PETROL/BLOOD - Stosh
polycounter lvl 4
This will be my first contest I participate in on polycount and I'm really excited to work on it. Overall I wanted something crude, but slightly futuristic or had some sci-fi influences on it.
My idea for the vehicle is mostly referenced from the brute chopper from Halo 3 and a morning star mace. Fusing those two ideas together basically creating a big single wheeled bike where the wheel is a giant spike ball. I'm toying around with a few other ideas to nail my design down, but I will reveal more about those within the next two days when I post my concepts for the bike.
Vehicle Reference:
I'm not completely sure yet what gender my character will be, but I like the combination of Mad Max and Destiny characters. Keeping with that crude and futuristic look I'm going for. One thing I do know is that my character will have a cloak of some type, so that's at least something solid decided
Character Reference:
My idea for the vehicle is mostly referenced from the brute chopper from Halo 3 and a morning star mace. Fusing those two ideas together basically creating a big single wheeled bike where the wheel is a giant spike ball. I'm toying around with a few other ideas to nail my design down, but I will reveal more about those within the next two days when I post my concepts for the bike.
Vehicle Reference:
I'm not completely sure yet what gender my character will be, but I like the combination of Mad Max and Destiny characters. Keeping with that crude and futuristic look I'm going for. One thing I do know is that my character will have a cloak of some type, so that's at least something solid decided
Character Reference:
Replies
Most of this is more of the Mad Max look because I've been having trouble trying to figure out a more futuristic "sleek" look with a spiked ball for a wheel. So I may go closer to Mad Max than sci-fi. Although functionally my idea was that around the wheel there were highly magnetic plates that would control the spin of the wheel so that it could make hard turns much faster. Which in turn I had to reduce the "whiplash" the rider would get so I added "repulsor lifts" to the sides of the cockpit so it would be less likely to bang into a wall or environment on a hard turn.
If there are some parts from one concept that you think would look better with another, please let me know what to mix and match and I'll try to put together another concept page.
Everyone elses stuff is looking awesome! Can't wait to get mine farther along and begin modeling it up
Also, which general cockpit looks better? The "ninja" motorcycle style cockpit, the "podracer" cockpit, or the chopper motorcycle on 6?
Upon looking at it, I found that I can simple apply the same process to get geometry that would allow me to create evenly distributed spikes around the ball. Although the geometry that it creates is all made up of hexagons. My professors from the classes I took in college had always mentioned it's highly recommended if not required to keep all shapes make up the geometry of the mesh 3 or 4 sides.
What I wanted to know is if this process I found would be acceptable for this contest and generally within the gaming industry.
This way of modeling the spike ball stemmed from link I posted that was a tutorial on how to model a golf ball. It was a method to allow me to evenly distribute spikes around the ball itself. It originally looked like a ball with hexagon geometry all over it and a specifically selected a pattern of faces and extruded them to create the spikes.
What I was told in my past classes is that I should be trying to only have faces have 3-4 sides, basically a triangle or a polygon with 4 sides. I have abided by that principle in all of my modeling. I was just trying to find different methods to create the spike ball and came across this (http://www.bmmedia.no/henningb/tutorial/golfball.pdf) golf ball tutorial that I could use as a way to evenly create spikes. I know another method would be just taking a basic sphere in ZBrush and use radial symmetry to create spikes. That would also need to be retopped, I understand, but this method would be a time saver.
I guess what I could also do now, is separate the spikes and sphere from each other, create a new sphere that has 4 sided faces, and combine the spikes from the hexagon sphere to the new 4 face sided sphere.
I know you mentioned creating one spike and one ball, what method would you do that would allow me to place the spikes evenly across the ball?
If I was doing this (and that would be in 3DS max), I would create a geosphere as it has vertices evenly spaced around its surface. Create a spike and then scatter it onto the geosphere using the scatter tool.
Tips
- Use scatter along all vertices
- Unwrap the spike first so you only have to do it once.
- Reduce the segments on the geosphere to control how many spikes you have.
- Move the pivot up on the spike slightly so that it is fully in the geosphere.
Hope this helps!
I plan to use intersecting chainlinks to "fill" the holes I've punched into the frame. Anyone know of any good tutorials or ways to create chainlinks?
Haven't tried it but this one seemed pretty decent
Few more things to do in Maya such as create the guns, cockpit, put the chainlinks in the holes of the frame, and any other misc things that might come across either as an idea or just lower the poly count a bit before taking it into ZBrush for a high poly version. I've narrowed down cockpit ideas to either a full "podracer" type or the "chopper" style seating of a harley motorcycle. I'll probably start to make both and see which one just works better with the rest of the bike.
Created the frame of the cockpit and adjusted the size of the spike ball so the frame around it wouldn't drag on the ground as much. Finer details on the way including guns/flamethrowers, cockpit controls, and chainlinks in the frame holes. Thanks for the support and input everyone