlk


And this seems to be something coming up on the future/past frontlines in Wow:WoD.

My personal opinion would be to take a look at the boiler in the back and perhaps give it some more character! So far it looks like it fits neatly inside the box, being pretty symmetric as is right now. But with some more personality like the boilers above it could look a lot more powerful.

Also, post some wires! Makes it a lot easier to see what kind of topology you got going on your current mesh

Dethling

Thanks for the feedback.
As it should be a vehicle of the Iron Horde, I'm aiming for the WoW:WoD style.

So far the model is complete symetrical, as it's easier to work with it. I totally agree with the boiler. I have to look into it an make it more... HORDE.

Here are some Wireframes of the model so far:


As the front wheel is a direct export from WoW and not made by me, I applied the game texture to it and not a wireframe.

Dethling

- made the boiler bigger
- added metal scales to the front shield (not yet sure if I model or texture them)

plans:
- redo the front shields "spikes"

Vert Count so far: 5254

Wireframe:

Dethling

As the rear wheels for my Iron Horde Ram are finished so far, I decided to texture it today.
Not 100% happy with the wood texture, but so far I think it looks good.

Dethling

Completed the engine part today. I have to check for the highlights at the exhausts as they look wrong. Plan is to correct this tomorrow.

Dethling

To day I finished the Iron-Horde Ram, so one day before deadline.

I will rest now and check tomorrow again if I can find some parts were I have to rework, but so far I consider it DONE.



(The front wheel is not done by me, it's extracted from World of Warcraft, by Blizzard Entertainment)

praetus

ok some things. You mention beating your deadline by a day. What are your intentions on this project? Is it for a grade, portfolio, or your own enjoyment? I ask because as it stands this does not look finished to me. I like the model. I think it's a neat idea and you've got yourself a clean mesh. Your textures however, need quite a bit of work. They're currently not meeting a Blizzard standard. First of all it doesn't read as metal. There is no discernable light source. I recommend watching Hand Painted Texturing by Tyson Murphy. He is currently working at Blizzard so it is safe to say he knows what he is talking about.

Also, lastly, get rid of that wheel you extracted from the game. You didn't make it, you didn't texture it, and it does not benefit your piece to have it there. It makes me wonder what your intentions are having it there in that you're either too lazy to make a single wheel or you're hoping to pass it off like it is something you made (even though you address it in a disclaimer.) If you have the time to make an entire siege vehicle, you can create a wheel for it.

dschmidt3d

I have to agree with praetus

Nosslak

I think you need to rework many of your highlights as they've got the wrong shape entirely. For example the exhausts at the back have these soft round highlights when it should really be a big streak going along the shape (like this) and on the rims of the front plate you've got these round highlights again when it should mostly be flat following the underlying shape (either highlighting the whole plane or none of it url=https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/archievelyn/files/2012/11/L1010613.jpg]like this[/url).

The highlights on the metal plates in the front look wrong as well, but I'm not sure how to fix this.

The model currently feels very flat as it doesn't look like you've got any diffuse lighting baked in only specular and some AO. So I think you need to either bump up the strength of the diffuse lighting or add some if you don't have any.

I'm sure you've seen it already but here's a video by another guy who've worked for Blizzard on doing metal (starts at about 1:07).

Dethling

Thanks for the feedback... and yes have to agree, seems I get a little blind. When I look at this model now (and with your feedback) I see a lot of issues with it.

For the front wheel: I took the ingame model to have a refence point and to create a connection to the already present Iron Horde stuff ingame. I never intendet to trick someone with it (that's why I always add the disclaimer).

For the deadline: As I often get lost in my work, start new projects etc. I decided to set myself a deadline (end of year), so it was only a personal one.

For the metal plates: I always felt something was wrong with them, but can't narrow it down.

So back to the drawing-board. I will update this post with more work in progress.
And again thanks for all your feedback.

Dethling

Over the last days I recieved a lot of feedback for this and I'm thinking how to improve it.
I think I should make more basics hand painted textures before coming back to this one.

My plan is to do several 512x512 handpainted texture examples to get used to the basic stuff (like lightning, forms and different spec levels).
I will post the textures here and at my blog (http://dethling.blogspot.fr/).

So thanks again for the feedback!

