Halo Missile Turret (WIP)

Kimon

LATEST UPDATE:



ORIGINAL THREAD:

Heya everyone! Started working on a Missile Turret yesterday.
It's heavily based on one I saw in Halo. Here's the High Poly as it stands right now:



Still a lot of stuff to fix and do, and I'm still not sure how much I will put into the actual high poly.
Will probably end up do a lot of the small stuff in nDo!

Any C&C is appreciated. Will update as I go along

Thanks for stopping by.

DWalker

It looks rather top heavy. If you lengthened the feet, you'd make it appear less likely to topple over when it fires. Consider the mount for an old hawk missile battery:

Kimon

So, I had time for some more stuff today. Update:



@DWalker

Hm, yea I see what you mean. Will definitely look into making that look more steady!

Spiffy664

nice modeling. I agree your main problems are in design and not execution. I would think about recoil, targeting, and reloading. Right now its not obvious to me how it would work and looks more like a giant sensor of some sort, then a missile turret. Slick modeling though

dissonance

You could just make them taller; the cylindrical portion above the current legs doesn't look like it's doing much, so you could just extend the top hinge of the legs up into it and have their outstretched position be at a shallower angle to the vertical axis. It'd be the same footprint as the current version, but the force would be transmitted downwards starting from closer to the center of gravity so it'd be a lot more stable. See if you can match the leg angle with the control arm angle up above (the one that controls the pitch of the rocket pod itself).

BobtheGreatII

If anyone was curious, this is what he's basing the turret off of:


It looks nice, but the lack of detail in the middle is really throwing off the look of the high poly. I'm sure you want to save some stuff to do after you bake, but I would try to put as much of those little details in the middle as you can to really make an impressive high poly model. Also, you're missing some bevels on the little parts that make up the covers where the legs come out.

Edit: It would also seem that they changed the entire model's proportions a lot when they finally put it in game, as the actual missle pod is much larger than the base. Personally I think it looks kind of weird, but I thought it was interesting enough to point out:

Kimon

Thanks for the C&C guys, now I got a lot to think about.

@BobtheGreatII
I was seconds away from posting it myself!
And wow, it really changed a lot. I think I prefer the concept version to be honest.

Just want to add that I feel a bit torn. I agree what you guys are saying about it looking a bit top heavy and unstable, on the other hand, it would be fun to stay pretty true to the concept. Hmm, tough one to be honest.

As until now, proportions have stayed decently same-ish as the concept:

Kimon

Good morning! I sat down for a little while now in the morning before school and moved out the feet as far as I could without breaking the feel and style from the concept.



What do you guys think? It's looking at least a bit less top heavy, right?

Dethling

I would say you have to do something with the main body. In hte concept it looks more like added plates in your model it looks like some extension from the body.

I would seperate the plates (the Parts with the UNSC Logo) from the main body and handle them like armor-plates / casing). By doing so you can also seperate the shape of the body from the plates (there is a slight bevel at the bottom of the main body in the concept).

Also the conection between the missle launcher frame and the main body (lower part of the frame) looks different in the ingame version then in yours.

Kimon

@Dethling

Good catch on that main body bevel, will definitely fix that one.
About the connection, yea, I've noticed that the in game version and the concept differs on a number of places, I kinda prefer the concept version myself and sticking closer to that

Kimon

Doing some quick test bakes with temporary UV's just to check what kind of quality I can expect. Pretty satisfied considering the low tricount! this is just the base parts without floaters etc, I'll bake those later when I'm doing it for realz.

Kimon

Hey hey! Wish I didn't have so much school stuff so I could work on this more, but here's some progress on the low poly at least:





Still a lot of the small stuff detail and floaters missing, and I got some obvious smoothing problems at the front holes mostly!

Trying to keep everything I feel would waste too much UV space as one mesh.
Also did some test bakes for cylindrical parts and got a lot of lovely wobbles, so I really have to fix that low poly piece up before even showing it!

Stockwell

Will you be doing a second normal detail pass somehow? I think there is a lot more you could capture from the concept. Detail can always be added into your normal map, but personally I think you should model just a bit more out. Nothing against adding the tertiary detail later, but I just wanted to throw in my input before you keep baking. Bakes look nice though.

Kimon

@Stockwell

Yes, of course! More detail is coming
I like to do these "dirty bakes" as I like to call them, while I model.
I just lay out some quick UV's and bake to know that I'm not doing something terribly wrong.

Thanks for the input!

BobtheGreatII

Even for rough bakes, it looks like those are coming out nicely.