Here is the first texture (took me ~ 1 hour):

The goal was to create some metal like texture.. but it looks more like polished stone. Neitherless I like it.

praetus

Keep this in mind when making metal for this. The iron horde does not have artisan blacksmiths. You're not going to find smooth polished metal. When they put something together they're hammering a piece of metal until it works and if it doesn't they're layering even more iron slabs, crude rivets and spikes until it does work. Look at some of the examples you posted of the WoD concepts. There isn't a smooth chunk of metal on that thing. Hell, those things look like they might gash you for just trying to hold a piece of them.

Somethings on your practice piece -

• It is incredibly obvious you used render clouds. I know it can be used as a base in a workflow, but it is always (to me at least) super recognizable. If you're going to use it as a base, that's fine, but get enough work into it where it isn't the first thing I see.
• Cracks are too small. Most everything in WoW is huge and overstated. Those are tiny little scratches.
• It's too polished. Iron Horde metal is hammered to hell with a mallet or blacksmith hammer. Gets some impacts in there.
• I get it's a square for practice but most Iron Horde stuff isn't perfect geometric shapes. They're just slabs of metal that get hammered into shape just enough to work.
• It's really obvious you cloned the spikes. Mix it up a little.

Haftoof

Another good source for understanding non-metallic metals (IE what you are doing when you paint metals with highlights) you can look into something like coolminiornot.com and look for things specifically labeled non-metallic metal work.

It's probably thee hardest thing to replicate on a miniature (besides the no-takesy-backsies) but there are good resources that talk about the process. Look for some source images of Wrought Iron, while you may mostly come up with tools and gates, it'll give you an idea of the color and highlight (which you can pull color samples from).

Dethling

Good morning polycount

Instead of doing the usual morning stuff (browsing gaming sites, reading news etc.) I decided to use the one-two hours before work to harness my texturing skills.

That's the todays texture:


The bars need a little bit more refinement I think, but works calling.

Nosslak

This is looking a lot better than your last one. But I think you should add some shadows to the smaller cracks as well as otherwise the look too shallow.

I think the shading and shapes are pretty good but the texture could be improved with some color variation to break up the monochrome nature of it (think subtle reflections, some brown dirt, maybe some algae/moss/lichen if it's something that's either old or near the sea).

Haftoof

Actually I was thinking it needs a red hue. That would tie it to the horde theme also. Rust is a good tie in for a red-hue. But you need to do it accurately or the eye will call you on it (around bolts, cracks, etc).

I'll be honest I don't know if the marble-esque cracks add anything to the piece, but may just be me, the tears in the metal looks good.

Dethling

The thinking behinde the smaller, marble-esque s cracks is, that this shouldn't be normal iron, it should be dark iron (the blackrock orcs which creates the iron hordes warmaschine use dark iron) and I wanted to add something to differ it a little and show the origin of the dark iron (it's mined inside active volcanos, so I wanted to add some Obsidian characteristica)

Here's a updated, rusted version:


I'm not happy with the rust "patches", have to find a better way of doing them.

Chimi Jimi

why are you drawing cracks in metal in non of the blizzard concepts are there cracks and the only time you might see a crack is in thin rusted metal and im pretty sure not in the huge slabs of metal that you are making.

if im reading it wrong and the squiggly lines are supposed to be cuts well cuts are straight and have much more variation (thick, thin, dark, light)

Look at your ref MUCH more closely dude and like Praetus said get rid of the front wheel and make your dam own if it aint your work dont show it

Haftoof

Chimi kind of put up my thoughts. Divits, dents, giant rends are all awesome ways to break up the surface, but the cracks mess up what the brain wants to think. I would even put weapon scarring as if this thing has been in battle before. More towards the front of the ram as anyone would be crushed or pushed to the side when it finally barreled through a crowd.

Depends how far you want to go with the rust. I could definitely aim to add it around "things" (bolts, the plates holding the rend together). I would also add some noise to the rust, as it really has a texture to it. Rust also tends to draw downward with gravity, especially in streaks. So focus on the rends, slices and divots in the plate, the bolts and extra and draw it downward onto other areas of the plate where moisture causes it to run and stain.

Dethling

After some weeks of rest, vacation and other projects/training. I decided to come back to this one.
As I saw the texturing I have to say I'm very disappointed about my own work. So I did soem tweaks on the model (removed sharp corners) and started the texturing from scratch.

So far I did the base colors and the lightning for the front part:


I still have massive problems with the "look like metal" part, so if anyone has any tips or tricks here, please share it

Dethling

Worked on the front to make it more like the dark metal of the iron horde:

Lowpawly

The front seems to plated and wouldn't be able to break into anything, Iron horde are all about chunky stuff that works