Kimon

Good evening! Some progress on the low poly:



Still some main parts to bake and A LOT of detail to be added, and I gotta fix that horrible normal map wobbling on the big cylinders. But overall I think it's going pretty smooth! Thanks for stopping by

Kimon

Wow, has it been a week already? That's crazy.
Havn't had a lot of time to work on this tbh, too much stuff in school.

I finished the UV's and moved on to the real baking anyways:



I guess the UV's could be much better, and you could probably be optimizing them forever, but hey, sometimes you gotta say enough is enough

You guys think they look at least somewhat OK? Not too much space wasted?

Tobbo

Those UV's look nice and packed to me.

luge

thats a sexy UV layout right there. looks like it fits well within. I do have a pet peve of scaling inwards a little from the edges of the layout, but thats just me.

Kimon

Thanks for the kind words, guys!

I've decided that the base bake is solid enough so work has begun on the first detail pass:



Thanks for stopping by, means a lot

Kimon

Hey everyone! New update:



I think it's finally starting to look atleast somewhat cool

JamieRIOT

This is coming along real nice now. Are you doing the detail pass in nDo?

Kimon

Thanks Jamie! I try to mix it up a little! Some are floaters, most are nDo, but to be honest I think more often than not, nDo gives me a much more clean and polished result.

Kimon

Hey polycounters! Finally started texturing this guy today:



Obviously still a lot to do but some feedback is always nice!
Summer break is finally here so it will be awesome with more time to work on personal stuff. Thanks!

Kimon

So I guess it's pretty boring / bad right now?
Would be awesome if someone could leave a few words letting me know what they think I should think about when i continue working today!

Kimon

Morning! Been working some more on this one and I've tried to put some real thought into the wear and tear and dirt (something I know since before that I gotta practice on) so here's where I am right now:



Overall I like it so far, but some C&C would be sweet

Gazu

Hey!
Im working for a TowerDefense Class Project@School and i have to make Turrets for it.
I used your work for inspiration and i like it very much

shotgun

I think that filling-in the thin crevices half way human height upwards from the bottom with your dirt/mud color would help create the illusion of wear & tear u'r looking for. Think about it as a semi-opaque gradient that goes over everything, muting specular, color & value (effectively reducing contrast and hiding the black lines as well as the shiny edges). A subtle hue change would go along way as well, right now its just a tad darker.

The wear kinda ends abruptly at the bottom of the largest form, I think it should end more gradually. Also, if u wonna practice these effects more, try baking some of the scrapped-paint effects. The larger, dominant areas that lost a lot of paint and have deeper tear can get support from the normal while the softer, superficial corrosion is just shown in the diffuse.

Kimon

@Gazu

Hey man, thanks! That's really cool

@shotgun

Good stuff, will definitely think about those things now when I continue working.
The filling-in of crevices sounds like a cool idea.

SpooneyLuv

This is looking awesome Kimon! I would suggest adding some slight dings, scratches on the edges and on various panels. On the bottom you have some dirt going on, thats looking nice, but on the top its very clean. The metal overall could be faded in some areas, maybe where there would be exhaust coming out. Also, put some various decals on this. Panel warnings stickers, danger stripes, caution signs etc. Overall, this is very nice work. Clean bakes...I love clean bakes!!

BobtheGreatII

Looking great!

Kimon

Thanks so much for the feedback! Really helped me push myself and add more/better wear and tear. Been really fun texturing this guy Here's a few beauty shots:

JamesArk

Saw this in WAYWO, great job man.

sziada

looks great, the texture could maybe us a bit more scratches, good application of grunge though. bit unsure about the spec on this as I think the painted metal is a bit too metallic. Over all love your work so far, keep at it.

mats effect

Looking pretty good nice work man. I second what sziada said about surface scrapes etc, though don't want to make it look too beat up at the same time.

Kimon

Thanks a lot guys! Your feedback will help me a lot in upcoming project. I want to start something new right away and make everything better from the get go!

Here's wires and texture flats if anyone is interested:





(textures are 2k on the model, but I compressed and scaled them down to keep the image sized down a bit.)

ae.

came out great man, could def see this in a bungie game ;P

beefaroni

Been watching this thread since you started it up. Nice material definition and dust/scratches on the model

Kimon

@ae.
Wow, it's really, really cool to hear that from you. Thanks man, means a lot!

@beefaroni
Thank you. Nice to hear that I'm hopefully getting better on that front ^^,

Dethling

That looks really cool.

AlexCatMasterSupreme

nice

BobtheGreatII

This came out wonderful, great work.